Anatomy of information transfer for Ibis using transfer entropy and active information storage

Abstract

As birds migrate in a linear formation, the frequent exchange of leader-follower in the Ibises can extend the formation flight time. In this paper, we utilize the information theory to analyze the underlying mechanism of the coordination and cooperation within the Ibises. To this end, we examine and quantify the dynamic characteristics of the information transfer in a group of Ibises at the individual level. Firstly, the local transfer entropy is employed to quantify the local dynamic information transfer during the migration of the Ibises. Therefore, we provide lucid explanations of how Ibis individually influences the group decision through information transfer to generate consistent collective behavior. The local active information storage is used to represent the memory of the Ibis. The relationship between the consistency of the collective behavior and the memory of the Ibis is obtained by calculating the mutual information between the historical state sequences and the future state of the Ibis. Finally, based on the dynamic information transfer, the relationship between the group memory and the consistent collective behavior, we effectively captured the relationship between the excitation and convergence of the Ibis’ collective behavior, and the variance of entropy is obtained.