Temporal organization of bi-directional traffic in the ant Lasius niger (L.)
Résumé
The collective displacement of assemblies of organisms is certainly one of the most spectacular phenomena one can observe in nature. A column of army ants, a swarm of locusts, a herd of migrating wildebeests, a flock of birds or a shoal of fish can sometimes comprise several million individuals. Collective displacements are characterized by a high degree of coordination among individuals. This coordination is allowed by short response latencies: the movement of an individual is almost immediately followed by a parallel movement of the neighbouring individuals located within perceptual range. Each individual in a formation is submitted to conflicting forces of interattraction and repulsion (Couzin et al., 2002), and a rupture in the balance between the two categories of forces can lead to the collapse of the group. A number of recent reviews attests to the growing interest in the study of collective motion (Parrish and Hamner
Origine : Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte
Loading...