ArticleNature communications2022
Marginal speed confinement resolves the conflict between correlation and control in collective behaviour.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Nonreciprocal field theory for decision-making in multi-agent control systems.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Body orientation change of neighbors leads to scale-free correlation in collective motion.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Perception of motion salience shapes the emergence of collective motions.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Synchronization in collectively moving inanimate and living active matter.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Exploring the criticality hypothesis using programmable swarm robots with Vicsek-like interactions.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Functional duality in group criticality via ambiguous interactions.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Speed fluctuations of individual birds in natural flocks are moderate, due to the aerodynamic and biomechanical constraints of flight. Yet the spatial correlations of such fluctuations are scale-free, namely they have a range as wide as the entire group, a property linked to the capacity of the system to collectively respond to external perturbations. Scale-free correlations and moderate fluctuations set conflicting constraints on the mechanism controlling the speed of each agent, as the factors boosting correlation amplify fluctuations, and vice versa. Here, using a statistical field theory approach, we suggest that a marginal speed confinement that ignores small deviations from the natural reference value while ferociously suppressing larger speed fluctuations, is able to reconcile scale-free correlations with biologically acceptable group's speed. We validate our theoretical predictions by comparing them with field experimental data on starling flocks with group sizes spanning an unprecedented interval of over two orders of magnitude.
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