Leaders and Followers: A Design Pattern for Second-Order Emergence

first-order emergence also referred to as swarm mode, is well studied, while higher-order levels of emergent behaviour have not received much attention yet. Second-order emergent behaviour arises from the interactions of individuals, which are themselves the result of first-order emergent behaviour. Design patterns for modelling the first-order emergence are well studied and identified, such as gradient, repulsion or ant foraging, there are no available design patterns for the second-or higher-order emergence. We provided an agent-based model of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum; by modelling individual agents behaviour, we reproduce the second-order emergent behaviour of D. discoideum. Through this work, we identified a new design pattern, that we called "Leaders and Followers", for engineering second-order emergent behaviour in artificial systems.