Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, United States.
Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences, Tempe, United States.
Elife. 2020 Jul 30;9:e55395. doi: 10.7554/eLife.55395.
Behavioral correlations stretching over time are an essential but often neglected aspect of interactions among animals. These correlations pose a challenge to current behavioral-analysis methods that lack effective means to analyze complex series of interactions. Here we show that non-invasive information-theoretic tools can be used to reveal communication protocols that guide complex social interactions by measuring simultaneous flows of different types of information between subjects. We demonstrate this approach by showing that the tandem-running behavior of the ant and that of the termites and are governed by different communication protocols. Our discovery reconciles the diverse ultimate causes of tandem running across these two taxa with their apparently similar signaling mechanisms. We show that bidirectional flow of information is present only in ants and is consistent with the use of acknowledgement signals to regulate the flow of directional information.
行为相关性随着时间的推移而延伸，是动物间相互作用的一个重要但经常被忽视的方面。这些相关性对当前缺乏有效手段分析复杂的相互作用系列的行为分析方法构成了挑战。在这里，我们表明，非侵入性的信息论工具可以通过测量主体之间不同类型信息的同时流动，用于揭示指导复杂社会相互作用的通信协议。我们通过展示蚂蚁的串联奔跑行为和白蚁和木蚁的串联奔跑行为受到不同的通信协议的控制，证明了这种方法。我们的发现将这两个分类单元的串联奔跑的不同最终原因与它们明显相似的信号机制统一起来。我们表明，信息的双向流动仅存在于蚂蚁中，并且与使用确认信号来调节方向信息的流动是一致的。
