Information Propagation and Synchrony in Firefly Natural Swarms

Firefly synchronous flashing is a rare and mesmerizing natural phenomenon, but remains mysterious. Despite casual descriptions of collective flashing and hasty analogies with models of coupled oscillators, careful observations and quantitative analysis suggest that the underlying mechanisms of synchrony are complex and remain poorly understood. By using stereoscopic recordings of the collective flashing display of synchronous fireflies in their natural environment as well as in controlled experiments, we reconstruct flashing swarms in three dimensions and investigate local interactions and collective patterns. We show in particular that flashing information propagates across the swarm along a network of visual connections, and we search for signatures of heterogeneities that could suggest social differentiation.