From individual motion to group behavior: what regulates collective dynamics in natural swarms of insects

Experiments on swarms of insects show that these groups obey robust statistical laws, thereby supporting a physics-based approach. I will discuss how three crucial ingredients must be incorporated in their theoretical description: activity, behavioral inertia, and mutual alignment. I will first consider small sparse groups, where interactions play no role, and show how to extract from experimental data information on the order of the dynamics. Then I will consider larger and denser groups, where interactions are strong and correlations are long-range. I will show how conservation laws, interactions and motility combine together leading to non-trivial dynamics and out-of-equilibrium features on the large scale. Our analysis explains the mechanistic origin of efficient collective behaviour in living groups and unveils new challenges in the statistical physics of active systems.

Part of the NSCS webinar series https://softmatterisrael.wixsite.com/nscs