Effect of gravitational field on collective motion of fish

Abstract

Abstract Fish exhibit various patterns of collective motion, in which individual fish sense the gravitational field and tend to move horizontally. We study the effect of gravity on the collective patterns by incorporating suppression of vertical motion in an agent-based model. The gravitational factor induces a rotating cylinder which is a vertically and highly elongated form of a torus. The vortex axis becomes almost identical to the vertical axis even when the gravitational factor is weak compared to the interaction between fish. We also obtained a vertically elongated polarized school with high frontal density. Our results clarify the effect of gravity on the shape of clusters, individual-level motion, and mobility of the entire cluster.