Scale-free movement patterns in termites emerge from social interactions and preferential attachments.

ABSTRACT: 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

SUBMITTER: Paiva LR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8157965 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature