Characterizing heterogeneity in microscopic collectives

Abstract

Most collective systems in real life from animal herds, bird flocks and schools of fish to bacterial swarms, and cell migration are heterogenous in nature; they contain multiple types of individuals. These differences among the individuals can affect the emergent behaviour of the collective as a whole. There have been many techniques developed to infer the heterogeneity in these systems, but none of them deal with complex interactions between agents like that present in microscopic collectives. In these systems, long range hydrodynamic interactions have a considerable effect on the observed dynamics. By modelling a system that simulates a microscopic collective in a fluid medium and introducing heterogeneity into it, we can study the observed dynamics and their relation to the intrinsic properties.