Orit Peleg, an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, talks about the synchronization of fireflies. She explains the process of studying firefly swarms, how even a small amount of coupling can lead to synchronization, and the potential applications in programming synchronized behaviors in swarms of robots.
Fireflies synchronize their flashing through interactions in a complex system, which can be applied to programming swarm robots.
Studying fireflies in national parks using cameras helps understand emergent periodicity in collective firefly behavior.
Deep dives
Fireflies and Synchronization
Fireflies have the ability to synchronize their flashing in the night sky, even over significant areas. This synchronization is achieved through the interactions of individual fireflies in a complex system. Understanding this mechanism can have implications for programming swarm robots to work together.
Field Work and Data Collection
Field work to study fireflies involves capturing data on their behavior. This is done using cameras to record their flashing patterns. National parks are ideal locations for this research due to their abundance of fireflies and help from park service entomologists.
Models and Insights
Classical models explain firefly synchronization as individual fireflies being like oscillators, flashing periodically. The collective synchronization emerges when there is a coupling between fireflies, with one individual perceiving what others are doing. However, recent research has found that individual fireflies do not behave periodically. Exploring new mathematical models, such as the integrate-and-fire model used in neuroscience, shows promise in understanding how emergent periodicity occurs in collective firefly behavior.
Orit Peleg is an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. Orit has been on the show before, to discuss how bees work as a complex system. In this episode, we're staying within the animal kingdom, as Orit talks to us about fireflies.
In this episode, Orit is going to explain how thousands of fireflies over very significant areas can synchronise their flashing in the night sky. She'll break down the work she has been doing to study this complex system of individual agents and share the lessons we can learn from these fireflies and use them in other applications. For example, what can we learn from these synchronised fireflies that could help us to program a swarm of small robots to work together to lift something?