Collective behavior states in animal groups

Abstract

In this work, we study some states of collective behavior observed in groups of animals. For this end we consider an agent-based model with biologically motivated behavioral rules where the speed is treated as an independent stochastic variable, and the motion direction is adjusted in accord with alignment and attractive interactions. Four types of collective behavior have been observed: disordered motion, collective rotation, coherent collective motion, and formation flight. We investigate the case when transitions between collective states depend on both the speed and the attraction between individuals. Our results show that, to any size of the attraction, small speeds are associated to the coherent collective motion, while collective rotation is more and more pronounced for high speed since the attraction radius is large enough.