RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Behavioural synchronization in a multilevel society of feral horses
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.02.21.432190
DO 10.1101/2021.02.21.432190
A1 Maeda, Tamao
A1 Sueur, Cédric
A1 Hirata, Satoshi
A1 Yamamoto, Shinya
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/06/10/2021.02.21.432190.abstract
AB Behavioural synchrony among individuals is essential for group-living organisms. It is still largely unknown how synchronization functions in a multilevel society, which is a nested assemblage of multiple social levels between many individuals. Our aim was to build a model that explained the synchronization of activity in a multilevel society of feral horses. We used multi-agent based models based on four hypotheses: A) horses do not synchronize, B) horses synchronize with any individual in any unit, C) horses synchronize only within units and D) horses synchronize across and within units, but internal synchronization is stronger. Our empirical data obtained from drone observations best supported hypothesis D. This result suggests that animals in a multilevel society coordinate with other conspecifics not only within a unit but at an inter-unit level. In this case, inter-individual distances are much longer than those in most previous models which only considered local interaction within a few body lengths.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.