title: Power-law scaling in dimension-to-biomass relationship of fish schools.
abstract: Motivated by the finding that there is some biological universality in the relationship between school geometry and school biomass of various pelagic fishes in various conditions, I here establish a scaling law for school dimensions: the school diameter increases as a power-law function of school biomass. The power-law exponent is extracted through the data collapse, and is close to 35. This value of the exponent implies that the mean packing density decreases as the school biomass increases, and the packing structure displays a mass-fractal dimension of 53. By exploiting an analogy between school geometry and polymer chain statistics, I examine the behavioral algorithm governing the swollen conformation of large-sized schools of pelagics, and I explain the value of the exponent.
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: D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D018533:Biomass; D005399:Fishes / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009068:Movement