Departamento de Estatística, Física e Matemática, Universidade Federal de São João Del-Rei, Ouro Branco, MG, 36420-000, Brazil.
Laboratório de Termitologia, Departamento de Entomologia, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, MG, 36570-900, Brazil.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 May 18;118(20). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2004369118.
As the number or density of interacting individuals in a social group increases, a transition can develop from uncorrelated and disordered behavior of the individuals to a collective coherent pattern. We expand this observation by exploring the fine details of termite movement patterns to demonstrate that the value of the scaling exponent μ of a power law describing the Lévy walk of an individual is modified collectively as the density of animals in the group changes. This effect is absent when termites interact with inert obstacles. We also show that the network of encounters and interactions among specific individuals is selective, resembling a preferential attachment mechanism that is important for social networking. Our data strongly suggest that preferential attachments, a phenomenon not reported previously, and favorite interactions with a limited number of acquaintances are responsible for the generation of Lévy movement patterns in these social insects.
随着社会群体中相互作用的个体数量或密度的增加，个体的无关联和无序行为可能会发展为集体的连贯模式。我们通过探索白蚁运动模式的细节来扩展这一观察结果，以证明描述个体 Lévy 漫步的幂律的标度指数μ的值随着群体中动物密度的变化而集体改变。当白蚁与惰性障碍物相互作用时，这种效应不存在。我们还表明，特定个体之间的遭遇和相互作用网络是有选择性的，类似于对社交网络很重要的优先附着机制。我们的数据强烈表明，优先附着（以前未报道过的现象）和与有限数量熟人的偏好相互作用是这些社会性昆虫产生 Lévy 运动模式的原因。
