title: Space-irrelevant scaling law for fish school sizes.
abstract: Universal scaling in the power-law size distribution of pelagic fish schools is established. The power-law exponent of size distributions is extracted through the data collapse. The distribution depends on the school size only through the ratio of the size to the expected size of the schools an arbitrary individual engages in. This expected size is linear in the ratio of the spatial population density of fish to the breakup rate of school. By means of extensive numerical simulations, it is verified that the law is completely independent of the dimension of the space in which the fish move. Besides the scaling analysis on school size distributions, the integrity of schools over extended periods of time is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Behavioral Ecology Section, National Research Institute of Fisheries Engineering, Hasaki, Ibaraki 314-0421, Japan. hiro.s.niwa@fra.affrc.go.jp
authors.forename: Hiro-Sato
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Niwa
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005399:Fishes; D006126:Group Processes; D008954:Models, Biological; D011156:Population Density; D012919:Social Behavior