A swarm is a swarm - for any biomimetic aggregation. (1) Sure, you may have a specific term for a sepecific type of swarm, but swarm is an umbrella term that co

A swarm is a swarm - for any biomimetic aggregation. (1) Sure, you may have a specific term for a sepecific type of swarm, but swarm is an umbrella term that covers all aggregations. Working in this field, I can say that applying common terminology is not as superficial an act as it may seem. There are similarities in the rulesets governing the dynamics of animal collectives irrespective of the working environment, so usong common terms accross disciplines of study helps avoid confusion and also helps identify points of leverage. For example, engineers building biomimetic swarms of seagliders may benefit from studying V-formations of geese, even though you don't often see sealife swimming in a V-formation. A swarm requires more than one entity whose behavior is directly affected by the behavior of another entity. One of the most fascinating interdisciplinary aspects of swarms, IMO, is the fact that all swarms can be described by Radial Distribution Functions (2), which is also how states of matter can be characterized - in terms of density and lattice structure (and even polarity in extended versions). More amazingly is that, similar to the way matter in different states yields different physical behavior (e.g. between gas, liquid, solid), it's looking more and more like swarms do the same. They may even have predictable state transition points. 1.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_behaviour https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_behaviour (See bilogical swarming) 2.) The use of radial distribution and pair‐correlation functions to analyze and describe biological aggregations: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.4319/lom.2006.4.382/pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiFnqqL27vYAhUI6yYKHQK0An0QFghOMAo&usg=AOvVaw3HwVp92i8sa-DegIetM-W4 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...