Abstract
Social environments are known to influence behavior. Moreover, within small social groups, dominant/subordinate relationships frequently emerge. Dominants can display aggressive behaviors towards subordinates and sustain priority access to resources. Herein, Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) were used, given that they establish hierarchies through frequent aggressive interactions. We apply a combination of different mathematical tools to provide a precise quantification of the effect of social environments and the consequence of dominance at an individual level on the temporal dynamics of behavior. Main results show that subordinates performed locomotion dynamics with stronger long-range positive correlations in comparison to birds that receive few or no aggressions from conspecifics (more random dynamics). Dominant birds and their subordinates also showed a high level of synchronization in the locomotor pattern, likely emerging from the lack of environmental opportunities to engage in independent behavior. Findings suggest that dominance can potentially modulate behavioral dynamics through synchronization of locomotor activities.
Highlights
Social environments are known to influence behavior
It is well known that behaviors, such as locomotion, do not occur randomly over time but rather show temporal organization such as ultradian rhythms, long-term correlations and scale-invariant fractal dynamics[25,26,27,28,29,30,31]
The fractal analysis detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA, see Materials and Methods for details) on the locomotor time series showed that the dynamics of locomotion varied over time in both females and males
Summary
Social environments are known to influence behavior. within small social groups, dominant/subordinate relationships frequently emerge. Within small groups, regardless of the abundance of resources, social hierarchies (i.e., individuals with a dominant or a subordinate status) are usually established through the frequent performance of aggressive behaviors[7,8] (see examples in pigs[9,10] and poultry[11,12]). Under these conditions, animals ranking high in the dominance hierarchy have precedence at the feed trough, waterers, nests, and other resources[13]. In regard to this last property, fractal refers to a geometrical object that are composed of subunits (and sub-subunits, etc.) that resemble the structure of the overall object
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
