Fine-scale collective movements reveal present, past and future dynamics of a multilevel society in Przewalski's horses.

ABSTRACT: Studying animal societies needs detailed observation of many individuals, but technological advances offer new opportunities in this field. Here, we present a state-of-the-art drone observation of a multilevel herd of Przewalski's horses, consisting of harems (one-male, multifemale groups). We track, in high spatio-temporal resolution, the movements of 238 individually identified horses on drone videos, and combine movement analyses with demographic data from two decades of population monitoring. Analysis of collective movements reveals how the structure of the herd's social network is related to kinship and familiarity of individuals. The network centrality of harems is related to their age and how long the harem stallions have kept harems previously. Harems of genetically related stallio

SUBMITTER: Ozogany K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10480438 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature