Emergent periodicity in the collective synchronous flashing of fireflies
- University of Colorado Boulder, United States
- Purdue University West Lafayette, United States
- University of New Mexico, United States
Abstract
In isolation from their peers, Photinus carolinus fireflies flash with no intrinsic period between successive bursts. Yet, when congregating into large mating swarms, these fireflies transition into predictability, synchronizing with their neighbors with a rhythmic periodicity. Here we propose a mechanism for emergence of synchrony and periodicity, and formulate the principle in a mathematical framework. Remarkably, with no fitting parameters, analytic predictions from this simple principle and framework agree strikingly well with data. Next, we add further sophistication to the framework using a computational approach featuring groups of random oscillators via integrate-and-fire interactions controlled by a tunable parameter. This agent-based framework of P. carolinus fireflies interacting in swarms of increasing density also shows quantitatively similar phenomenology and reduces to the analytic framework in the appropriate limit of the tunable coupling strength. We discuss our findings and note that the resulting dynamics follow the style of a decentralized follow-the-leader synchronization, where any of the randomly flashing individuals may take the role of the leader of any subsequent synchronized flash burst.
Data availability
Data Availability: The data and code that support the findings of this study are openly available in the EmergentPeriodicity GitHub repository found at https://github.com/peleg-lab/EmergentPeriodicity
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Ross-Lynn Fellowship
- Kunaal Joshi
- Srividya Iyer-Biswas
Showwalter Trust
- Kunaal Joshi
- Srividya Iyer-Biswas
Purdue Research Foundation
- Kunaal Joshi
- Srividya Iyer-Biswas
Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement
- Orit Peleg
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Irene Giardina, Università Sapienza, Italy
Publication history
- Received: March 23, 2022
- Accepted: March 12, 2023
- Accepted Manuscript published: March 13, 2023 (version 1)
Copyright
© 2023, Sarfati et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 145
- Page views
-
- 34
- Downloads
-
- 0
- Citations
Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, PubMed Central, Scopus.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Emergent periodicity in the collective synchronous flashing of fireflies
eLife 12:e78908.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78908
Further reading
-
- Physics of Living Systems
Schooling in fish is linked to a number of factors such as increased foraging success, predator avoidance, and social interactions. In addition, a prevailing hypothesis is that swimming in groups provides energetic benefits through hydrodynamic interactions. Thrust wakes are frequently occurring flow structures in fish schools as they are shed behind swimming fish. Despite increased flow speeds in these wakes, recent modeling work has suggested that swimming directly in-line behind an individual may lead to increased efficiency. However, only limited data are available on live fish interacting with thrust wakes. Here we designed a controlled experiment in which brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis, interact with thrust wakes generated by a robotic mechanism that produces a fish-like wake. We show that trout swim in thrust wakes, reduce their tail-beat frequencies, and synchronize with the robotic flapping mechanism. Our flow and pressure field analysis revealed that the trout are interacting with oncoming vortices and that they exhibit reduced pressure drag at the head compared to swimming in isolation. Together, these experiments suggest that trout swim energetically more efficiently in thrust wakes and support the hypothesis that swimming in the wake of one another is an advantageous strategy to save energy in a school.
-
- Physics of Living Systems
When a fish beats its tail, it produces vortices in the water that other fish could take advantage of to save energy while swimming.
