Power-law versus exponential distributions of animal group sizes

DOI10.1016/S0022-5193(03)00192-9zbMATH Open1441.92049arXivcond-mat/0305241OpenAlexW2060835744WikidataQ47645038 ScholiaQ47645038MaRDI QIDQ2177376FDOQ2177376

Authors: Hiro-Sato Niwa 

Publication date: 6 May 2020

Published in: Journal of Theoretical Biology (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: There has been some confusion concerning the animal group-size: an exponential distribution was deduced by maximizing the entropy; lognormal distributions were practically used; a power-law decay with exponent {3/2} was proposed in physical analogy to aerosol condensation. Here I show that the animal group-size distribution follows a power-law decay with exponent 1, and is truncated at a cut-off size which is the expected size of the groups an arbitrary individual engages in. An elementary model of animal aggregation based on binary splitting and coalescing on contingent encounter is presented. The model predicted size distribution holds for various data from pelagic fishes and mammalian herbivores in the wild.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0305241

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zbMATH Keywords

power lawstochastic differential equationsize distributionanimal group

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Ecology (92D40)

Cites Work

• The dynamics of group formation
• The steady-state distributions of coagulation-fragmentation processes
• The equilibrium behavior of reversible coagulation-fragmentation processes

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