Research News: Science Paper on The Physics of Locust Swarms
David Sumpter and Iain Couzin, two members of CABDyN who are based in the Zoology Department, are the co-authors of an article in Science on order-disorder transitions in the collective motion of locust swarms (see Buhl, J., Sumpter, D.J.T., Couzin, I.D., Hale, J., Despland, E., Miller, E. & Simpson, S.J. (2006) "From disorder to order in marching locusts", Science 312, 1402-1406). Locust swarms can invade large areas of Earth’s land surface and are estimated to affect the livelihood of one in ten people on the planet. The key to effective management of locust out-breaks is early detection of the marching juveniles (bands), because control of flying swarms is costly and ineffective. Buhl et al., (2006) reveal that there is a critical density at which locusts will begin collective motion. The onset of this behaviour is characterized by a sudden switch from disordered movement of individuals in the group to highly aligned collective motion. The nonlinearity of this transition means that small increases in density can result in abrupt changes in collective motion. The results match predictions from models of phase transitions from disorder to order in statistical physics. These models can permit scaling from laboratory experiments to large populations in the field and hence inform plans for controlling locust outbreaks.
For the article see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/312/5778/1402.pdf
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For the University Press Announcement see http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/news/2005-06/jun/20.shtml.