Topic: social structure

Many species cohesively navigate their environment as a group. This includes fish schools and shoals, where group structure emerges from social interactions, which can subsequently facilitate adaptive advantages such as collective foraging. While previous work has characterized how group structure emerges from social interactions, less is known about how collective behavior is influenced by external factors (e.g., resource availability) and internal physiological states (e.g., hunger), and their underlying behavioral and neural mechanisms. To address how collective behavior is influenced by bo

An emerging body of scientific evidence strongly supports the notion of mice exhibiting prosocial actions, such as helping and rescuing behavior. However, prior studies have primarily focused on single or pair-housed animals, leaving a gap in our understanding of how social interactions contribute to the underlying mechanisms of helping behavior. To answer this question, we have built "mice cities" to observe the social structure of mice in a group. A male and a female group of ten animals, 5 siblings and 5 non-siblings each, were placed in a large enclosure of three interconnected boxes with