Ariel Gil, Ophir Yotam, Levi Sagi, Ben-Jacob Eshel, Ayali Amir
Department of Mathematics, Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel.
Department of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
PLoS One. 2014 Jul 2;9(7):e101636. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101636. eCollection 2014.
The principal interactions leading to the emergence of order in swarms of marching locust nymphs was studied both experimentally, using small groups of marching locusts in the lab, and using computer simulations. We utilized a custom tracking algorithm to reveal fundamental animal-animal interactions leading to collective motion. Uncovering this behavior introduced a new agent-based modeling approach in which pause-and-go motion is pivotal. The behavioral and modeling findings are largely based on motion-related visual sensory inputs obtained by the individual locust. Results suggest a generic principle, in which intermittent animal motion can be considered as a sequence of individual decisions as animals repeatedly reassess their situation and decide whether or not to swarm. This interpretation implies, among other things, some generic characteristics regarding the build-up and emergence of collective order in swarms: in particular, that order and disorder are generic meta-stable states of the system, suggesting that the emergence of order is kinetic and does not necessarily require external environmental changes. This work calls for further experimental as well as theoretical investigation of the neural mechanisms underlying locust coordinative behavior.
通过实验（利用实验室中的一小群行军蝗虫若虫）和计算机模拟，研究了导致行军蝗虫若虫群体出现秩序的主要相互作用。我们使用了一种定制的跟踪算法来揭示导致集体运动的基本动物间相互作用。揭示这种行为引入了一种新的基于主体的建模方法，其中暂停和行进运动至关重要。行为和建模结果很大程度上基于单个蝗虫获得的与运动相关的视觉感官输入。结果表明了一个通用原则，即间歇性动物运动可被视为动物反复重新评估自身状况并决定是否聚集时一系列个体决策的结果。这种解释尤其意味着关于群体中集体秩序的形成和出现的一些通用特征：特别是，秩序和无序是系统的通用亚稳态，这表明秩序的出现是动态的，不一定需要外部环境变化。这项工作需要对蝗虫协调行为背后的神经机制进行进一步的实验和理论研究。
