A theoretical model of flying insect swarms proposes acoustic interaction as a local communication mechanism, with each insect attracted toward a weighted mean field generated by nearby swarm members.
The model reproduces several observed collective behaviours and predicts a counterintuitive result: stochastic noise can stabilise the swarm by disrupting pair formation that would otherwise allow insects to peel away in helical trajectories. Observations of malarial mosquitoes are consistent with swarms operating near the model’s transition to instability.
