Self Organization

Self-organized pattern formation occurs when complex spatio-temporal structures result from seemingly simple dynamical evolution processes. The formation of animal markings can be understood in this context in terms of a Turing instability. Zebra stripes, and other biological patterns, emerge in reaction-diffusion systems, which will be discussed together with the notion of self-stabilizing wavefronts, as observed for the Fisher equation. Further prominent examples of self-organizing processes treated in this chapter involve collective decision making and swarm intelligence, as occurring in social insects and flocking birds, information offloading in terms of stigmergy, opinion dynamics and the physics of traffic flows, including the ubiquitous phenomenon of self-organized traffic congestions.