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--- murmuration [2023/11/28 21:36] – created jhagstrand
+++ murmuration [2023/11/28 21:39] (current) – jhagstrand
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 Human murmuration, Hierarchy, torus
-As a term, swarming is applied particularly to insects, but can also be applied to any other entity or an
+As a term, swarming is applied particularly to insects,
+but can also be applied to any other entity or animal that exhibits swarm behaviour.
+The term flocking or murmuration can refer specifically to swarm behaviour in birds,
+herding to refer to swarm behaviour in tetrapods,
+and shoaling or schooling to refer to swarm behaviour in fish.
+Phytoplankton also gather in huge swarms called blooms,
+although these organisms are algae and are not self-propelled the way animals are.
+By extension, the term "swarm" is applied also to inanimate entities which exhibit parallel behaviours,
+as in a robot swarm, an earthquake swarm, or a swarm of stars.
-From a more abstract point of view, swarm behaviour is the collective motion of a large number of self-pr
+From a more abstract point of view,
+swarm behaviour is the collective motion of a large number of self-propelled entities.
+From the perspective of the mathematical modeller,
+it is an emergent behaviour arising from simple rules that are followed by individuals
+and does not involve any central coordination.
+Swarm behaviour is also studied by active matter physicists
+as a phenomenon which is not in thermodynamic equilibrium,
+and as such requires the development of
+tools beyond those available from the statistical physics of systems in thermodynamic equilibrium.
+In this regard, swarming has been compared to the mathematics of superfluids,
+specifically in the context of starling flocks (murmuration).