University of Ljubljana.
Artif Life. 2014 Summer;20(3):343-59. doi: 10.1162/ARTL_a_00135. Epub 2014 Apr 14.
It is not exactly known why birds aggregate in coordinated flocks. The most common hypothesis proposes that the reason is protection from predators. Most of the currently developed examples of individual-based predator-prey models assume predators are attracted to the center of a highly coordinated flock. This proposed attraction of a predator to a flock would appear to be contradictory to an alternate hypothesis that flocks evolved as a protection against predation. In an attempt to resolve this apparent conflict, in this article we use a fuzzy individual-based model to study three attack tactics (attack center, attack nearest, attack isolated) and analyze the success of predation on two types of prey (social and individualistic). Our simulations revealed that social flocking (as opposed to individualistic behavior) is the optimal anti-predatory response to predators attacking mainly isolated individuals.
目前尚不清楚鸟类为什么会成群结队地聚集在一起。最常见的假设是，这样做的原因是为了躲避捕食者。目前开发的大多数基于个体的捕食者-猎物模型都假设捕食者会被高度协调的鸟群中心所吸引。这种捕食者被吸引到鸟群的假设似乎与另一种假设相矛盾，即鸟群的进化是为了抵御捕食。为了解决这一明显的冲突，在本文中，我们使用模糊的基于个体的模型来研究三种攻击策略（攻击中心、攻击最近的、攻击孤立的），并分析两种类型的猎物（社会性和个体性）被捕食的成功率。我们的模拟结果表明，对于主要攻击孤立个体的捕食者，社会性的群居（与个体行为相反）是最佳的反捕食反应。
