This is the first time I’ve come across discussion of stigmergy in a fluid (water) context. Check out this freely available paper here.
Stigmergy is a biological phenomenon that has been adopted by robotics, referring to environmentally mediated communication where information about building actions is encoded in the partially built structure. For example, beavers build in response to the sound of moving water. This cue is directly tied to the function of a dam, which should stop water from moving. The simple linking of build actions to the function of the resulting structure results in adaptive and robust building behavior.