SKM 2023 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 16: Collective Dynamics in Animal and Human Societies

SOE 16.5: Talk

Thursday, March 30, 2023, 12:00–12:15, ZEU 260

The role of escape angle in predator-prey interactions: the emergence of fountain effect — •Palina Bartashevich^{1, 2} and Pawel Romanczuk^{1, 2} — ¹Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany — ²Excellence Cluster Science of Intelligence, Technische Universität Berlin, 10587 Berlin, Germany

Empirical studies of fish schooling widely described the variety of ways in which fish escape to reduce the chances of being caught by a predator while trying at the same time to stay in a group. The ``fountain effect'' is one such evasion maneuver that allows small fish to out-maneuver the fast-moving predator by swimming away at a constant angle determined by the rear limit of the visual cone [1]. Our spatially-explicit agent-based numerical simulations recover the same optimal prey-fleeing angle as confirmed by empirical studies. Moreover, our results show that the fleeing angle not only minimizes the distance to the predator but creates a sequence of information flows that best facilitates the information propagation throughout the collective. This finding highlights the direct role of social interaction in the emergence of the fountain effect which was not addressed before. We also address the questions of how the stimulus characteristics such as the initial predator angle of attack and distance to the first responders affect the response as a whole, allowing us to make biological predictions.

[1] Hall SJ, Wardle CS and MacLennan DN 1986. Predator evasion in a fish school: test of a model for the fountain effect. Mar. Biol. 91: 143-148.