scholarly journals Challenges and solutions for studying collective animal behaviour in the wild

2018 ◽  
Vol 373 (1746) ◽  
pp. 20170005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lacey F. Hughey ◽  
Andrew M. Hein ◽  
Ariana Strandburg-Peshkin ◽  
Frants H. Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Collective Motion ◽  
Movement Ecology ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Animal Behaviour ◽  
Natural Setting ◽  
Animal Groups ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Data Volume ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Collective Animal Behaviour

Mobile animal groups provide some of the most compelling examples of self-organization in the natural world. While field observations of songbird flocks wheeling in the sky or anchovy schools fleeing from predators have inspired considerable interest in the mechanics of collective motion, the challenge of simultaneously monitoring multiple animals in the field has historically limited our capacity to study collective behaviour of wild animal groups with precision. However, recent technological advancements now present exciting opportunities to overcome many of these limitations. Here we review existing methods used to collect data on the movements and interactions of multiple animals in a natural setting. We then survey emerging technologies that are poised to revolutionize the study of collective animal behaviour by extending the spatial and temporal scales of inquiry, increasing data volume and quality, and expediting the post-processing of raw data. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Collective movement ecology’.

scholarly journals The movement ecology of seagrasses

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1795) ◽  
pp. 20140878 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn McMahon ◽  
Kor-jent van Dijk ◽  
Leonardo Ruiz-Montoya ◽  
Gary A. Kendrick ◽  
Siegfried L. Krauss ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Clonal Growth ◽  
Movement Ecology ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Life History Stages ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
Time Movement

A movement ecology framework is applied to enhance our understanding of the causes, mechanisms and consequences of movement in seagrasses: marine, clonal, flowering plants. Four life-history stages of seagrasses can move: pollen, sexual propagules, vegetative fragments and the spread of individuals through clonal growth. Movement occurs on the water surface, in the water column, on or in the sediment, via animal vectors and through spreading clones. A capacity for long-distance dispersal and demographic connectivity over multiple timeframes is the novel feature of the movement ecology of seagrasses with significant evolutionary and ecological consequences. The space–time movement footprint of different life-history stages varies. For example, the distance moved by reproductive propagules and vegetative expansion via clonal growth is similar, but the timescales range exponentially, from hours to months or centuries to millennia, respectively. Consequently, environmental factors and key traits that interact to influence movement also operate on vastly different spatial and temporal scales. Six key future research areas have been identified.

scholarly journals Mechanical spectroscopy of insect swarms

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (7) ◽  
pp. eaaw9305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kasper van der Vaart ◽  
Michael Sinhuber ◽  
Andrew M. Reynolds ◽  
Nicholas T. Ouellette
Keyword(s):  
Information Flow ◽  
Collective Behavior ◽  
Mechanical Spectroscopy ◽  
Bulk Materials ◽  
Animal Groups ◽  
Environmental Perturbations ◽  
Storage And Loss Moduli ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Flow Through

Social animals routinely form groups, which are thought to display emergent, collective behavior. This hypothesis suggests that animal groups should have properties at the group scale that are not directly linked to the individuals, much as bulk materials have properties distinct from those of their constituent atoms. Materials are often probed by measuring their response to controlled perturbations, but these experiments are difficult to conduct on animal groups, particularly in the wild. Here, we show that laboratory midge swarms have emergent continuum mechanical properties, displaying a collective viscoelastic response to applied oscillatory visual stimuli that allows us to extract storage and loss moduli for the swarm. We find that the swarms strongly damp perturbations, both viscously and inertially. Thus, unlike bird flocks, which appear to use collective behavior to promote lossless information flow through the group, our results suggest that midge swarms use it to stabilize themselves against environmental perturbations.

scholarly journals Behavioural valuation of landscapes using movement data

2019 ◽  
Vol 374 (1781) ◽  
pp. 20180046 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Wittemyer ◽  
Joseph M. Northrup ◽  
Guillaume Bastille-Rousseau
Keyword(s):  
Animal Movement ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Economic Valuation ◽  
Movement Ecology ◽  
Optimization Theory ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Animal Behaviour ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
Movement Data ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Wildlife tracking is one of the most frequently employed approaches to monitor and study wildlife populations. To date, the application of tracking data to applied objectives has focused largely on the intensity of use by an animal in a location or the type of habitat. While this has provided valuable insights and advanced spatial wildlife management, such interpretation of tracking data does not capture the complexity of spatio-temporal processes inherent to animal behaviour and represented in the movement path. Here, we discuss current and emerging approaches to estimate the behavioural value of spatial locations using movement data, focusing on the nexus of conservation behaviour and movement ecology that can amplify the application of animal tracking research to contemporary conservation challenges. We highlight the importance of applying behavioural ecological approaches to the analysis of tracking data and discuss the utility of comparative approaches, optimization theory and economic valuation to gain understanding of movement strategies and gauge population-level processes. First, we discuss innovations in the most fundamental movement-based valuation of landscapes, the intensity of use of a location, namely dissecting temporal dynamics in and means by which to weight the intensity of use. We then expand our discussion to three less common currencies for behavioural valuation of landscapes, namely the assessment of the functional (i.e. what an individual is doing at a location), structural (i.e. how a location relates to use of the broader landscape) and fitness (i.e. the return from using a location) value of a location. Strengthening the behavioural theoretical underpinnings of movement ecology research promises to provide a deeper, mechanistic understanding of animal movement that can lead to unprecedented insights into the interaction between landscapes and animal behaviour and advance the application of movement research to conservation challenges. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Linking behaviour to dynamics of populations and communities: application of novel approaches in behavioural ecology to conservation’.

scholarly journals Death is common, so is understanding it: the concept of death in other species

Synthese ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susana Monsó ◽  
Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Complexity ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Learning Pathways ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Nonhuman Species

Abstract Comparative thanatologists study the responses to the dead and the dying in nonhuman animals. Despite the wide variety of thanatological behaviours that have been documented in several different species, comparative thanatologists assume that the concept of death (CoD) is very difficult to acquire and will be a rare cognitive feat once we move past the human species. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is based on two forms of anthropocentrism: (1) an intellectual anthropocentrism, which leads to an over-intellectualisation of the CoD, and (2) an emotional anthropocentrism, which yields an excessive focus on grief as a reaction to death. Contrary to what these two forms of anthropocentrism suggest, we argue that the CoD requires relatively little cognitive complexity and that it can emerge independently from mourning behaviour. Moreover, if we turn towards the natural world, we can see that the minimal cognitive requirements for a CoD are in fact met by many nonhuman species and there are multiple learning pathways and opportunities for animals in the wild to develop a CoD. This allows us to conclude that the CoD will be relatively easy to acquire and, so, we can expect it to be fairly common in nature.

scholarly journals Red deer synchronise their activity with close neighbours

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean A Rands ◽  
Naomi Terry ◽  
Hayley Muir
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Cervus Elaphus ◽  
Red Deer ◽  
Animal Behaviour ◽  
The Third ◽  
Collective Animal Behaviour ◽  
Made In

Models of collective animal behaviour frequently make assumptions about the effects of neighbours on the behaviour of focal individuals, but these assumptions are rarely tested. One such set of assumptions is that the switch between active and inactive behaviour seen in herding animals is influenced by the activity of close neighbours, where neighbouring animals show a higher degree of behavioural synchrony than would be expected by chance. We tested this assumption by observing the simultaneous behaviour of paired individuals within a herd of red deer Cervus elaphus. Focal individuals were more synchronised with their two closest neighbours than with the third closest or randomly selected individuals from the herd. Our results suggest that the behaviour of individual deer is influenced by immediate neighbours. Even if we assume that there are no social relationships between individuals, this suggests that the assumptions made in models about the influence of neighbours may be appropriate.

scholarly journals Collective behavior emerges from genetically controlled simple behavioral motifs in zebrafish

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariel C. Aspiras ◽  
Roy Harpaz ◽  
Sydney Chambule ◽  
Sierra Tseng ◽  
Florian Engert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Larval Stage ◽  
Visual Motion ◽  
Collective Motion ◽  
Group Behavior ◽  
Visual Responses ◽  
Animal Groups ◽  
Collective Behaviors ◽  
Early Larval Stage ◽  
Model Simulations ◽  
Species Survival

AbstractSince Darwin, coordinated movement of animal groups has been believed to be essential to species survival, but it is not understood how changes in the genetic makeup of individuals might alter behavior of the collective. Here we find that even at the early larval stage, zebrafish regulate their proximity and alignment with each other. Two simple visual responses, one that measures relative visual field occupancy and the other global visual motion, suffice to account for the group behavior that emerges. We analyze how mutations in genes known to affect social behavior of humans perturb these simple reflexes in larval zebrafish and thereby affect their collective behaviors. We use model simulations to show that changes in reflexive responses of individual mutant animals predict well the distinctive collective patterns that emerge in a group. Hence group behaviors reflect in part genetically defined primitive sensorimotor “motifs”, which are evident even in young larvae.Long AbstractCoordinated movement of animal groups is essential to species survival. It is not clear whether there are simple interactions among the individuals that account for group behaviors, nor when they arise during development. Zebrafish at the early larval stage do not manifest obvious tendencies to form groups, but we find here that they have already established mechanisms to regulate proximity and alignment with respect to their neighbors, which are the two key ingredients of shoaling and schooling. Specifically, we show that two basic reflexes are sufficient to explain a large part of emerging collective behaviors. First, young larvae repel away from regions of high visual clutter, leading to a dispersal of the group. At later developmental stages, this dispersal reflex shifts to attraction and aggregation behaviors. Second, larvae display a strong tendency to move along with whole field motion stimuli, a well-described behavior known as the optomotor reflex (OMR). When applied to individuals swimming within a group, this reflex leads to an emergence of mutual alignment between close neighbors and induces collective motion of the whole group. The combined developmental maturation of both reflexes can then explain emergent shoaling and schooling behavior.In order to probe the link between single genetic mutations and emergent collective motion, we select fish with mutations in genes orthologous to those associated with human behavioral disorders and find that these mutations affect the primitive visuomotor behaviors at a very young age and persist over development. We then use model simulations to show that the phenotypic manifestations of these mutations are predictive of changes in the emergent collective behaviors of mutant animals. Indeed, models based solely on these two primitive motor reflexes can synergistically account for a large fraction of the distinctive emergent group behaviors across ages and genetic backgrounds. Our results indicate that complex interactions among individuals in a group are built upon genetically defined primitive sensorimotor “motifs”, which are evident even in young larvae at a time when the nervous system is far less complex and more directly accessible to detailed analysis.

scholarly journals Effect of tag attachment on flight parameters and energetic cost across five raptor species

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arianna Longarini ◽  
Olivier Duriez ◽  
Emily Shepard ◽  
Kamran Safi ◽  
Martin Wikelski ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Energy Expenditure ◽  
Movement Ecology ◽  
Energetic Cost ◽  
Systematic Bias ◽  
Flight Performance ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Vertical Speed ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Flight Parameters

Bio-logging devices play a fundamental and indispensable role in movement ecology studies, particularly in the wild. However, researchers are becoming increasingly aware of the potential effects that attaching devices can have on animals, particularly on their behaviour, energy expenditure and survival. The way a device is attached to an animal's body has also potential effects on the collected data, and quantifying the type and magnitude of potential bias is fundamental to enable researchers to combine and compare data from different studies. Since over two decades, large terrestrial birds have been in the focus of long-term movement ecology research, employing bio-logging devices attached with different types of harnesses. However, comparative studies investigating the effects of harness type on these species are scarce. In this study, we tested for potential differences in data collected by two commonly used harness types, backpack and leg-loop, on the flight performance of 10 individuals from five raptor species, equipped with high resolution bio-logging devices, in the same area and time. We explored the effect of harness type on vertical speed, horizontal speed, glide ratio, height above sea level, distance travelled, proportion of soaring and flapping behaviour, and VeDBA (a proxy for energy expenditure) between and within individuals, all used as fine-scale measures of flight performance. Birds equipped with leg-loops climbed up to 0.65 ms-1 faster, reached 19% greater heights while soaring and spent less time with active flight compared to birds equipped with backpacks, suggesting that backpack harnesses, compared to leg-loops, might cause additional drag that lowered the birds' flight performance. A lower rate of sinking while gliding, a slightly higher glide ratio, higher horizontal speed while soaring, and lower VeDBA, were also indicative of decreased drag using leg-loops. Our results, add to the pre-existing literature highlighting the design-related advantages of leg-loops, and they are in support of considering leg-loops as a better alternative to backpack harnesses for large soaring birds. Our study also highlights the importance of investigating how the methodology used to measure behavioural information affects the collected data to avoid systematic bias, which would invalidate data comparability and lead to misinterpreting the behaviour being measured.

The STARFLAG handbook on collective animal behaviour: 2. Three-dimensional analysis

2008 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Cavagna ◽  
Irene Giardina ◽  
Alberto Orlandi ◽  
Giorgio Parisi ◽  
Andrea Procaccini
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Analysis ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Animal Behaviour ◽  
Collective Animal Behaviour

NATURAL HISTORIES: LEARNING FROM ANIMALS IN T.H. WHITE'S ARTHURIAN SEQUENCE

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Debbie Sly
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Animal Behaviour ◽  
World War ◽  
Natural Histories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Human Limitation ◽  
Ideological Construction

AbstractThis paper examines the changes T.H. White made to The Sword in the Stone between its first publication in 1938 and subsequent appearance as the first part of the Once and Future King in 1958. These changes are related to the immediate historical context of World War II, and also to the wider context of children's literature dealing with the relationship between the child and the ''natural world''. Rather than seeing White's texts as reflecting a post-Enlightenment idealisation, placing both child and nature beyond the bounds of culture and human limitation, the essay argues that even in the first version White's medieval worldview is constructed from a sophisticated and deliberately anachronistic medley of discourses including medieval codes of hunting and chivalry, Renaissance tragedy and Victorian natural history. These combine to create an exclusively male world, which is analysed as part of the ideological construction of a masculine relationship to the environment based on a ''natural'' nstinct to hunt and kill. White's growing pacifism leads to the insertion in the later version of episodes replacing this relationship with models of cooperative animal behaviour, and even introducing a female mentor for the hero.

scholarly journals Optimized Hyper Beamforming of Linear Antenna Arrays Using Collective Animal Behaviour

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gopi Ram ◽  
Durbadal Mandal ◽  
Rajib Kar ◽  
Sakti Prasad Ghoshal
Keyword(s):  
Antenna Arrays ◽  
Optimization Technique ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Beam Width ◽  
Animal Behaviour ◽  
Linear Antenna ◽  
Sidelobe Level ◽  
Real Coded Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Linear Antenna Arrays ◽  
Collective Animal Behaviour

A novel optimization technique which is developed on mimicking the collective animal behaviour (CAB) is applied for the optimal design of hyper beamforming of linear antenna arrays. Hyper beamforming is based on sum and difference beam patterns of the array, each raised to the power of a hyperbeam exponent parameter. The optimized hyperbeam is achieved by optimization of current excitation weights and uniform interelement spacing. As compared to conventional hyper beamforming of linear antenna array, real coded genetic algorithm (RGA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and differential evolution (DE) applied to the hyper beam of the same array can achieve reduction in sidelobe level (SLL) and same or less first null beam width (FNBW), keeping the same value of hyperbeam exponent. Again, further reductions of sidelobe level (SLL) and first null beam width (FNBW) have been achieved by the proposed collective animal behaviour (CAB) algorithm. CAB finds near global optimal solution unlike RGA, PSO, and DE in the present problem. The above comparative optimization is illustrated through 10-, 14-, and 20-element linear antenna arrays to establish the optimization efficacy of CAB.

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