The impact of different degrees of leadership on collective navigation in follower-leader systems

TL;DR

This study models how different leadership behaviors affect collective migration success in follower-leader systems, revealing that adaptable leadership strategies enhance robustness depending on group connectivity.

Contribution

It extends a hyperbolic model to compare three leadership types, showing how leadership influence impacts collective navigation success.

Findings

Indifferent leaders only guide effectively short-term.

Observant and persuadable leaders provide more robust guidance.

Follower influence on leaders improves success when alignment is low.

Abstract

In both animal and cell populations, the presence of leaders often underlies the success of collective migration processes, which we characterise by a group maintaining a cohesive configuration that consistently moves toward a target. We extend a recent non-local hyperbolic model for follower-leader systems to investigate different degrees of leadership. Specifically, we consider three levels of leadership: indifferent leaders, who do not alter their movement according to followers; observant leaders, who attempt to remain connected with the followers, but do not allow followers to affect their desired alignment; and persuadable leaders, who integrate their attempt to reach some target with the alignment of all neighbours, both followers and leaders. A combination of analysis and numerical simulations is used to investigate under which conditions each degree of leadership allows successful collective movement to a destination. We find that the indifferent leaders' strategy can result in a cohesive and target-directed migration only for short times. Observant and persuadable leaders instead provide robust guidance, showing that the optimal leader behavior depends on the connection between the migrating individuals: if alignment is low, greater follower influence on leaders is beneficial for successful guidance; otherwise, it can be detrimental and may generate various unsuccessful swarming dynamics.