Complexity in a population of Artemia

Artemia salina belongs to a genus of very primordial crustaceans, whose behavior is not widely investigated in literature. Their collective behavior is studied in this paper both experimentally and theoretically. Different experiments have been designed to control the direction of motion of an Artemia population by exploiting their sensitivity to light and to measure the response of the population to light at different wavelengths. Mathematical models have been also derived, explaining the mechanisms underlying Artemia flocking formation when a light spot is applied to the system. The results obtained allow to develop new strategies for distributed control of agents and to test them in a simple and low cost experimental setup.

► Experiments on collective motion of populations of animals (Artemia salina). ► Design of low-cost experimental setup for complex systems. ► Control of collective motion of populations of Artemia. ► Models of collective motion of populations of Artemia.