Ant collectives and their fluctuations

Abstract

We know a lot about the behaviour of matter on equilibrium. In particular, we know fluctuations follow the central limit theorem. In contrast, only recently have we began to really understand how out of equilibrium active matter behaves. Here, we use fire ants and explore the relationship between ant number fluctuations and system size. We do this for two distinct ant states: a collective active state and a preferentially non-active state. We find that while fluctuations in the predominantly non-active state are similar to fluctuations in equilibrium systems, in the collective active there are giant number fluctuations