Fig 1. Attention trade-off in collective behavior.

a: Schematic visualization of attention trade-off in collective behavior in complex environments. The focal individual can only pay attention to k = 3 nearest objects—other agents or non-social environmental features—simultaneously. b: Visualization of different situations that may occur in the model. The arrows indicate the velocity vectors $\overrightarrow{v}$ of the different agents. The small black circles indicate the location of danger sites l and l′ with their repulsion zones shown in blue. Agent i (red) reacts to the danger site (DS) l as two conditions are met simultaneously: DS l is in i’s kNO, and agent i is also within the corresponding repulsion zone. Agent j (magenta) does not react to DS l′ since it’s attention slot is already filled with three other agents (one blue and two gray). Agent k (blue) perceives DS l′ but does not react to it, because it is outside of the repulsion zone. It only reacts to two other neighbors (gray and magenta) and aligns with them.