Fiddler Crab Courtship Lab (2D)

Male fiddler crabs signal from fixed burrow positions on the mudflat by waving one greatly enlarged claw, and neighbours nudge each other's timing the way fireflies or cardiac pacemaker cells entrain — a classic coupled-oscillator problem. This lab treats every crab's wave cycle as a phase θ on a Kuramoto oscillator: each crab's phase drifts at its own natural rate but is pulled toward the average phase of every crab within visual range, weighted by the "Signal coupling" slider. Push coupling high with a dense, exposed colony and the claws lock into a visible synchronized ripple — the Kuramoto order parameter r climbs toward 1 and the compass needle in the corner snaps to full length. Raise the tide slider instead and the water line climbs from the bottom edge, submerging burrows in encounter order; those crabs retreat and drop out of the oscillator network entirely, exactly as real fiddler crabs plug their burrows and go quiet at high tide, only resuming their display once the flat is exposed again.