Thread by @oritpeleg

Pre-print alert! ״Self-organization in natural #swarms of Photinus carolinus #synchronous #fireflies”

How many fireflies does it take to synchronize a swarm in its natural habitat? And how fast does the burst propagate throughout the swarm?

dlvr.it/RrVkLC



🧵1/7

2/7 Fireflies flashing in unison is not just a mesmerizing manifestation of animal collective behavior… but also a landmark example of biological synchrony.

We recently developed a method to record the 3D spatiotemporal pattern of their flashes

https://twitter.com/oritpeleg/status/1308556914314280960

3/7 To understand the synchronization mechanisms and inform theoretical models, we apply our method on the collective display of thousands of Photinus carolinus fireflies, this time, in their natural habitat!

4/7 As we showed before, at low firefly density, flashes appear uncorrelated. At high density, the swarm produces synchronous flashes within periodic bursts:

5/7 Using three-dimensional reconstruction, we demonstrate that flash bursts nucleate and propagate across the swarm in a relay-like process, and estimate the speed of propagation to be an order of magnitude larger than the speed of individuals:

6/7 Our results suggest that fireflies interact locally through a dynamic network of visual connections defined by visual occlusion from terrain and vegetation! This highlights the importance of the environment in shaping self-organization and collective behavior:

7/7 For more info see the full text:

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

#collectiveBehavior #firefly #bioluminescence #synchronization