High-order social interactions in groups of mice.

Yair Shemesh,Alon Chen,Elad Schneidman,Yehezkel Sztainberg,Oren Forkosh,Tamar Shlapobersky

doi:10.7554/elife.00759

Yair Shemesh, Alon Chen + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.00759

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Abstract

Social behavior in mammals is often studied in pairs under artificial conditions, yet groups may rely on more complicated social structures. Here, we use a novel system for tracking multiple animals in a rich environment to characterize the nature of group behavior and interactions, and show strongly correlated group behavior in mice. We have found that the minimal models that rely only on individual traits and pairwise correlations between animals are not enough to capture group behavior, but that models that include third-order interactions give a very accurate description of the group. These models allow us to infer social interaction maps for individual groups. Using this approach, we show that environmental complexity during adolescence affects the collective group behavior of adult mice, in particular altering the role of high-order structure. Our results provide new experimental and mathematical frameworks for studying group behavior and social interactions.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00759.001

Highlights

Understanding the nature and impact of the interactions that underlie the behavior of groups of organisms is a central question, shared across biology, physics, psychology, and mathematics
We analyzed the behavior of 17 groups of mice, each composed of four adult mice in an arena resembling an ethologically relevant context that has an interesting environment for exploration (Figure 1A, and Figure 1—figure supplement 1)
We found that individual mice in the group had distinct personal preferences for certain locations (Figure 1E), and the relative amounts of time spent in

Summary

Introduction

Understanding the nature and impact of the interactions that underlie the behavior of groups of organisms is a central question, shared across biology, physics, psychology, and mathematics. Much of our understanding of social behavior has come from studies of just pairs of animals under artificial settings (Insel and Fernald, 2004; Langford et al, 2006; Moy et al, 2008; Branson et al, 2009; Dankert et al, 2009; Blumstein et al, 2010; Silverman et al, 2010; Ben-Ami Bartal et al, 2011; de Chaumont et al, 2012). It is not clear, what the detailed analysis of social interaction at the level of a single pair implies for larger groups. New features may emerge that characterize the group as a whole that cannot be inferred from the study of individuals or pairs (Cavagna et al, 2010)

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