title: Spatio-temporal correlations in models of collective motion ruled by different dynamical laws.
abstract: Information transfer is an essential factor in determining the robustness of biological systems with distributed control. The most direct way to study the mechanisms ruling information transfer is to experimentally observe the propagation across the system of a signal triggered by some perturbation. However, this method may be inefficient for experiments in the field, as the possibilities to perturb the system are limited and empirical observations must rely on natural events. An alternative approach is to use spatio-temporal correlations to probe the information transfer mechanism directly from the spontaneous fluctuations of the system, without the need to have an actual propagating signal on record. Here we test this method on models of collective behaviour in their deeply ordered phase by using ground truth data provided by numerical simulations in three dimensions. We compare two models characterized by very different dynamical equations and information transfer mechanisms: the classic Vicsek model, describing an overdamped noninertial dynamics and the inertial spin model, characterized by an underdamped inertial dynamics. By using dynamic finite-size scaling, we show that spatio-temporal correlations are able to distinguish unambiguously the diffusive information transfer mechanism of the Vicsek model from the linear mechanism of the inertial spin model.
authors.affiliation: Istituto Sistemi Complessi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, UOS Sapienza, 00185 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cavagna
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Conti
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Giardina
authors.forename: Tomas S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Grigera
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Melillo
authors.forename: Massimiliano
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Viale
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016880:Anisotropy; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D001717:Birds; D003198:Computer Simulation; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis