RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Hierarchical organization of rhesus macaque behavior
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.11.15.468721
DO 10.1101/2021.11.15.468721
A1 Benjamin Voloh
A1 Benjamin R. Eisenreich
A1 David J-N. Maisson
A1 R. Becket Ebitz
A1 Hyun Soo Park
A1 Benjamin Y. Hayden
A1 Jan Zimmermann
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/19/2021.11.15.468721.abstract
AB Primatologists, psychologists and neuroscientists have long hypothesized that primate behavior is highly structured. However, fully delineating that structure has been impossible due to the difficulties of precision behavioral tracking. Here we analyzed a dataset consisting of continuous measures of the 3D position of fifteen body landmarks from two male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) performing three different tasks in a large unrestrained environment over many hours. Using an unsupervised embedding approach on the tracked joints, we identified commonly repeated pose patterns, which we call postures. We found that macaques’ behavior is characterized by 49 distinct identifiable postures, lasting an average of 0.6 seconds each. We found evidence that behavior is hierarchically organized, in that transitions between poses tend to occur within larger modules, which correspond to intuitively identifiably actions; these actions are in turn organized hierarchically. Our behavioral decomposition allows us to identify universal (cross-individual and cross-task) and unique (specific to each individual and task) principles of behavior. These results demonstrate the hierarchical nature of primate behavior and provide a method for the automated “ethogramming” of primate behavior.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.