Revealing the structure of information flows discriminates similar animal social behaviors

Abstract

Behavioral correlations stretching over time are an essential but often neglected aspect of interactions among animals. These correlations pose a challenge to current behavioral-analysis methods that lack effective means to analyze complex series of interactions. Here we show that non-invasive information-theoretic tools can be used to reveal communication protocols that guide complex social interactions by measuring simultaneous flows of different types of information between subjects. We demonstrate this approach by showing that the tandem-running behavior of the ant Temnothorax rugatulus and that of the termites Coptotermes formosanus and Reticulitermes speratus are governed by different communication protocols. Our discovery reconciles the diverse ultimate causes of tandem running across these two taxa with their apparently similar signaling mechanisms. We show that bidirectional flow of information is present only in ants and is consistent with the use of acknowledgement signals to regulate the flow of directional information.

Termite males enhance mating encounters by changing speed according to density

“…Successfully encountered couples perform tandem runs to seek a suitable nest site and establish a colony. In tandem runs, a leading female decides the course of movement, and a male follows the female by maintaining almost contact with her back (Valentini, Mizumoto, Pratt, Pavlic, & Walker, 2020). As the pairing process is extremely limited in time, termites should optimize their search patterns to increase the chance of encounter before all potential mates progressively become unavailable.…”

Naïve individuals promote collective exploration in homing pigeons

“…Leader–follower interactions of this sort can be accurately captured using information-theoretic measures that quantify causal relations in terms of predictive information ( Butail et al, 2016 ; Kim et al, 2018 ; Crosato et al, 2018 ; Ray et al, 2019 ; Valentini et al, 2020 ). This methodological approach, which generally requires large amounts of data (but see Porfiri and Ruiz Marín, 2020 ), is gaining popularity among behavioural ecologists ( Strandburg-Peshkin et al, 2018 ; Pilkiewicz et al, 2020 ) as tools for automatic monitoring and extraction of the necessary volumes of behavioural data become increasingly available ( Egnor and Branson, 2016 ).…”

Naïve individuals promote collective exploration in homing pigeons

“…Leader-follower interactions of this sort can be accurately captured using information-theoretic measures that quantify causal relations in terms of predictive information (Butail, Mwaffo, and Porfiri 2016;Kim et al 2018;Crosato et al 2018;Ray et al 2019;Valentini et al 2020). One of these measures, transfer entropy, quantifies information about the future behaviour of a focal individual that can be obtained exclusively from knowledge of the present behaviour of another subject (Schreiber 2000).…”

“…Leader-follower interactions of this sort can be accurately captured using information-theoretic measures that quantify causal relations in terms of predictive information (Butail, Mwaffo, and Porfiri 2016;Kim et al 2018;Crosato et al 2018;Ray et al 2019;Valentini et al 2020). This methodological approach, which generally requires large amounts of data (but see (Porfiri and Ruiz Marín 2020)), is gaining popularity among behavioural ecologists (Strandburg-Peshkin et al 2018;Pilkiewicz et al 2020) as tools for automatic monitoring and extraction of the necessary volumes of behavioural data become increasingly available (Egnor and Branson 2016).…”