Long-term tracking of social structure in groups of rats

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Nagy, Mate, Davidson, Jacob D., Vasarhelyi, Gabor, Abel, Daniel, Kubinyi, Eniko, Hady, Ahmed El, Vicsek, Tamas
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Nagy, Mate
Davidson, Jacob D.
Vasarhelyi, Gabor
Abel, Daniel
Kubinyi, Eniko
Hady, Ahmed El
Vicsek, Tamas
author_facet Nagy, Mate
Davidson, Jacob D.
Vasarhelyi, Gabor
Abel, Daniel
Kubinyi, Eniko
Hady, Ahmed El
Vicsek, Tamas
contents Rodents serve as an important model for examining both individual and collective behavior. Dominance within rodent social structures can determine access to critical resources, such as food and mating opportunities. Yet, many aspects of the intricate interplay between individual behaviors and the resulting group social hierarchy, especially its evolution over time, remain unexplored. In this study, we utilized an automated tracking system that continuously monitored groups of male rats for over 250 days to enable an in-depth analysis of individual behavior and the overarching group dynamic. We describe the evolution of social structures within a group and additionally investigate how past behaviors influence the emergence of new social hierarchies when group composition and experimental area changes. Notably, we find that conventional individual and pairwise tests exhibit a weak correlation with group behavior, highlighting their limited accuracy in predicting behavioral outcomes in a collective context. These results emphasize the context-dependence of social behavior as an emergent property of interactions within a group and highlight the need to measure and quantify social behavior in more naturalistic environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_08945
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Long-term tracking of social structure in groups of rats
Nagy, Mate
Davidson, Jacob D.
Vasarhelyi, Gabor
Abel, Daniel
Kubinyi, Eniko
Hady, Ahmed El
Vicsek, Tamas
Quantitative Methods
Rodents serve as an important model for examining both individual and collective behavior. Dominance within rodent social structures can determine access to critical resources, such as food and mating opportunities. Yet, many aspects of the intricate interplay between individual behaviors and the resulting group social hierarchy, especially its evolution over time, remain unexplored. In this study, we utilized an automated tracking system that continuously monitored groups of male rats for over 250 days to enable an in-depth analysis of individual behavior and the overarching group dynamic. We describe the evolution of social structures within a group and additionally investigate how past behaviors influence the emergence of new social hierarchies when group composition and experimental area changes. Notably, we find that conventional individual and pairwise tests exhibit a weak correlation with group behavior, highlighting their limited accuracy in predicting behavioral outcomes in a collective context. These results emphasize the context-dependence of social behavior as an emergent property of interactions within a group and highlight the need to measure and quantify social behavior in more naturalistic environments.
title Long-term tracking of social structure in groups of rats
topic Quantitative Methods
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08945