Publication Date:
2009-03-28
Description:
Similarities in the behavior of diverse animal species that form large groups have motivated attempts to establish general principles governing animal group behavior. It has been difficult, however, to make quantitative measurements of the temporal and spatial behavior of extensive animal groups in the wild, such as bird flocks, fish shoals, and locust swarms. By quantifying the formation processes of vast oceanic fish shoals during spawning, we show that (i) a rapid transition from disordered to highly synchronized behavior occurs as population density reaches a critical value; (ii) organized group migration occurs after this transition; and (iii) small sets of leaders significantly influence the actions of much larger groups. Each of these findings confirms general theoretical predictions believed to apply in nature irrespective of animal species.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Makris, Nicholas C -- Ratilal, Purnima -- Jagannathan, Srinivasan -- Gong, Zheng -- Andrews, Mark -- Bertsatos, Ioannis -- Godo, Olav Rune -- Nero, Redwood W -- Jech, J Michael -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Mar 27;323(5922):1734-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1169441.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. makris@mit.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19325116" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animal Migration
;
Animals
;
Atlantic Ocean
;
*Behavior, Animal
;
Ecosystem
;
Fishes/*physiology
;
Population Density
;
Reproduction
;
Spatial Behavior
;
*Swimming
;
Time Factors
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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