The construction of a measure of behavioural complexity as a potential individual-based welfare indicator and its theoretical validation.

ABSTRACT: Behavioural complexity is likely to reflect how animals cope with their environment. A large behavioural repertoire and the ability to flexibly apply these behaviours provide an individual with a greater likelihood of adapting to its (captive) environment. Here, we developed a procedure to aggregate different behavioural measures into a condensed measure of behavioural complexity based on 14 features, which were previously proposed (e.g. number of behaviours, Shannon diversity index) as well as some new features of behavioural complexity (e.g. variances of within and between transition durations). To test the measure, artificial behavioural sequences with potentially varying complexity were created using an individual-based modelling approach. With a Principal Component Analysis, the featu

SUBMITTER: Raudies C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11655276 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature