Johnson-Ulrich, L. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2024

Spatial position relative to group members affects weight gain in meerkats (Suricata suricatta)

Social animals often face a trade-off between the costs of foraging competition among group members and the benefits of protection from predators offered by group living. The spatial position of an individual in relation to the other group members during foraging can mediate the effects of this trade-off as individuals at the front or edge may have better access to food resources, but also higher predation risk than individuals near the centre of the group. Using meerkats (Suricata suricatta) as a model species, we investigated the effect of individual spatial position within a group on foraging success. We determined the spatial position of individuals in a meerkat group by fitting the animals with high-resolution GPS loggers. As a proxy of foraging success, we used meerkats individual body weight differences between the start and the end of daily data collection over foraging periods (3 hours). We found significant individual differences in meerkats spatial positions within the group. In addition, age-dependent differences in spatial position became obvious, with younger individuals spending more time in the centre of the group and less time in the front. However, younger individuals who spent more time on the side of the group relative to older individuals had higher daily weight gain, indicating more successful foraging. In older individuals, we found that the dominant females tended to spend more time towards the front of the group, but gained less weight in this location, contrary to the predicted association between front edge of the group and better access to food resources. Our results suggest that the relationship between weight gain and spatial position is highly nuanced and likely dependent on more than just trade-offs between foraging success and predation risk. HighlightsO_LISpatial position relative to other group members during foraging was a highly repeatable trait for individual meerkats, though time spent near the front of the group was more strongly influenced by individual traits (age, sex, and social rank) C_LIO_LIYounger meerkats spent less time in the front and more time in the centre of the group relative to older meerkats, but had the highest foraging success towards the sides of the group C_LIO_LIDominant female meerkats spent more time near the front of the group, but had reduced foraging success in this position C_LIO_LIMeerkats may trade-off more than just foraging success and predation risk when making decisions about where to position themselves relative to other group members C_LI

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2024

Behavioral sequences across multiple animal species in the wild share common structural features

Animal behavior can be decomposed into a sequence of discrete activity bouts over time. Analyzing the statistical structure of such behavioral sequences can provide insights into the drivers of behavioral decisions. Laboratory studies, predominantly in invertebrates, have suggested that behavioral sequences exhibit multiple timescales and long-range memory, but whether these results can be generalized to other taxa and to animals in natural settings remains unclear. By analyzing accelerometer-inferred predictions of behavioral states in three species of social mammals (meerkats, white-nosed coatis, and spotted hyenas) in the wild, we discovered surprisingly consistent structuring of behavioral sequences across all behavioral states, all individuals, and all study species. Behavioral bouts were characterized by decreasing hazard functions, wherein the longer a behavioral bout had progressed, the less likely it was to end within the next instant. The predictability of an animals future behavioral state as a function of its present state always decreased as a truncated power-law for predictions made farther into the future, with very similar estimates for the power law exponent across all species. Finally, the distributions of bout durations were also heavy-tailed. Why such shared structural principles emerge remains unknown, and we explore multiple plausible explanations, including environmental non-stationarity, behavioral self-reinforcement, and the hierarchical nature of behavior. The existence of highly consistent patterns in behavioral sequences across our study species suggests that these phenomena could be widespread in nature, and points to the existence of fundamental properties of behavioral dynamics that could drive such convergent patterns. Significance statementThe study of animal behavior seeks to understand how and why animals do what they do. This pursuit of general principles governing behavior across species can be approached by first understanding when animals choose to change their behavioral states (e.g., switching from walking to standing, or to running). Using accelerometer-inferred behaviors of three social mammals, we uncover common structural long timescale patterns in their sequences of behavior. We explore two explanations, involving either positive feedbacks or the interaction of several independent time-scales, about how such common patterns arise.

animal behavior and cognition↗