Stigmergy, collective actions, and animal social spacing.

ABSTRACT: Collective animal behavior studies have led the way in developing models that account for a large number of individuals, but mostly have considered situations in which alignment and attraction play a key role, such as in schooling and flocking. By quantifying how animals react to one another's presence, when interaction is via conspecific avoidance rather than alignment or attraction, we present a mechanistic insight that enables us to link individual behavior and space use patterns. As animals respond to both current and past positions of their neighbors, the assumption that the relative location of individuals is statistically and history independent is not tenable, underscoring the limitations of traditional space use studies. We move beyond that assumption by constructing a framework t

SUBMITTER: Giuggioli L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3801015 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature