Discrete modes of social information processing predict individual behavior of fish in a group.

ABSTRACT: Individual computations and social interactions underlying collective behavior in groups of animals are of great ethological, behavioral, and theoretical interest. While complex individual behaviors have successfully been parsed into small dictionaries of stereotyped behavioral modes, studies of collective behavior largely ignored these findings; instead, their focus was on inferring single, mode-independent social interaction rules that reproduced macroscopic and often qualitative features of group behavior. Here, we bring these two approaches together to predict individual swimming patterns of adult zebrafish in a group. We show that fish alternate between an "active" mode, in which they are sensitive to the swimming patterns of conspecifics, and a "passive" mode, where they ignore them.

SUBMITTER: Harpaz R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5617265 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature