Porfiri Maurizio, De Lellis Pietro, Aung Eighdi, Meneses Santiago, Abaid Nicole, Waters Jane S, Garnier Simon
Center for Urban Science and Progress, New York University, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA.
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA.
PNAS Nexus. 2024 Jun 26;3(7):pgae246. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae246. eCollection 2024 Jul.
Mass behavior is the rapid adoption of similar conduct by all group members, with potentially catastrophic outcomes such as mass panic. Yet, these negative consequences are rare in integrated social systems such as social insect colonies, thanks to mechanisms of social regulation. Here, we test the hypothesis that behavioral deactivation between active individuals is a powerful social regulator that reduces energetic spending in groups. Borrowing from scaling theories for human settlements and using behavioral data on harvester ants, we derive ties between the hypermetric scaling of the interaction network and the hypometric scaling of activity levels, both relative to the colony size. We use elements of economics theory and metabolic measurements collected with the behavioral data to link activity and metabolic scalings with group size. Our results support the idea that metabolic scaling across social systems is the product of different balances between their social regulation mechanisms.
群体行为是指所有群体成员迅速采取相似行为，可能导致大规模恐慌等灾难性后果。然而，在诸如社会性昆虫群落这样的整合社会系统中，由于社会调节机制，这些负面后果很少出现。在此，我们检验这样一个假设：活跃个体之间的行为失活是一种强大的社会调节因素，可减少群体中的能量消耗。借鉴人类住区的标度理论，并利用收获蚁的行为数据，我们得出了互动网络的超度量标度与活动水平的亚度量标度之间的关系，二者均相对于蚁群规模而言。我们运用经济学理论的要素以及与行为数据一同收集的代谢测量数据，将活动标度和代谢标度与群体规模联系起来。我们的结果支持这样一种观点，即跨社会系统的代谢标度是其社会调节机制之间不同平衡的产物。
