Herding tendency as an aggregating factor in a binary mixture of social entities

The role of herding tendency in the group formation of social entities is hereby explored. The herding tendency is quantified by a parameter α ∈ [ 0 , 1 ] . The system consists of a mixture of two types of entities: (i) those with α > 0 and (ii) those with α = 0 . The latter consist a fraction p of the entire population. The dynamics of agent interactions leads to the formation of clusters of different sizes. The size distribution D ( s ) of these clusters are found to obey a power-law only in the limit that α → 1 and p → 0 . Group-size data of several real-world animal systems are fitted with curves generated by the model. This study contributes further to the understanding of group-forming behavior commonly cited in ecological studies.