Foraging behavior of fish schools via diffusion adaptation

Abstract

Fish organize themselves into schools as a way to defend against predators and improve foraging efficiency. In this work we develop a model for food foraging and explain how a school of fish can move as a group if every fish were to employ a distributed strategy, known as diffusion adaptation. The algorithm assumes the fish sense the general direction of food and can also infer the general direction of motion of their neighbors. The result indicates that a simple diffusion algorithm can account for the foraging behavior. The study also reveals that some form of communication among the fish is crucial to achieve schooling.