Similarities between Insect Swarms and Isothermal Globular Clusters

Previous work has suggested that disordered swarms of flying insects can be well modeled as selfgravitating systems, as long as the “gravitational” interaction is adaptive. Motivated by this work we compare the predictions of the classic, mean-field King model for isothermal globular clusters to observations of insect swarms. Detailed numerical simulations of regular and adaptive gravity allow us to expose the features of the swarms’ density and velocity profiles that are due to longrange interactions, and are captured by the King model phenomenology, and those that are due to adaptivity and short-range repulsion. Our results provide further support for adaptive gravity as a model for swarms.