Mobility driven coexistence of living organisms

TL;DR

This paper introduces a minimal off-lattice model demonstrating how local rules and individual mobility influence the coexistence and pattern formation of living organisms, revealing complex dynamics and phase transitions.

Contribution

It presents a novel off-lattice model showing how local movement rules and mobility levels affect organism coexistence and pattern formation, including phase transitions and pattern flips.

Findings

Stable coexistence depends on local movement rules.

High mobility can threaten or sustain populations depending on levels.

Pattern types shift from hexagonal to stripe-like with biased movement.

Abstract

We propose a minimal off-lattice model of living organisms where just a very few dynamical rules of growth are assumed. The stable coexistence of many clusters is detected when we replace the global restriction rule by a locally applied one. A rich variety of evolving patterns is revealed where players movement has a decisive role on the evolutionary outcome. For example, intensive individual mobility may jeopardize the survival of the population, but if we increase players movement further then it can save the population. Notably, the collective drive of population members is capable to compensate the negative consequence of intensive movement and keeps the system alive. When the drive becomes biased then the resulting unidirectional flow alters the stable pattern and produce a stripe-like state instead of the previously observed hexagonal arrangement of clusters. Interestingly, the rotation of stripes can be flipped if the individual movement exceeds a threshold value.