We study the collective dynamics of groups of whirligig beetles
Dineutus discolor
(Coleoptera: Gyrinidae)
swimming freely on the surface of water. We extract individual trajectories for each beetle, including positions and orientations, and use this to discover (i) a density-dependent speed scaling like
v
∼
ρ
−
ν
with
ν
≈ 0.4 over two orders of magnitude in density (ii) an inertial delay for velocity alignment of approximately 13 ms and (iii) coexisting high and low-density phases, consistent with motility-induced phase separation (MIPS). We modify a standard active Brownian particle (ABP) model to a corralled ABP (CABP) model that functions in open space by incorporating a density-dependent reorientation of the beetles, towards the cluster. We use our new model to test our hypothesis that an motility-induced phase separation (MIPS) (or a MIPS like effect) can explain the co-occurrence of high- and low-density phases we see in our data. The fitted model then successfully recovers a MIPS-like condensed phase for
N
= 200 and the absence of such a phase for smaller group sizes
N
= 50, 100.
Dynamical clustering interrupts motility-induced phase separation in chiral active Brownian particles
