Numerical Analysis and Computation Commons^™

Modelling The Transition From Homogeneous To Columnar States In Locust Hopper Bands, Miguel Velez

HMC Senior Theses

Many biological systems form structured swarms, for instance in locusts, whose swarms are known as hopper bands. There is growing interest in applying mathematical models to understand the emergence and dynamics of these biological and social systems. We model the locusts of a hopper band as point particles interacting through repulsive and attractive social "forces" on a one dimensional periodic domain. The primary goal of this work is to modify this well studied modelling framework to be more biological by restricting repulsion to act locally between near neighbors, while attraction acts globally between all individuals. This is a biologically motivated …