Regensburg 2007 – scientific programme

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SYNF: Symposium Nonlinear and Fractional Transport in Complex Systems

SYNF 1: Nonlinear and Anomalous Transport in Complex Systems

SYNF 1.4: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 28, 2007, 16:15–16:45, H1

Flocks, Herds and Schools - Physical Models of Animal Motion — •Udo Erdmann — Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren, Berlin, Germany

The phenomenon of collective motion is of wide interest and therefore a lot of scientific research has been done in that field recently. Especially in biological and social systems which seem to be far from equilibrium most of the time, coherent motion of groups of individuals can be observed very often. Schools of fish, flocks of birds, groups of ants, systems of microorganisms like bacteria or cellular slime molds etc. show cooperative behavior and collective moving modes of a large group of these species. The variety of types of motion goes from translational directed motion over rotational motions up to more complex cooperative moving patterns of particles. Various approaches which try to tackle this phenomenon have been developed. In contrast of the rule-based models the talk will focus on a physicists view onto the aforementioned phenomena. The dynamics of the individuals will be modeled based on Newton's law. This reductionist type of approach finds three main ingredients which have to be put into the equations of motion of every single particle in order to obtain the main types of swarming motion. Various types of interactions are investigated. The stability of translational and rotational motion and a transition between these two types of motion will be discussed throughout the talk.