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Sci Rep

Title:		Scale-free behavioral cascades and effective leadership in schooling fish
Author(s):		Mugica J; Torrents J; Cristin J; Puy A; Miguel MC; Pastor-Satorras R;
Address:		"Departament de Fisica, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord B4, 08034, Barcelona, Spain. Departament de Fisica de la Materia Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, Marti i Franques 1, 08028, Barcelona, Spain. Istituto Sistemi Complessi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, UOS Sapienza, 00185, Rome, Italy. Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' Sapienza, 00185, Rome, Italy. Departament de Fisica de la Materia Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona, Marti i Franques 1, 08028, Barcelona, Spain. carmen.miguel@ub.edu. Universitat de Barcelona Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS), Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. carmen.miguel@ub.edu. Departament de Fisica, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Campus Nord B4, 08034, Barcelona, Spain. romualdo.pastor@upc.edu"
Journal Title:		Sci Rep
Year:		2022
Volume:		20220624
Issue:		1
Page Number:		10783 -
DOI:		10.1038/s41598-022-14337-0
ISSN/ISBN:		2045-2322 (Electronic) 2045-2322 (Linking)
Abstract:		"Behavioral contagion and the presence of behavioral cascades are natural features in groups of animals showing collective motion, such as schooling fish or grazing herbivores. Here we study empirical behavioral cascades observed in fish schools defined as avalanches of consecutive large changes in the heading direction of the trajectory of fish. In terms of a minimum turning angle introduced to define a large change, avalanches are characterized by distributions of size and duration showing scale-free signatures, reminiscent of self-organized critical behavior. We observe that avalanches are generally triggered by a small number of fish, which act as effective leaders that induce large rearrangements of the group's trajectory. This observation motivates the proposal of a simple model, based in the classical Vicsek model of collective motion, in which a given individual acts as a leader subject to random heading reorientations. The model reproduces qualitatively the empirical avalanche behavior observed in real schools, and hints towards a connection between effective leadership, long range interactions and avalanche behavior in collective movement"
Keywords:		"Animals Behavior, Animal Fishes Leadership Models, Biological *Social Behavior *Swimming;"
Notes:		"MedlineMugica, Julia Torrents, Jordi Cristin, Javier Puy, Andreu Miguel, M Carmen Pastor-Satorras, Romualdo eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't England 2022/06/25 Sci Rep. 2022 Jun 24; 12(1):10783. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-14337-0"