Local interactions and global properties of wild, free-ranging stickleback shoals
Abstract
Collective motion describes the global properties of moving groups of animals and the self-organized, coordinated patterns of individual behaviour that produce them. We examined the group-level patterns and local interactions between individuals in wild, free-ranging shoals of three-spine sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus. Our data reveal that the highest frequencies of near-neighbour encounters occur at between one and two body lengths from a focal fish, with the peak frequency alongside a focal individual. Fish also show the highest alignment with these laterally placed individuals, and generally with animals in front of themselves. Furthermore, fish are more closely matched in size, speed and orientation to their near neighbours than to more distant neighbours, indicating local organization within groups. Among the group level properties reported here, we find that polarization is strongly influenced by group speed, but also the variation in speed among individuals and the nearest neighbour distances of group members. While we find no relationship between group order and group size, we do find that larger groups tend to have lower nearest neighbour distances, which in turn may be important in maintaining group order.
Citation
Ward , A , Schaerf , T , Herbert-Read , J , Morrell , L , Sumpter , D & Webster , M M 2017 , ' Local interactions and global properties of wild, free-ranging stickleback shoals ' , Royal Society Open Science , vol. 4 , no. 7 , 170043 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170043
Publication
Royal Society Open Science
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2054-5703Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright 2017 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
Funding: Australian Research Council. A.J.W.W. and T.M.S. were supported by a Discovery Project Grant from the Australian Research Council. D.J.T.S. and J.E.H.-R. were supported by a Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation Grant.Collections
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