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Cited by 780

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 5 of the 5 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Statistical mechanics for natural flocks of birds

Open access
Bialek, William, Cavagna, Andrea, Giardina, Irene, Mora, Thierry, Silvestri, Edmondo, Viale, Massimiliano, Walczak, Aleksandra M.·2012·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Flocking is a typical example of emergent collective behavior, where interactions between individuals produce collective patterns on the large scale. Here we show how a quantitative microscopic theory for directional ordering in a flock can be derived directly from field data. We construct the minimally structured (maximum entropy) model consistent with experimental correlations in large flocks of starlings. The maximum entropy model shows that local, pairwise interactions between birds are sufficient to correctly predict the propagation of order throughout entire flocks of starlings, with no free parameters. We also find that the number of interacting neighbors is independent of flock density, confirming that interactions are ruled by topological rather than metric distance. Finally, by comparing flocks of different sizes, the model correctly accounts for the observed scale invariance of long-range correlations among the fluctuations in flight direction.

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Crossref · 10.1073/pnas.1118633109

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Metadata

Authors
Bialek, W., Cavagna, A., Giardina, I., Mora, T., Silvestri, E., Viale, M., & Walczak, A. M.
Venue
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Published
2012-03-16
Volume
109
Issue
13
Pages
4786-4791
ISSN
  • 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
  • 1091-6490
OpenAlex
W2092685486
Cited by
780
References
5
FWCI
59.51
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Statistical mechanics for natural flocks of birds. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1073/pnas.1118633109
The paper
Bialek, W., Cavagna, A., Giardina, I., Mora, T., Silvestri, E., Viale, M., & Walczak, A. M. (2012). Statistical mechanics for natural flocks of birds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118633109

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.