Publication Date:
2006-06-03
Description:
Recent models from theoretical physics have predicted that mass-migrating animal groups may share group-level properties, irrespective of the type of animals in the group. One key prediction is that as the density of animals in the group increases, a rapid transition occurs from disordered movement of individuals within the group to highly aligned collective motion. Understanding such a transition is crucial to the control of mobile swarming insect pests such as the desert locust. We confirmed the prediction of a rapid transition from disordered to ordered movement and identified a critical density for the onset of coordinated marching in locust nymphs. We also demonstrated a dynamic instability in motion at densities typical of locusts in the field, in which groups can switch direction without external perturbation, potentially facilitating the rapid transfer of directional information.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Buhl, J -- Sumpter, D J T -- Couzin, I D -- Hale, J J -- Despland, E -- Miller, E R -- Simpson, S J -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2006 Jun 2;312(5778):1402-6.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK. jbuhl@usyd.edu.au〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16741126" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Grasshoppers/*physiology
;
*Mass Behavior
;
*Models, Biological
;
Movement
;
Population Density
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
