Creature Movement Modeling Project Spring 2018

These past 2 weeks, I have done lots of readings on the book An Introduction to Agent-based Modelling by Uri Wilensky and William Rand. I read from Chapter 1 to Chapter 7, learning about what agent-based modelling means, how to create a simple agent-based model and how to analyze the model that we have. I further studied some models in the library of NetLogo, including the Flocking Model. This model illustrates the flocking of birds based on 3 primary rules: alignment, cohesion, and separation. Learning about how this model works and figuring out the code behind it helps me have a better understanding of the Whirligig Models (the stream, the turn-back, getting food...) I also did some readings on articles about the whirligig beetles' behaviors, namely Social Behavior of Adult Whirligig Beetle by V. J. Fitzgerald and Aggregation and Predator Avoidance in Whirligig Beetles by K. Vulinec, M. C. Miller. I learned that whirligig beetles are very sensitive to the temperature of the e

This week I had the chance to do the followings: Did tutorials 1,2 & 3 about models, commands and procedures in NetLogo Learned basic syntax to make a model in NetLogo Programming Guide Started reading some of the posts in Project Whirligig Blog about the overall process of researching about the behaviors of the target figure, creating an initial model and developing that model to create a more advanced and complex one Next week I will try to look into the files of the Whirligig model, run them and understand how the codes work.

This blog will be used to discuss progress about the independent study research that Dr. Stonedahl and I are working on. The plan is to model whirligig beetles' movement.  This builds on earlier work discussed in  this blog .