I am working on an application in behavioral ecology that combines network and particle interaction models. I have not been able to find any articles that simultaneously estimate these types of models and I was hoping that someone with more math background than myself could suggest any references.
First, we know that animals like wolves and birds, etc., form flocks or groups for hunting, protection, etc. There is a lot of work on flocking and swarming behaviors in the animal kingdom already. Second, many of these animal groups compete with each other for food--or form rivalries. So we can model these rivalries as a network, where each node is an animal group and an edge represents a rivalry. What I would like to do is understand the bi-directional interaction between (a) the network of rivalries producing changes in the flocking behavior of group (phase change), and (b) how phase changes in the flocking behavior of a group(s) can have a corresponding effect on the network or rivalries.
I have consulted the work on flocking and the work on networks, but I have not found anyone that integrates the two. Any references to articles or work would be appreciated.
I think I found an answer to this question. There is some work being done on multi-species flocking by Xiaohui Cui. Very interesting work. It seems like a good foundation from which to build. Thanks for the input folks.