Monfils Marie-H, Pasala Michael, Malone Cassidy, Agee Laura, Roquet Rheall, Cormack Lawrence
Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, 108 E. Dean Keeton Stop A8000, Austin, TX 78712-1043, USA.
Oxf Open Neurosci. 2024 Apr 2;3:kvae005. doi: 10.1093/oons/kvae005. eCollection 2024.
Environment is a determining factor that can facilitate or hinder social interactions. A precursor to meaningfully engaging with conspecifics is being exposed to opportunistic encounters with others. Increasing the number of individuals in a given space (thus increasing density) would, statistically speaking, increase the likelihood of accidental encounters. This might have consequences on the formation of social networks-an idea that has not reliably been explored. If true, we would expect that increasing density would lead to an increase in the number and the duration of 'clusters' of animals. Here, we examined whether varying the number of rats in an open field environment differentially affected their movement dynamics or their propensity to aggregate into clusters and, if so, whether such effects are dependent solely on statistical factors due to increases in density, the potential for actively-sought social interactions, or both. We found that the number of rats in an environment impacts ambulation speed, distance traveled, cluster formation and approaches, and that number and duration of clusters are highly dependent on the propensity for the rats to engage in social interactions.
环境是一个决定性因素，它可以促进或阻碍社会互动。与同种个体进行有意义互动的一个先决条件是有机会与他人偶然相遇。从统计学角度讲，在给定空间中增加个体数量（从而增加密度）会增加意外相遇的可能性。这可能会对社交网络的形成产生影响——这一观点尚未得到可靠的探讨。如果这是真的，我们会预期密度增加会导致动物“集群”的数量和持续时间增加。在这里，我们研究了在开阔场地环境中改变大鼠数量是否会对它们的运动动态或聚集成群的倾向产生不同影响，如果是这样，这些影响是否仅仅取决于由于密度增加导致的统计因素、主动寻求社交互动的可能性，或者两者兼而有之。我们发现，环境中大鼠的数量会影响行走速度、行进距离、集群形成和接近行为，并且集群的数量和持续时间高度依赖于大鼠进行社交互动的倾向。
