Searching for Effective Forces in Laboratory Insect Swarms

Collective animal behaviour is often modeled by systems of agents that interact via effective social forces, including short-range repulsion and long-range attraction. We search for evidence of such effective forces by studying laboratory swarms of the flying midge Chironomus riparius. Using multi-camera stereoimaging and particle-tracking techniques, we record three-dimensional trajectories for all the individuals in the swarm. Acceleration measurements show a clear short-range repulsion, which we confirm by considering the spatial statistics of the midges, but no conclusive long-range interactions. Measurements of the mean free path of the insects also suggest that individuals are on average very weakly coupled, but that they are also tightly bound to the swarm itself. Our results therefore suggest that some attractive interaction maintains cohesion of the swarms, but that this interaction is not as simple as an attraction to nearest neighbours

Emergent dynamics of laboratory insect swarms

Collective animal behaviour occurs at nearly every biological size scale, from single-celled organisms to the largest animals on earth. It has long been known that models with simple interaction rules can reproduce qualitative features of this complex behaviour. But determining whether these models accurately capture the biology requires data from real animals, which has historically been difficult to obtain. Here, we report three-dimensional, time-resolved measurements of the positions, velocities, and accelerations of individual insects in laboratory swarms of the midge Chironomus riparius. Even though the swarms do not show an overall polarisation, we find statistical evidence for local clusters of correlated motion. We also show that the swarms display an effective large-scale potential that keeps individuals bound together, and we characterize the shape of this potential. Our results provide quantitative data against which the emergent characteristics of animal aggregation models can be benchmarked.United States. Army Research Office (Grant W911Nf-12-1-0517

Quantifying stretching and rearrangement in epithelial sheet migration

Although understanding the collective migration of cells, such as that seen in epithelial sheets, is essential for understanding diseases such as metastatic cancer, this motion is not yet as well characterized as individual cell migration. Here we adapt quantitative metrics used to characterize the flow and deformation of soft matter to contrast different types of motion within a migrating sheet of cells. Using a Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponent (FTLE) analysis, we find that - in spite of large fluctuations - the flow field of an epithelial cell sheet is not chaotic. Stretching of a sheet of cells (i.e., positive FTLE) is localized at the leading edge of migration. By decomposing the motion of the cells into affine and non-affine components using the metric D$^{2}_{min}$, we quantify local plastic rearrangements and describe the motion of a group of cells in a novel way. We find an increase in plastic rearrangements with increasing cell densities, whereas inanimate systems tend to exhibit less non-affine rearrangements with increasing density.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the New Journal of Physics. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at doi:10.1088/1367-2630/15/2/02503

Rotating, hydromagnetic laboratory experiment modelling planetary cores

This dissertation describes a series of laboratory experiments motivated by planetary cores and the dynamo effect, the mechanism by which the flow of an electrically conductive fluid can give rise to a spontaneous magnetic field. Our experimental apparatus, meant to be a laboratory model of Earth's core, contains liquid sodium between an inner, solid sphere and an outer, spherical shell. The fluid is driven by the differential rotation of these two boundaries, each of which is connected to a motor. Applying an axial, DC magnetic field, we use a collection of Hall probes to measure the magnetic induction that results from interactions between the applied field and the flowing, conductive fluid. We have observed and identified inertial modes, which are bulk oscillations of the fluid restored by the Coriolis force. Over-reflection at a shear layer is one mechanism capable of exciting such modes, and we have developed predictions of both onset boundaries and mode selection from over-reflection theory which are consistent with our observations. Also, motivated by previous experimental devices that used ferromagnetic boundaries to achieve dynamo action, we have studied the effects of a soft iron (ferromagnetic) inner sphere on our apparatus, again finding inertial waves. We also find that all behaviors are more broadband and generally more nonlinear in the presence of a ferromagnetic boundary. Our results with a soft iron inner sphere have implications for other hydromagnetic experiments with ferromagnetic boundaries, and are appropriate for comparison to numerical simulations as well. From our observations we conclude that inertial modes almost certainly occur in planetary cores and will occur in future rotating experiments. In fact, the predominance of inertial modes in our experiments and in other recent work leads to a new paradigm for rotating turbulence, starkly different from turbulence theories based on assumptions of isotropy and homogeneity, starting instead with inertial modes, which are the linear eigenmodes of any rapidly rotating fluid

Three-Dimensional Time-Resolved Trajectories from Laboratory Insect Swarms

Aggregations of animals display complex and dynamic behaviour, both at the individual level and on the level of the group as a whole. Often, this behaviour is collective, so that the group exhibits properties that are distinct from those of the individuals. In insect swarms, the motion of individuals is typically convoluted, and swarms display neither net polarization nor correlation. The swarms themselves, however, remain nearly stationary and maintain their cohesion even in noisy natural environments. This behaviour stands in contrast with other forms of collective animal behaviour, such as flocking, schooling, or herding, where the motion of individuals is more coordinated, and thus swarms provide a powerful way to study the underpinnings of collective behaviour as distinct from global order. Here, we provide a data set of three-dimensional, time-resolved trajectories, including positions, velocities, and accelerations, of individual insects in laboratory insect swarms. The data can be used to study the collective as a whole as well as the dynamics and behaviour of individuals within the swarm