I call them spherepackers

'Swarmalators' - EurekAlert

Swarming and synchronization both involve large, self-organizing groups of individuals interacting according to simple rules, but rarely have they been studied together, O'Keeffe said."No one had connected these two areas, in spite of the fact that there were all these parallels," he said. "That was the theoretical idea that sort of seduced us, I suppose. And there were also a couple of concrete examples, which we liked - including the tree frogs."

I have studied sphere packing a bit.   The phase information is like a bit error, and it tells everyone how well  they are spread.  Mathematically, they are computing Pi in the aggregate,