Pub Date : 2024-08-01DOI: 10.1101/2024.08.01.605994
Yige Piao, James Brooks, Shinya Yamamoto
Chimpanzees and bonobos are excellent tool users and can socially learn various skills. Previous studies on social learning mainly measure success/failure in acquiring new techniques, with less direct measurement of proximate mechanisms like visual attention during the process. This study investigates how apes observe tool-using demonstrations through eye-tracking. After checking initial techniques, six chimpanzees and six bonobos were shown video demonstrations of human demonstrators using a tube to dip (low-efficiency) or suck (high-efficiency) juice, and then tried the task themselves. Attention to each video was compared to participants' knowledge. Although no individuals acquired the high-efficiency technique through video demonstrations, eye-tracking results revealed attentional differences between individuals familiar with different techniques. Compared with individuals already familiar with both techniques, individuals knowing only the dipping technique showed less attention to the unfamiliar sucking technique. This result indicates that apes may not attend much to what they do not know well, which aligns with reported interplay of action observation and understanding. Attentional patterns to specific areas was similar between species, though there was a tendency towards more attention to faces in bonobos and food in chimpanzees. This study emphasizes the importance of detailed investigation into social learning process using eye-tracking.
{"title":"An eye-tracking study of visual attention in chimpanzees and bonobos when viewing different tool-using techniques","authors":"Yige Piao, James Brooks, Shinya Yamamoto","doi":"10.1101/2024.08.01.605994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.08.01.605994","url":null,"abstract":"Chimpanzees and bonobos are excellent tool users and can socially learn various skills. Previous studies on social learning mainly measure success/failure in acquiring new techniques, with less direct measurement of proximate mechanisms like visual attention during the process. This study investigates how apes observe tool-using demonstrations through eye-tracking. After checking initial techniques, six chimpanzees and six bonobos were shown video demonstrations of human demonstrators using a tube to dip (low-efficiency) or suck (high-efficiency) juice, and then tried the task themselves. Attention to each video was compared to participants' knowledge. Although no individuals acquired the high-efficiency technique through video demonstrations, eye-tracking results revealed attentional differences between individuals familiar with different techniques. Compared with individuals already familiar with both techniques, individuals knowing only the dipping technique showed less attention to the unfamiliar sucking technique. This result indicates that apes may not attend much to what they do not know well, which aligns with reported interplay of action observation and understanding. Attentional patterns to specific areas was similar between species, though there was a tendency towards more attention to faces in bonobos and food in chimpanzees. This study emphasizes the importance of detailed investigation into social learning process using eye-tracking.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"190 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141884905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-31DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.30.605869
Robin Vloeberghs, Anne E. Urai, Kobe Desender, Scott W. Linderman
Classical decision models assume that the parameters giving rise to choice behavior are stable, yet emerging research suggests these parameters may fluctuate over time. Such fluctuations, observed in neural activity and behavioral strategies, have significant implications for understanding decision-making processes. However, empirical studies on fluctuating human decision-making strategies have been limited due to the extensive data requirements for estimating these fluctuations. Here, we introduce hMFC (Hierarchical Model for Fluctuations in Criterion), a Bayesian framework designed to estimate slow fluctuations in the decision criterion from limited data. We first showcase the importance of considering fluctuations in decision criterion: incorrectly assuming a stable criterion gives rise to apparent history effects and underestimates perceptual sensitivity. We then present a hierarchical estimation procedure capable of reliably recovering the underlying state of the fluctuating decision criterion with as few as 500 trials per participant, offering a robust tool for researchers with typical human datasets. Critically, hMFC does not only accurately recover the state of the underlying decision criterion, it also effectively deals with the confounds caused by criterion fluctuations. Lastly, we provide code and a comprehensive demo to enable widespread application of hMFC in decision-making research.
{"title":"A Bayesian Hierarchical Model of Trial-to-Trial Fluctuations in Decision Criterion","authors":"Robin Vloeberghs, Anne E. Urai, Kobe Desender, Scott W. Linderman","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.30.605869","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.30.605869","url":null,"abstract":"Classical decision models assume that the parameters giving rise to choice behavior are stable, yet emerging research suggests these parameters may fluctuate over time. Such fluctuations, observed in neural activity and behavioral strategies, have significant implications for understanding decision-making processes. However, empirical studies on fluctuating human decision-making strategies have been limited due to the extensive data requirements for estimating these fluctuations. Here, we introduce hMFC (Hierarchical Model for Fluctuations in Criterion), a Bayesian framework designed to estimate slow fluctuations in the decision criterion from limited data. We first showcase the importance of considering fluctuations in decision criterion: incorrectly assuming a stable criterion gives rise to apparent history effects and underestimates perceptual sensitivity. We then present a hierarchical estimation procedure capable of reliably recovering the underlying state of the fluctuating decision criterion with as few as 500 trials per participant, offering a robust tool for researchers with typical human datasets. Critically, hMFC does not only accurately recover the state of the underlying decision criterion, it also effectively deals with the confounds caused by criterion fluctuations. Lastly, we provide code and a comprehensive demo to enable widespread application of hMFC in decision-making research.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141862677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
″What makes animals thrive in human-dominated environments?″ is a question that has been extensively researched transcending disciplines, but findings remain inconclusive. Consistent inter-individual differences or personalities can potentially explain the functional significance of habitat-specific traits and their variations that help animals successfully coexist with humans. Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) are the most successful non-human primate in the Anthropocene, living in diverse climatic and environmental conditions. Studying the personalities of synanthropic rhesus macaques can provide insights into the biological traits that facilitate their success in human-dominated environments. We employed a multi-method ′bottom-up′ approach of behavioral observations and novelty experiments, standardized for assessing captive non-human primates, to evaluate the personalities of synanthropic adult rhesus macaques (N=52). To our surprise, novelty experiments encountered significant challenges, limiting their effectiveness. However, behavioral observations in the form of focal sampling revealed two repeatable traits: sociability and cautiousness. We found an effect of sex on sociability, where males were more sociable than females. In an additional analysis, we found that individuals who obtained food through contact provisioning had higher cautiousness scores than individuals who obtained food through non-contact provisioning. We discuss how the observed personality traits and their variations potentially offer adaptive advantages in human-dominated environments, where rhesus macaques face both benefits, such as anthropogenic subsidies and reduced predation, and costs, like exposure to anthropogenic stressors. We also emphasize that protocols designed for captive conditions may not be directly applicable to free-living animals. Thus, the study underscores the need to reconsider experimental designs to obtain comparable empirical evidence between captive and non-captive populations to enhance the ecological validity of personality assessments. Nevertheless, empirically identifying traits using observations in synanthropic species like rhesus macaques can still provide valuable insights into the mechanisms that enable certain animals to thrive amidst a rapid expansion of anthropogenic activities.
{"title":"Personality assessment of synanthropic rhesus macaques: implications and challenges","authors":"Taniya Gill, Anshul Gautam, Jorg J.M. Massen, Debottam Bhattacharjee","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.30.605931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.30.605931","url":null,"abstract":"″What makes animals thrive in human-dominated environments?″ is a question that has been extensively researched transcending disciplines, but findings remain inconclusive. Consistent inter-individual differences or personalities can potentially explain the functional significance of habitat-specific traits and their variations that help animals successfully coexist with humans. Rhesus macaques (<em>Macaca mulatta</em>) are the most successful non-human primate in the Anthropocene, living in diverse climatic and environmental conditions. Studying the personalities of synanthropic rhesus macaques can provide insights into the biological traits that facilitate their success in human-dominated environments. We employed a multi-method ′bottom-up′ approach of behavioral observations and novelty experiments, standardized for assessing captive non-human primates, to evaluate the personalities of synanthropic adult rhesus macaques (N=52). To our surprise, novelty experiments encountered significant challenges, limiting their effectiveness. However, behavioral observations in the form of focal sampling revealed two repeatable traits: sociability and cautiousness. We found an effect of sex on sociability, where males were more sociable than females. In an additional analysis, we found that individuals who obtained food through contact provisioning had higher cautiousness scores than individuals who obtained food through non-contact provisioning. We discuss how the observed personality traits and their variations potentially offer adaptive advantages in human-dominated environments, where rhesus macaques face both benefits, such as anthropogenic subsidies and reduced predation, and costs, like exposure to anthropogenic stressors. We also emphasize that protocols designed for captive conditions may not be directly applicable to free-living animals. Thus, the study underscores the need to reconsider experimental designs to obtain comparable empirical evidence between captive and non-captive populations to enhance the ecological validity of personality assessments. Nevertheless, empirically identifying traits using observations in synanthropic species like rhesus macaques can still provide valuable insights into the mechanisms that enable certain animals to thrive amidst a rapid expansion of anthropogenic activities.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141862675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-31DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.31.605100
Sophie Berdugo, Emma Cohen, Arran J Davis, Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Susana Carvalho
Primate extractive foraging requires years of dedicated learning. Throughout this period, learners peer at conspecifics engaging in the behaviour ("models"), interacting with the model and their tools, and sometimes stealing the freshly extracted resource. This also corresponds to an extended period of tolerance from the models. Yet the long-term effect of variation in experiences during this period on the technological efficiency of individuals is unknown for primate tool use, and no research has assessed the role of both the learner and the model(s) in generating individual differences. Using >680 hours of video spanning 25 years, we assessed whether experiences during the stone tool use social learning period ("early learning period"; ages 0-5) predicted the post-early learning period (ages 6+) technological efficiency in wild chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea. We found that learners varied in how frequently they peered at the models' whole nut-cracking bouts, how many learning opportunities their mothers presented, and the amount of tolerance and intolerance they experienced from all selected models. Learners who experienced more intolerance became less efficient tool users, whereas learners who were exposed to more social learning opportunities and tolerance became more efficient. Peering at the whole nut-cracking bout decreased subsequent efficiency, hinting at learners acquiring less efficient cultural components of the behaviour. Our findings highlight the role of social learning in the acquisition of stone tool use and support the view that social learning opportunities within a tolerant environment are key in explaining the emergence and maintenance of complex forms of primate technology.
{"title":"The ontogeny of chimpanzee technological efficiency","authors":"Sophie Berdugo, Emma Cohen, Arran J Davis, Tetsuro Matsuzawa, Susana Carvalho","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.31.605100","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.31.605100","url":null,"abstract":"Primate extractive foraging requires years of dedicated learning. Throughout this period, learners peer at conspecifics engaging in the behaviour (\"models\"), interacting with the model and their tools, and sometimes stealing the freshly extracted resource. This also corresponds to an extended period of tolerance from the models. Yet the long-term effect of variation in experiences during this period on the technological efficiency of individuals is unknown for primate tool use, and no research has assessed the role of both the learner and the model(s) in generating individual differences. Using >680 hours of video spanning 25 years, we assessed whether experiences during the stone tool use social learning period (\"early learning period\"; ages 0-5) predicted the post-early learning period (ages 6+) technological efficiency in wild chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea. We found that learners varied in how frequently they peered at the models' whole nut-cracking bouts, how many learning opportunities their mothers presented, and the amount of tolerance and intolerance they experienced from all selected models. Learners who experienced more intolerance became less efficient tool users, whereas learners who were exposed to more social learning opportunities and tolerance became more efficient. Peering at the whole nut-cracking bout decreased subsequent efficiency, hinting at learners acquiring less efficient cultural components of the behaviour. Our findings highlight the role of social learning in the acquisition of stone tool use and support the view that social learning opportunities within a tolerant environment are key in explaining the emergence and maintenance of complex forms of primate technology.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141862673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-31DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.30.605655
Jennifer J Sun, Hao Zhou, Long Zhao, Liangzhe Yuan, Bryan Seybold, David Hendon, Florian Schroff, David A Ross, Hartwig Adam, Bo Hu, Ting Liu
Computational approaches leveraging computer vision and machine learning have transformed the quantification of animal behavior from video. However, existing methods often rely on task-specific features or models, which struggle to generalize across diverse datasets and tasks. Recent advances in machine learning, particularly the emergence of vision foundation models, i.e., large-scale models pre-trained on massive, diverse visual repositories, offers a way to tackle these challenges. Here, we investigate the potential of frozen video foundation models across a range of behavior analysis tasks, including classification, retrieval, and localization. We use a single, frozen model to extract general-purpose representations from video data, and perform extensive evaluations on diverse open-sourced animal behavior datasets. Our results demonstrate that features with minimal adaptation from foundation models achieve competitive performance compared to existing methods specifically designed for each dataset, across species, behaviors, and experimental contexts. This highlights the potential of frozen video foundation models as a powerful and accessible backbone for automated behavior analysis, with the ability to accelerate research across diverse fields from neuroscience, to ethology, and to ecology.
{"title":"Video Foundation Models for Animal Behavior Analysis","authors":"Jennifer J Sun, Hao Zhou, Long Zhao, Liangzhe Yuan, Bryan Seybold, David Hendon, Florian Schroff, David A Ross, Hartwig Adam, Bo Hu, Ting Liu","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.30.605655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.30.605655","url":null,"abstract":"Computational approaches leveraging computer vision and machine learning have transformed the quantification of animal behavior from video. However, existing methods often rely on task-specific features or models, which struggle to generalize across diverse datasets and tasks. Recent advances in machine learning, particularly the emergence of vision foundation models, i.e., large-scale models pre-trained on massive, diverse visual repositories, offers a way to tackle these challenges. Here, we investigate the potential of frozen video foundation models across a range of behavior analysis tasks, including classification, retrieval, and localization. We use a single, frozen model to extract general-purpose representations from video data, and perform extensive evaluations on diverse open-sourced animal behavior datasets. Our results demonstrate that features with minimal adaptation from foundation models achieve competitive performance compared to existing methods specifically designed for each dataset, across species, behaviors, and experimental contexts. This highlights the potential of frozen video foundation models as a powerful and accessible backbone for automated behavior analysis, with the ability to accelerate research across diverse fields from neuroscience, to ethology, and to ecology.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141862676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-30DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.29.605658
Marcus Nicolaas Boon, Niek Andresen, Soledad Traverso, Sophia Meier, Friedrich Schuessler, Olaf Hellwich, Lars Lewejohann, Christa Thöne-Reineke, Henning Sprekeler, Katharina Hohlbaum
Recent advances in automated tracking tools have sparked a growing interest in studying naturalistic behavior. Yet, traditional decision-making tasks remain the norm for assessing learning behavior in neuroscience. We introduce an alternative sequential decision-making task for studying mouse behavior. It consists of an open-source, 3D-printed "lockbox", a mechanical riddle that requires four different mechanisms to be solved in sequence to obtain a reward. During the task, the mice move around freely, allowing the expression of complex behavioral patterns. We observed that mice willingly engage in the task and learn to solve it in only a few trials. To analyze how the mice solved the task, we recorded their behavior in a multi-camera setup and developed a custom data analysis pipeline to automatically detect the interactions of the mice with the different lockbox mechanisms for a large corpus of video footage (> 300h, 12 mice). The pipeline allows us to further delineate why mouse performance increases over trials. Our analyses suggest that this is not due to an increased interaction time with the task or the acquisition of a smart solution strategy, but primarily due to habituation to the lockbox. Lockboxes may hence be a promising approach to study both abstract sequential decision making and low-level motor learning in a single task that can be rapidly learned by mice.
自动跟踪工具的最新进展激发了人们对研究自然行为的兴趣。然而，传统的决策任务仍然是评估神经科学学习行为的标准。我们介绍了一种用于研究小鼠行为的替代性顺序决策任务。它包括一个开源的 3D 打印 "锁箱"，这是一个机械谜语，需要依次解开四个不同的机关才能获得奖励。在任务过程中，小鼠可以自由走动，从而表现出复杂的行为模式。我们观察到，小鼠愿意参与这项任务，并且只需几次试验就能学会解谜。为了分析小鼠是如何完成任务的，我们用一个多摄像头装置记录了小鼠的行为，并开发了一个自定义数据分析管道，以自动检测大量视频片段（300 小时，12 只小鼠）中小鼠与不同锁箱机制的互动。通过该管道，我们可以进一步了解小鼠的表现为何会随着试验的进行而提高。我们的分析表明，这并不是因为与任务的互动时间增加或获得了智能解决方案策略，而主要是由于对锁箱的习惯。因此，在小鼠可以快速学会的单一任务中研究抽象的顺序决策和低水平的运动学习，锁箱可能是一种很有前途的方法。
{"title":"Mechanical problem solving in mice","authors":"Marcus Nicolaas Boon, Niek Andresen, Soledad Traverso, Sophia Meier, Friedrich Schuessler, Olaf Hellwich, Lars Lewejohann, Christa Thöne-Reineke, Henning Sprekeler, Katharina Hohlbaum","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.29.605658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.29.605658","url":null,"abstract":"Recent advances in automated tracking tools have sparked a growing interest in studying naturalistic behavior. Yet, traditional decision-making tasks remain the norm for assessing learning behavior in neuroscience. We introduce an alternative sequential decision-making task for studying mouse behavior. It consists of an open-source, 3D-printed \"lockbox\", a mechanical riddle that requires four different mechanisms to be solved in sequence to obtain a reward. During the task, the mice move around freely, allowing the expression of complex behavioral patterns. We observed that mice willingly engage in the task and learn to solve it in only a few trials. To analyze how the mice solved the task, we recorded their behavior in a multi-camera setup and developed a custom data analysis pipeline to automatically detect the interactions of the mice with the different lockbox mechanisms for a large corpus of video footage (> 300h, 12 mice). The pipeline allows us to further delineate why mouse performance increases over trials. Our analyses suggest that this is not due to an increased interaction time with the task or the acquisition of a smart solution strategy, but primarily due to habituation to the lockbox. Lockboxes may hence be a promising approach to study both abstract sequential decision making and low-level motor learning in a single task that can be rapidly learned by mice.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"361 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141872659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-30DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.29.605620
Julia Mellert, Weronika Kłos, David Michael Dormagen, Benjamin Wild, Adrian Zachariae, Michael L. Smith, C. Giovanni Galizia, Tim Landgraf
Honeybee colonies exhibit a collective circadian rhythm reflecting the periodic dynamics of the environment. Thousands of workers, including those engaged in in-hive tasks, must synchronize in various processes that may be rhythmic, such as nectar inflows, or non-rhythmic, such as brood care but it remains unknown how those different rhythms are integrated into a colony-level circadian rhythm. Using an AI-driven automated tracking system, we obtained uninterrupted long-term tracking of all individuals in two honeybee colonies. We demonstrate that circadian rhythmicity is present across all age groups and that this rhythm is entrained into all individuals, however, with peak activity shifting by up to 2 hours in workers furthest from the entrance. Extensive data analysis and an agent-based model suggest that mechanical interactions between individuals facilitate the transfer of movement speed, and hence Zeitgeber information. Finally, we show that this speed transfer leads to a collective slow wave of activity that initiates at the nest entrance, spreading throughout the nest. This simple mechanism, workers bumping into each other, enables colonies to entrain their rhythm to the daily cycle of the external environment and, because of the spatial organization of the nest, activates different groups of workers sequentially. The speed transfer interactions demonstrate a tightly-tuned mechanism that underlines the elegant self-organization of the superorganism.
{"title":"Collective flow of circadian clock information in honeybee colonies","authors":"Julia Mellert, Weronika Kłos, David Michael Dormagen, Benjamin Wild, Adrian Zachariae, Michael L. Smith, C. Giovanni Galizia, Tim Landgraf","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.29.605620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.29.605620","url":null,"abstract":"Honeybee colonies exhibit a collective circadian rhythm reflecting the periodic dynamics of the environment. Thousands of workers, including those engaged in in-hive tasks, must synchronize in various processes that may be rhythmic, such as nectar inflows, or non-rhythmic, such as brood care but it remains unknown how those different rhythms are integrated into a colony-level circadian rhythm. Using an AI-driven automated tracking system, we obtained uninterrupted long-term tracking of all individuals in two honeybee colonies. We demonstrate that circadian rhythmicity is present across all age groups and that this rhythm is entrained into all individuals, however, with peak activity shifting by up to 2 hours in workers furthest from the entrance. Extensive data analysis and an agent-based model suggest that mechanical interactions between individuals facilitate the transfer of movement speed, and hence Zeitgeber information. Finally, we show that this speed transfer leads to a collective slow wave of activity that initiates at the nest entrance, spreading throughout the nest. This simple mechanism, workers bumping into each other, enables colonies to entrain their rhythm to the daily cycle of the external environment and, because of the spatial organization of the nest, activates different groups of workers sequentially. The speed transfer interactions demonstrate a tightly-tuned mechanism that underlines the elegant self-organization of the superorganism.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141862678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-29DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.29.605243
Maria Camila Calderon Capote, Marielle L van Toor, Teague O'Mara, Travis Bayer, Meg Crofoot, Dina Dechmann
All foraging animals face a trade-off: how much time should they invest in exploitation of known resources versus exploration to discover new resources? For group-living central place foragers, balancing these competing goals poses particular challenges. The availability of social information may discourage individuals from investing in risky, expensive but possibly rewarding exploration. We GPS-tracked groups of greater spear-nosed bats (Phyllostomus hastatus) from three colonies on Isla Colon in Panama. In the dry season, when these omnivores forage on the nectar of ephemeral balsa flowers (Ochroma pyramidale), bats consistently travelled long distances to remote, colony-specific foraging areas, bypassing flowering trees closer to their roosts. They continued to use these same areas in the wet season, when feeding on a diverse, presumably ubiquitously distributed diet, but also visited other, similarly distant foraging areas. Foraging areas were shared within, but not always between colonies. Our longitudinal dataset suggests that bats from each colony invest in long-distance commutes to socially learned shared foraging areas, bypassing other available food patches. Rather than investing in exploration to find nearby resources or engaging in a win-stay lost-shift foraging strategy, these bats follow colony specific behaviours consistent with the existence of culturally transmitted preferences for specific feeding grounds.
{"title":"Consistent long-distance foraging flights across years and seasons at colony level in a Neotropical bat","authors":"Maria Camila Calderon Capote, Marielle L van Toor, Teague O'Mara, Travis Bayer, Meg Crofoot, Dina Dechmann","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.29.605243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.29.605243","url":null,"abstract":"All foraging animals face a trade-off: how much time should they invest in exploitation of known resources versus exploration to discover new resources? For group-living central place foragers, balancing these competing goals poses particular challenges. The availability of social information may discourage individuals from investing in risky, expensive but possibly rewarding exploration. We GPS-tracked groups of greater spear-nosed bats (Phyllostomus hastatus) from three colonies on Isla Colon in Panama. In the dry season, when these omnivores forage on the nectar of ephemeral balsa flowers (Ochroma pyramidale), bats consistently travelled long distances to remote, colony-specific foraging areas, bypassing flowering trees closer to their roosts. They continued to use these same areas in the wet season, when feeding on a diverse, presumably ubiquitously distributed diet, but also visited other, similarly distant foraging areas. Foraging areas were shared within, but not always between colonies. Our longitudinal dataset suggests that bats from each colony invest in long-distance commutes to socially learned shared foraging areas, bypassing other available food patches. Rather than investing in exploration to find nearby resources or engaging in a win-stay lost-shift foraging strategy, these bats follow colony specific behaviours consistent with the existence of culturally transmitted preferences for specific feeding grounds.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"72 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141862681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-26DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.23.604707
Caitlin Nicole Creak, Hugo Muirhead, Russell Bonduriansky, Michael Kasumovic, Bruno Buzatto
The risky business of mate-searching often leaves the actively searching sex facing threats and rapidly changing conditions. Yet, active mate-searching behaviour is rarely studied in invertebrates, and we have limited understanding of how mate-searching strategies have evolved to cope with risks posed by harsh weather. We investigated how mate-searching males move through their habitat and how their movement is affected by weather conditions in the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus), one of the world's most venomous spiders. As is common in mygalomorphs spiders, females are functionally sessile, and are thought to spend their whole lives in a single burrow, whereas males must permanently abandon their burrows to mate during the breeding season. Nineteen male spiders were fitted with micro-radio transmitters and tracked during their mating seasons in 2020 (n = 2), 2021 (n = 8) and 2022 (n = 9) in Lane Cove National Park, in Sydney, Australia. Males moved at night, typically in a zig-zag pattern, and were found in new locations on approximately 50% of daily resighting's. Males often spent several days in a female's burrow, and some female burrows were visited by multiple males. When outside a female's burrow, males constructed and occupied temporary shelters ('temporacula'). Males were most likely to move and/or moved furthest when there was no rain, and on warm nights after cool days. Our findings suggest that mate-searching A. robustus males prefer to search for females in less risky conditions, revealing novel risk-minimizing strategies, especially in response to rainfall and temperature.
{"title":"Weathering the storm for love: Mate searching behaviour of wild males of the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus)","authors":"Caitlin Nicole Creak, Hugo Muirhead, Russell Bonduriansky, Michael Kasumovic, Bruno Buzatto","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.23.604707","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.23.604707","url":null,"abstract":"The risky business of mate-searching often leaves the actively searching sex facing threats and rapidly changing conditions. Yet, active mate-searching behaviour is rarely studied in invertebrates, and we have limited understanding of how mate-searching strategies have evolved to cope with risks posed by harsh weather. We investigated how mate-searching males move through their habitat and how their movement is affected by weather conditions in the Sydney funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus), one of the world's most venomous spiders. As is common in mygalomorphs spiders, females are functionally sessile, and are thought to spend their whole lives in a single burrow, whereas males must permanently abandon their burrows to mate during the breeding season. Nineteen male spiders were fitted with micro-radio transmitters and tracked during their mating seasons in 2020 (n = 2), 2021 (n = 8) and 2022 (n = 9) in Lane Cove National Park, in Sydney, Australia. Males moved at night, typically in a zig-zag pattern, and were found in new locations on approximately 50% of daily resighting's. Males often spent several days in a female's burrow, and some female burrows were visited by multiple males. When outside a female's burrow, males constructed and occupied temporary shelters ('temporacula'). Males were most likely to move and/or moved furthest when there was no rain, and on warm nights after cool days. Our findings suggest that mate-searching A. robustus males prefer to search for females in less risky conditions, revealing novel risk-minimizing strategies, especially in response to rainfall and temperature.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141776107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-25DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.24.604915
Ian Q Whishaw, Jessica R Kuntz, Hardeep Ryait, Julia Phillip, Jordyn Kopples, Jordan Dudley, Jenni M Karl
Food handling and eating are central to the skill of primate hand movements, and their analysis can provide insights into the evolutionary origins of hand use and its generalization to other behaviors, such as tool use. Vision contributes differently to the reach, grasp, and withdraw-to-eat components of hand use when eating, suggesting that these component movements are controlled by different visuomotor networks with distinct evolutionary histories. This study examines the role of gaze in mediating the withdraw-to-eat movement in human participants eating various food items, including candy, donuts, carrots, bananas, and apples, or pantomiming the eating movements for some of these items. Eye-tracking and frame-by-frame video analyses are used to describe gaze, gaze duration, gaze disengagement, eye blinking, and hand preference in eating each food item. The results show that gaze first identifies points on a food item that the dominant hand can grasp and then identifies points on the food item that the mouth can bite. The hand and finger shaping movements of both the initial grasp and subsequent food handling aid in exposing targets on the food for grasping and biting. The comparison of real and pantomime eating suggests that only real food items possess the affordances that elicit gaze patterns associated with identifying online targets for grasps and bites. The findings are discussed in relation to idea that gaze has a feature-detector-like role linking food cues to the skilled movements of hand shaping to grasp a food item and then to orient a food item to the mouth for biting.
{"title":"Gaze audits food items for bite points during human withdraw-to-eat movements","authors":"Ian Q Whishaw, Jessica R Kuntz, Hardeep Ryait, Julia Phillip, Jordyn Kopples, Jordan Dudley, Jenni M Karl","doi":"10.1101/2024.07.24.604915","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.24.604915","url":null,"abstract":"Food handling and eating are central to the skill of primate hand movements, and their analysis can provide insights into the evolutionary origins of hand use and its generalization to other behaviors, such as tool use. Vision contributes differently to the reach, grasp, and withdraw-to-eat components of hand use when eating, suggesting that these component movements are controlled by different visuomotor networks with distinct evolutionary histories. This study examines the role of gaze in mediating the withdraw-to-eat movement in human participants eating various food items, including candy, donuts, carrots, bananas, and apples, or pantomiming the eating movements for some of these items. Eye-tracking and frame-by-frame video analyses are used to describe gaze, gaze duration, gaze disengagement, eye blinking, and hand preference in eating each food item. The results show that gaze first identifies points on a food item that the dominant hand can grasp and then identifies points on the food item that the mouth can bite. The hand and finger shaping movements of both the initial grasp and subsequent food handling aid in exposing targets on the food for grasping and biting. The comparison of real and pantomime eating suggests that only real food items possess the affordances that elicit gaze patterns associated with identifying online targets for grasps and bites. The findings are discussed in relation to idea that gaze has a feature-detector-like role linking food cues to the skilled movements of hand shaping to grasp a food item and then to orient a food item to the mouth for biting.","PeriodicalId":501210,"journal":{"name":"bioRxiv - Animal Behavior and Cognition","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141776331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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