Bleichman Itay, Shefi Peleg, Kaminka Gal A, Ayali Amir
School of Zoology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, 6997801, Israel.
Department of Computer Science, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel.
PNAS Nexus. 2024 Nov 25;3(12):pgae537. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae537. eCollection 2024 Dec.
Visual interactions play an instrumental role in collective-motion-related decision-making. However, our understanding of the various tentative mechanisms that can serve the visual-based decision-making is limited. We investigated the role that different attributes of the visual stimuli play in the collective-motion-related motor response of locust nymphs. We monitored and analyzed the behavioral responses of individual locusts tethered in a natural-like walking posture over an airflow-suspended trackball to carefully selected stimuli comprising various black rectangular shapes. The experimental findings together with a prediction model relating the level of behavioral response to the visual stimuli attributes indicate a major role of the number of objects in the visual field, and a further important effect of the object's vertical moving edges. While the object's horizontal edges can be utilized in the estimation of conspecifics' heading, the overall area or visual angle subtended by the stimuli do not seem to play any role in inducing the response. Our results offer important novel insights regarding the fundamental visual-based mechanisms underlying animal collective motion and can be useful also in swarm robotics.
视觉交互在与集体运动相关的决策中发挥着重要作用。然而，我们对可用于基于视觉的决策的各种暂定机制的理解是有限的。我们研究了视觉刺激的不同属性在蝗虫若虫与集体运动相关的运动反应中所起的作用。我们监测并分析了以自然行走姿势拴在气流悬浮轨迹球上的单个蝗虫对精心挑选的包含各种黑色矩形形状的刺激的行为反应。实验结果以及将行为反应水平与视觉刺激属性相关联的预测模型表明，视野中物体的数量起主要作用，物体垂直移动边缘有进一步的重要影响。虽然物体的水平边缘可用于估计同种个体的行进方向，但刺激所张的总面积或视角似乎在诱发反应中不起任何作用。我们的研究结果为动物集体运动背后基于视觉的基本机制提供了重要的新见解，在群体机器人技术中也可能有用。
