The impact of social networks on animal collective motion
Section snippets
Methods
In this section we describe and justify our modelling approach and some key methods.
Group Cohesion (hypothesis 1)
To explore possible effects of social network structure on group cohesion and alignment, we generated five different underlying social networks that each captures different illustrative structural elements (Fig. 1). The network structures we used were: (1) fully connected where all connections have the same strength (i.e. no structure); (2) two components; (3) three components; (4) a key individual (hub) that is strongly connected to all others; (5) randomly created strong connections (Erdös &
Discussion
We have presented a model of animal collective motion that includes social network structures. Our simulations suggest that social preferences could lead to spatial association of socially connected individuals and could also impact on group fission and fusion. Furthermore, our model leads to the testable predictions that animals with many social links can be found closer to the centre of moving groups. Finally, our model shows that social preferences alone could lead to hierarchical group
Acknowledgments
We thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments that have greatly improved the manuscript. N.W.F.B.’s research is supported by the Natural Environment Research Council. D.W.F. and A.J.W. are supported by RCUK Fellowships.
References (40)
- et al.
Making noise: emergent stochasticity in collective motion
Journal of Theoretical Biology
(2010) - et al.
Collective memory and spatial sorting in animal groups
Journal of Theoretical Biology
(2002) The geometry of the selfish herd
Journal of Theoretical Biology
(1971)Towards the integration of social dominance and spatial structure
Animal Behaviour
(2000)- et al.
Modeling group structures in pedestrian crowd simulation
Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory
(2010) - et al.
Graded leadership by dominant animals in a herd of female beef cattle on pasture
Animal Behaviour
(2010) - et al.
Techniques for analyzing vertebrate social structure using identified individuals: review and recommendations
Advances in the Study of Behavior
(1999) - et al.
Emergence of scaling in random networks
Science
(1999) - et al.
How perceived threat increases synchronization in collectively moving animal groups
Proceedings of the Royal Society B
(2010) - et al.
Limited interactions in flocks: relating model simulations to empirical data
Journal of the Royal Society Interface
(2011)
Social networks and models for collective motion in animals
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
From disorder to order in marching locusts
Science
Mortality risk of spatial positions in animal groups: the danger of being in the front
Behaviour
‘Leading according to need’ in self-organizing groups
American Naturalist
Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move
Nature
Mechanisms underlying shoal composition in the Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata
Oikos
Exploring Animal Social Networks
On the evolution of random graphs
Publications of the Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science
Sampling animal association networks with the gambit of the group
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Cited by (83)
How leadership could be used to manage domestic and wild ungulate herds
2021, Applied Animal Behaviour ScienceCollective movement analysis reveals coordination tactics of team players in football matches
2020, Chaos, Solitons and FractalsThe influence of lameness and individuality on movement patterns in sheep
2018, Behavioural ProcessesThe use of social information in vulture flight decisions
2024, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological SciencesInfluence of anomalous agents on the dynamics of an active system
2024, Physical Review E