Order and Flexibility in the Motion of Fish Schools

✍ Scribed by YOSHINOBU INADA; KEIJI KAWACHI

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 595 KB
• Volume: 214
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5193
• DOI: 10.1006/jtbi.2001.2449

✦ Synopsis

The coexistence of order and #exibility in the motion of "sh schools was studied by using a simple numerical model and a computer simulation. The numerical model is based on behavioral rules for individuals in the school by considering attraction, repulsion, and parallelorientation behavior. Each individual follows the same rules and makes school movements. The simulation results show that school order and #exibility are a!ected by the number of neighbors interacting with an individual in the school and by the randomness of individual motion. Increase in the number of interacting neighbors leads to high order, especially when the number increases from a low value (between one and three). An optimal number of interacting neighbors exists that is relatively low (two or three) for high #exibility, indicating that a "sh needs only to pay attention to a few neighbors to realize both order and #exibility. The low randomness of individual motion bene"ts both order and #exibility. These results indicate that schooling "sh have evolved specialized ability for establishing both school order and #exibility.