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Vespula germanica is a social wasp that has become established outside its native range in many regions of the world, becoming a major pest in the invaded areas. In the present work we analyze social communication processes used by V. germanica when exploiting un-depleted food sources. For this purpose, we investigated the arrival pattern of wasps at a protein bait and evaluated whether a forager recruited conspecifics in three different situations: foragers were able to return to the nest (full communication), foragers were removed on arrival (communication impeded), or only one forager was allowed to return to the nest (local enhancement restricted). Results demonstrated the existence of recruitment in V. germanica, given that very different patterns of wasp arrivals and a higher frequency of wasp visits to the resource were observed when communication flow between experienced and naive foragers was allowed. Our findings showed that recruitment takes place at a distance from the food source, in addition to local enhancement. When both local enhancement and distant recruitment were occurring simultaneously, the pattern of wasp arrival was exponential. When recruitment occurred only distant from the feeder, the arrival pattern was linear, but the number of wasps arriving was twice as many as when neither communication nor local enhancement was allowed. Moreover, when return to the nest was impeded, wasp arrival at the bait was regular and constant, indicating that naive wasps forage individually and are not spatially aggregated. In conclusion, this is the first study to demonstrate recruitment in V. germanica at a distance from the food source by modelling wasps' arrival to a protein-based resource. In addition, the existence of correlations when communication was allowed and reflected in tandem arrivals indicates that we were not in the presence of random processes.

Illegal fishing in small-scale fisheries is a contentious issue and resists a straightforward interpretation. Particularly, there is little knowledge regarding cooperative interactions between legal and illegal fishers and the potential effects on fisheries arising from these interactions. Taking the Chilean king crab ( Lithodes santolla ; common name centolla) fishery as a case study, our goal is twofold: (i) to model the effect of illegal-legal fishers’ interactions on the fishery and (ii) analyze how management and social behavior affect fishery’s outcomes. We framed the analysis of this problem within game theory combined with network theory to represent the architecture of competitive interactions. The fishers’ system was set to include registered (legal) fishers and unregistered (illegal) fishers. In the presence of unregistered fishers, legal fishers may decide to cooperate (ignoring the presence of illegal fishers) or defect, which involves becoming a “super fisher” and whitewashing the captures of illegal fishers for a gain. The utility of both players, standard fisher and super fisher depend on the strategy chosen by each of them, as well as on the presence of illegal fishers. The nodes of the network represent the legal fishers (both standard and super fishers) and the links between nodes indicate that these fishers compete for the resource, assumed to be finite and evenly distributed across space. The decision to change (or not) the adopted strategy is modeled considering that fishers are subjected to variable levels of temptation to whitewash the illegal capture and to social pressure to stop doing so. To represent the vital dynamics of the king crab, we propose a model that includes the Allee effect and a term accounting for the crab extraction. We found that the super fisher strategy leads to the decrease of the king crab population under a critical threshold as postulated in the tragedy of the commons hypothesis when there are: (i) high net extraction rates of the network composed of non-competing standard fishers, (ii) high values of the extent of the fishing season, and (iii) high density of illegal fishers. The results suggest that even in the presence of super fishers and illegal fishers, the choice of properly distributed fishing/closure cycles or setting an extraction limit per vessel can prevent the king crab population from falling below a critical threshold. This finding, although controversial, reflects the reality of this fishery that, for decades, has operated under a dynamic in which whitewashing and super fishers have become well established within the system.

The flow of grains through narrow apertures possess an extraordinary challenge: clogging. Strategies to alleviate the effect of clogging, such as the use of external vibration or addition of smaller grains, are always part of the design of machinery for the handling of bulk materials. In this work, we study with numerical simulations the effect of adding self-repelling magnetic particles to a sample of grains. We consider a vibrated two-dimensional hopper with a small orifice through which disks flow and clog intermittently. We find that the magnetic repulsion has a second order effect in comparison with the effect of the size of the added grains. Small added grains ease the flow of the original species. However, when the magnetic repulsion is switched on for the added small grains their “lubricating” effect is usually lessened. Only for a narrow range of sizes of the added particles we observe a subtle improvement of flow rate of the original particles with magnetic repulsion.

The increasing number of mass events involving large crowds calls for a better understanding of the dynamics of dense crowds. Inquiring into the possibility of a mechanical description of these dynamics, we experimentally study the crossing of dense static crowds by a cylindrical intruder, a mechanical test which is classical for granular matter. The analysis of our experiments reveals robust features in the crowds’ response, comprising both similarities and discrepancies with the response of granular media. Common features include the presence of a depleted region behind the intruder and the short-range character of the perturbation. On the other hand, unlike grains, pedestrians anticipate the intruder’s passage by moving much before contact and their displacements are mostly lateral, hence not aligned with the forces exerted by the intruder. Similar conclusions are reached when the intruder is not a cylinder, but a single crossing pedestrian. Thus, our work shows that pedestrian interactions even at high densities (3 to 6 ped/m 2 ) do not reduce to mechanical ones. More generally, the avoidance strategies evidenced by our findings question the incautious use of force models for dense crowds.

Vespula germanica is a social wasp that has become established outside its native range in many regions of the world, becoming a major pest in the invaded areas. In the present work we analyze social communication processes used by V. germanica when exploiting un-depleted food sources. For this purpose, we investigated the arrival pattern of wasps at a protein bait and evaluated whether a forager recruited conspecifics in three different situations: foragers were able to return to the nest (full communication), foragers were removed on arrival (communication impeded), or only one forager was allowed to return to the nest (local enhancement restricted). Results demonstrated the existence of recruitment in V. germanica, given that very different patterns of wasp arrivals and a higher frequency of wasp visits to the resource were observed when communication flow between experienced and naive foragers was allowed. Our findings showed that recruitment takes place at a distance from the food source, in addition to local enhancement. When both local enhancement and distant recruitment were occurring simultaneously, the pattern of wasp arrival was exponential. When recruitment occurred only distant from the feeder, the arrival pattern was linear, but the number of wasps arriving was twice as many as when neither communication nor local enhancement was allowed. Moreover, when return to the nest was impeded, wasp arrival at the bait was regular and constant, indicating that naive wasps forage individually and are not spatially aggregated. In conclusion, this is the first study to demonstrate recruitment in V. germanica at a distance from the food source by modelling wasps' arrival to a protein-based resource. In addition, the existence of correlations when communication was allowed and reflected in tandem arrivals indicates that we were not in the presence of random processes.

We analyze the dynamics of room evacuation for mixed populations that include both competitive and cooperative individuals through numerical simulations using the social force model. Cooperative agents represent well-trained individuals who know how to behave in order to reduce risks within high-density crowds. We consider that competitive agents can imitate cooperative behavior when they are in close proximity to cooperators. We study the effects of the imitation of cooperative behavior on the duration and safety of evacuations, analyzing evacuation time and other quantities of interest for varying parameters such as the proportions of mixing, the aspect ratio of the room, and the parameters characterizing individual behaviors. Our main findings reveal that the addition of a relatively small number of cooperative agents into a crowd can reduce evacuation time and the density near the exit door, making the evacuation faster and safer despite an increase in the total number of agents. In particular, for long spaces such as corridors, a small number of added cooperative agents can significantly facilitate the evacuation process. We compare our results with those of systems without imitation and also study the general role of cooperation, providing further analysis for homogeneous populations. Our main conclusions emphasize the potential relevance of training people how to behave in high-density crowds

The search for more realistic models for interacting species has produced many adaptations of the original Lotka-Volterra equations, such as the inclusion of the Allee effect and the different Holling's types of functional response. In the present work we show that a correct implementation of both ideas together requires a careful formulation. We focus our work in the fact that a density dependent carrying capacity, combined with the Allee effect, can lead to meaningless effects. We illustrate the difficulties in predator-prey and two-species competition models, together with our proposed solution of the careful inclusion of the corresponding cubic terms.

This study investigates the utilization of various mathematical models for comprehending and managing outbreaks of infectious diseases, with a specific focus on how different distributions of incubation times influence predictions regarding epidemics. Two methodologies are examined: a compartmental SEnIR ODE model, which represents an enhanced version of the mean-field SEIR model, and a stochastic agent-based complex network model. Our findings demonstrate that the selection of diverse incubation time distributions can result in noteworthy discrepancies in critical epidemic forecasts, highlighting the crucial role of precise modeling in shaping effective public health interventions. The research underscores the necessity of integrating authentic distribution patterns into epidemic modeling to increase its reliability and applicability

In this work we analyze an evolutionary game that incorporates the ideas presented by Cipolla in his work \\textit{The fundamental laws of human stupidity}. The game considers four strategies, three of them are inherent to the player behavior and can evolve via an imitation dynamics, while the fourth one is associated to an eventual behavior that can be adopted by any player at any time with certain probability. This fourth strategy corresponds to what Cipolla calls a stupid person. The probability of behaving stupidly acts as a parameter that induces a phase transition in the steady the distribution of strategies among the population.

In this work we present an evolutionary game inspired by the work of Carlo Cipolla entitled The basic laws of human stupidity. The game expands the classical scheme of two archetypical strategies, collaborators and defectors, by including two additional strategies. One of these strategies is associated to a stupid player that according to Cipolla is the most dangerous one as it undermines the global wealth of the population. By considering a spatial evolutionary game and imitation dynamics that go beyond the paradigm of a rational player we explore the impact of Cipolla' s ideas and analyze the extent of the damage that the stupid players inflict on the population