Leadership Through Influence: What Mechanisms Allow Leaders to Steer a Swarm? - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Bulletin of Mathematical Biology Année : 2021

Leadership Through Influence: What Mechanisms Allow Leaders to Steer a Swarm?

Sara Bernardi
  • Fonction : Auteur
Kevin Painter
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

Abstract Collective migration of cells and animals often relies on a specialised set of “leaders”, whose role is to steer a population of naive followers towards some target. We formulate a continuous model to understand the dynamics and structure of such groups, splitting a population into separate follower and leader types with distinct orientation responses. We incorporate leader influence via three principal mechanisms: a bias in the orientation of leaders towards the destination (orientation-bias), a faster movement of leaders when moving towards the target (speed-bias), and leaders making themselves more clear to followers when moving towards the target (conspicuousness-bias). Analysis and numerical computation are used to assess the extent to which the swarm is successfully shepherded towards the target. We find that successful leadership can occur for each of these three mechanisms across a broad region of parameter space, with conspicuousness-bias emerging as the most robust. However, outside this parameter space we also find various forms of unsuccessful leadership. Forms of excessive influence can result in either swarm-splitting, where the leaders break free and followers are left rudderless, or a loss of swarm cohesion that leads to its eventual dispersal. Forms of low influence, on the other hand, can even generate swarms that move away from the target direction. Leadership must therefore be carefully managed to steer the swarm correctly.

Dates et versions

hal-03258073 , version 1 (11-06-2021)

Identifiants

Citer

Sara Bernardi, Raluca Eftimie, Kevin Painter. Leadership Through Influence: What Mechanisms Allow Leaders to Steer a Swarm?. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 2021, 83 (6), ⟨10.1007/s11538-021-00901-8⟩. ⟨hal-03258073⟩
24 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Mastodon Facebook X LinkedIn More