Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36344501›Full record

ArticleNature communications2022

Social interactions lead to motility-induced phase separation in fire ants.

Caleb Anderson, Alberto Fernandez-Nieves

Open access · goldAbstract read
In one paragraph

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 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
4.1field-weighted citation impact, top 6% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Cooperation in binary mixtures of active colloids.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026
    Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

Caleb AndersonDepartment of Condensed Matter Physics, University of Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.
Alberto Fernandez-NievesDepartment of Condensed Matter Physics, University of Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Spain. a.fernandeznieves@ub.edu.ORCID 0000-0002-1286-9809
Georgia Institute of Technology · USInstitució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats · ES

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Collections of fire ants are a form of active matter, as the ants use their internal metabolism to self-propel. In the absence of aligning interactions, theory and simulations predict that active matter with spatially dependent motility can undergo motility-induced phase separation. However, so far in experiments, the motility effects that drive this process have come from either crowding or an external parameter. Though fire ants are social insects that communicate and cooperate in nontrivial ways, we show that the effect of their interactions can also be understood within the framework of motility-induced phase separation. In this context, the slowing down of ants when they approach each other results in an effective attraction that can lead to space-filling clusters and an eventual formation of dynamical heterogeneities. These results illustrate that motility-induced phase separation can provide a unifying framework to rationalize the behavior of a wide variety of active matter systems.

Indexed as

AntsArthropod VenomsAnimalsCrowdingSocial InteractionArthropod Venoms

Identifiers

PMID36344501
PMCPMC9640710
OpenAlexW4308769622

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.