Dora Biro | University of Oxford (original) (raw)

Papers by Dora Biro

Research paper thumbnail of Bringing a Time–Depth Perspective to Collective Animal Behaviour

The field of collective animal behaviour examines how relatively simple, local interactions betwe... more The field of collective animal behaviour examines how relatively simple, local interactions between individuals in groups combine to produce global-level outcomes. Existing mathematical models and empirical work have identified candidate mechanisms for numerous collective phenomena but have typically focused on one-off or short-term performance. We argue that feedback between collective performance and learning – giving the former the capacity to become an adaptive, and potentially cumulative, process – is a currently poorly explored but crucial mechanism in understanding collective systems. We synthesise material ranging from swarm intelligence in social insects through collective movements in vertebrates to collective decision making in animal and human groups, to propose avenues for future research to identify the potential for changes in these systems to accumulate over time. What Are Collective Behaviours and How Do They Arise? Some of the most impressive biological phenomena emerge out of interactions among members of animal groups. Bird flocks, fish schools, and insect swarms perform highly coordinated collective movements that can encompass thousands of individuals, producing complex group-level patterns that are difficult to predict from the behaviour of isolated individuals only. Animal groups are also able to solve problems that are beyond the capacities of single individuals [1]; ant colonies, for example, tackle certain types of optimisation problems so effectively that they have inspired an entire field of computer science [2]. Despite the appearance of synchronised organisation, it is increasingly well understood that no central control acts on the collective as a whole; instead, the global patterns result from simple, local interactions among the group's neighbouring members – a form of biological self-organisation [3] (see Glossary). Recent years have seen a proliferation of both empirical and theoretical work on the mechanistic underpinnings of collective animal behaviour [4], with self-organisation emerging as a major principle in various contexts including collective motion [5], decision making [6] and construction [7], activity synchronisation [8], and the spontaneous emergence of leader–follower relations [9]. Nonetheless, a rigorous adaptive framework is yet to be applied to collective animal behaviour; little is known about the nature of the selective forces that act at the level of the individual behavioural rules to shape pattern formation at group level. Over shorter timescales, and crucially for this review, no major synthesis has yet examined collective behaviour from a time–depth perspective; we do not know: (i) what changes group-level organisation might undergo over the course of repeated executions of collective tasks; (ii) to what extent solutions arrived at collectively are retained (learned), either at the individual or at the collective level, with the potential to influence future interactions; or (iii) what effect changes in group composition, due to natural demographic processes, have on whether solutions are 'inherited' from previous generations.

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Research paper thumbnail of Visually-mediated site recognition by the homing pigeon may rely on a snapshot-like mechanism

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Research paper thumbnail of Chimpanzee mothers at Bossou, Guinea carry the mummified remains of their dead infants

Current Biology, 2010

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Research paper thumbnail of Mechanisms of visually mediated site recognition by the homing pigeon

Animal Behaviour, 2003

The recognition of familiar areas by homing pigeons, Columba livia, is now known to depend at lea... more The recognition of familiar areas by homing pigeons, Columba livia, is now known to depend at least in part on visual cues. Birds allowed a 5-min preview of the surrounding landscape prior to release home faster than those denied access to such cues, suggesting that ...

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Research paper thumbnail of Tools, Traditions, and Technologies:Interdisciplinary Approaches to Chimpanzee Nut Cracking

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Research paper thumbnail of Tool-composite reuse in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Archaeologically invisible steps in the technological evolution of early hominins?

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Research paper thumbnail of Chimpanzee carrying behaviour and the origins of human bipedality

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Research paper thumbnail of Context-dependent hierarchies in pigeons

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Use-wear patterns on wild macaque stone tools reveal their behavioural history

PloS one, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Interaction rules underlying group decisions in homing pigeons

Journal of the Royal Society, Interface / the Royal Society, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Not just passengers: pigeons, Columba livia, can learn homing routes while flying with a more experienced conspecific

Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Pairs of pigeons act as behavioural units during route learning and co-navigational leadership conflicts

The Journal of experimental biology, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Tool-composite reuse in wild chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ): archaeologically invisible steps in the technological evolution of early hominins

Animal Cognition, 2009

Recent etho-archaeological studies of stone-tool use by wild chimpanzees have contributed valuabl... more Recent etho-archaeological studies of stone-tool use by wild chimpanzees have contributed valuable data towards elucidating the variables that influenced the emergence and development of the first lithic industries among Plio-Pleistocene hominins. Such data help to identify potential behaviours entailed in the first percussive technologies that are invisible in archaeological records. The long-term research site of Bossou in Guinea features a unique chimpanzee community whose members systematically use portable stones as hammers and anvils to crack open nuts in natural as well as in field experimental settings. Here we present the first analysis of repeated reuse of the same tool-composites in wild chimpanzees. Data collected over 5 years of experimental nut-cracking sessions at an “outdoor laboratory” site were assessed for the existence of systematic patterns in the selection of tool-composites, at group and at individual levels. Chimpanzees combined certain stones as hammer and anvil more often than expected by chance, even when taking into account preferences for individual stones by themselves. This may reflect an ability to recognise the nut-cracker as a single tool (composed of two elements, but functional only as a whole), as well as discrimination of tool quality-effectiveness. Through repeatedly combining the same pairs of stones—whether due to preferences for particular composites or for the two elements independently—tool-users may amplify use-wear traces and increase the likelihood of fracturing the stones, and thus of detaching pieces by battering.

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Research paper thumbnail of Chimpanzee carrying behaviour and the origins of human bipedality

Current biology : CB, 2012

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Research paper thumbnail of Experimental identification of social learning in wild animals

Learning & Behavior, 2010

Field experiments can provide compelling demonstrations of social learning in wild populations. S... more Field experiments can provide compelling demonstrations of social learning in wild populations. Social learning has been experimentally demonstrated in at least 23 field experiments, in 20 species, covering a range of contexts, such as foraging preferences and techniques, habitat choice, and predator avoidance. We review experimental approaches taken in the field and with wild animals brought into captivity and note how these approaches can be extended. Relocating individuals, introducing trained individual demonstrators or novel behaviors into a population, or providing demonstrator-manipulated artifacts can establish whether and how a particular act can be socially transmitted in the wild and can help elucidate the benefits of social learning. The type, strength, and consistency of presented social information can be varied, and the provision of conditions favoring the performance of an act can both establish individual discovery rates and help determine whether social information is needed for acquisition. By blocking particular avenues of social transmission or removing key individuals, routes of transmission in wild populations can be investigated. Manipulation of conditions proposed to favor social learning can test mathematical models of the evolution of social learning. We illustrate how field experiments are a viable, vital, and informative approach to the study of social learning.

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Research paper thumbnail of Homing pigeons develop local route stereotypy

Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 2005

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Research paper thumbnail of Homing pigeons respond to time-compensated solar cues even in sight of the loft

PloS one, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Chimpanzees' use of conspecific cues in matching-to-sample tasks: public information use in a fully automated testing environment

Animal cognition, 2011

Social animals have much to gain from observing and responding appropriately to the actions of th... more Social animals have much to gain from observing and responding appropriately to the actions of their conspecific group members. This can in turn lead to the learning of novel behavior patterns (social learning) or to foraging, ranging, or social behavioral choices copied from fellow group members, which do not necessarily result in long-term learning, but at the time represent adaptive responses to environmental cues (public information use). In the current study, we developed a novel system for the study of public information use under fully automated conditions. We modified a classic single-subject laboratory paradigm—matching-to-sample (MTS)—and examined chimpanzees’ ability to interpret and utilize cues provided by the behavior of a conspecific to solve the task. In Experiment 1, two subjects took turns on an identity MTS task, with one subject (the model) performing the first half of the trial and the other subject (the observer) completing the trial using the model’s actions as discriminative cues. Both subjects performed above chance from the first session onwards. In Experiment 2, the subjects were tested on a symbolic version of the same MTS task, with one subject showing spontaneous transfer. Our study establishes a novel method for examining public information use within a highly controlled and automated setting.

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Research paper thumbnail of Information transfer in moving animal groups

Theory in Biosciences, 2008

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Research paper thumbnail of Hierarchical group dynamics in pigeon flocks

Nature, 2010

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Research paper thumbnail of Bringing a Time–Depth Perspective to Collective Animal Behaviour

The field of collective animal behaviour examines how relatively simple, local interactions betwe... more The field of collective animal behaviour examines how relatively simple, local interactions between individuals in groups combine to produce global-level outcomes. Existing mathematical models and empirical work have identified candidate mechanisms for numerous collective phenomena but have typically focused on one-off or short-term performance. We argue that feedback between collective performance and learning – giving the former the capacity to become an adaptive, and potentially cumulative, process – is a currently poorly explored but crucial mechanism in understanding collective systems. We synthesise material ranging from swarm intelligence in social insects through collective movements in vertebrates to collective decision making in animal and human groups, to propose avenues for future research to identify the potential for changes in these systems to accumulate over time. What Are Collective Behaviours and How Do They Arise? Some of the most impressive biological phenomena emerge out of interactions among members of animal groups. Bird flocks, fish schools, and insect swarms perform highly coordinated collective movements that can encompass thousands of individuals, producing complex group-level patterns that are difficult to predict from the behaviour of isolated individuals only. Animal groups are also able to solve problems that are beyond the capacities of single individuals [1]; ant colonies, for example, tackle certain types of optimisation problems so effectively that they have inspired an entire field of computer science [2]. Despite the appearance of synchronised organisation, it is increasingly well understood that no central control acts on the collective as a whole; instead, the global patterns result from simple, local interactions among the group's neighbouring members – a form of biological self-organisation [3] (see Glossary). Recent years have seen a proliferation of both empirical and theoretical work on the mechanistic underpinnings of collective animal behaviour [4], with self-organisation emerging as a major principle in various contexts including collective motion [5], decision making [6] and construction [7], activity synchronisation [8], and the spontaneous emergence of leader–follower relations [9]. Nonetheless, a rigorous adaptive framework is yet to be applied to collective animal behaviour; little is known about the nature of the selective forces that act at the level of the individual behavioural rules to shape pattern formation at group level. Over shorter timescales, and crucially for this review, no major synthesis has yet examined collective behaviour from a time–depth perspective; we do not know: (i) what changes group-level organisation might undergo over the course of repeated executions of collective tasks; (ii) to what extent solutions arrived at collectively are retained (learned), either at the individual or at the collective level, with the potential to influence future interactions; or (iii) what effect changes in group composition, due to natural demographic processes, have on whether solutions are 'inherited' from previous generations.

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Research paper thumbnail of Visually-mediated site recognition by the homing pigeon may rely on a snapshot-like mechanism

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Research paper thumbnail of Chimpanzee mothers at Bossou, Guinea carry the mummified remains of their dead infants

Current Biology, 2010

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Research paper thumbnail of Mechanisms of visually mediated site recognition by the homing pigeon

Animal Behaviour, 2003

The recognition of familiar areas by homing pigeons, Columba livia, is now known to depend at lea... more The recognition of familiar areas by homing pigeons, Columba livia, is now known to depend at least in part on visual cues. Birds allowed a 5-min preview of the surrounding landscape prior to release home faster than those denied access to such cues, suggesting that ...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Tools, Traditions, and Technologies:Interdisciplinary Approaches to Chimpanzee Nut Cracking

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Tool-composite reuse in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Archaeologically invisible steps in the technological evolution of early hominins?

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Chimpanzee carrying behaviour and the origins of human bipedality

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Research paper thumbnail of Context-dependent hierarchies in pigeons

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Use-wear patterns on wild macaque stone tools reveal their behavioural history

PloS one, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Interaction rules underlying group decisions in homing pigeons

Journal of the Royal Society, Interface / the Royal Society, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Not just passengers: pigeons, Columba livia, can learn homing routes while flying with a more experienced conspecific

Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Pairs of pigeons act as behavioural units during route learning and co-navigational leadership conflicts

The Journal of experimental biology, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Tool-composite reuse in wild chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ): archaeologically invisible steps in the technological evolution of early hominins

Animal Cognition, 2009

Recent etho-archaeological studies of stone-tool use by wild chimpanzees have contributed valuabl... more Recent etho-archaeological studies of stone-tool use by wild chimpanzees have contributed valuable data towards elucidating the variables that influenced the emergence and development of the first lithic industries among Plio-Pleistocene hominins. Such data help to identify potential behaviours entailed in the first percussive technologies that are invisible in archaeological records. The long-term research site of Bossou in Guinea features a unique chimpanzee community whose members systematically use portable stones as hammers and anvils to crack open nuts in natural as well as in field experimental settings. Here we present the first analysis of repeated reuse of the same tool-composites in wild chimpanzees. Data collected over 5 years of experimental nut-cracking sessions at an “outdoor laboratory” site were assessed for the existence of systematic patterns in the selection of tool-composites, at group and at individual levels. Chimpanzees combined certain stones as hammer and anvil more often than expected by chance, even when taking into account preferences for individual stones by themselves. This may reflect an ability to recognise the nut-cracker as a single tool (composed of two elements, but functional only as a whole), as well as discrimination of tool quality-effectiveness. Through repeatedly combining the same pairs of stones—whether due to preferences for particular composites or for the two elements independently—tool-users may amplify use-wear traces and increase the likelihood of fracturing the stones, and thus of detaching pieces by battering.

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Research paper thumbnail of Chimpanzee carrying behaviour and the origins of human bipedality

Current biology : CB, 2012

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Research paper thumbnail of Experimental identification of social learning in wild animals

Learning & Behavior, 2010

Field experiments can provide compelling demonstrations of social learning in wild populations. S... more Field experiments can provide compelling demonstrations of social learning in wild populations. Social learning has been experimentally demonstrated in at least 23 field experiments, in 20 species, covering a range of contexts, such as foraging preferences and techniques, habitat choice, and predator avoidance. We review experimental approaches taken in the field and with wild animals brought into captivity and note how these approaches can be extended. Relocating individuals, introducing trained individual demonstrators or novel behaviors into a population, or providing demonstrator-manipulated artifacts can establish whether and how a particular act can be socially transmitted in the wild and can help elucidate the benefits of social learning. The type, strength, and consistency of presented social information can be varied, and the provision of conditions favoring the performance of an act can both establish individual discovery rates and help determine whether social information is needed for acquisition. By blocking particular avenues of social transmission or removing key individuals, routes of transmission in wild populations can be investigated. Manipulation of conditions proposed to favor social learning can test mathematical models of the evolution of social learning. We illustrate how field experiments are a viable, vital, and informative approach to the study of social learning.

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Research paper thumbnail of Homing pigeons develop local route stereotypy

Proceedings. Biological sciences / The Royal Society, 2005

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Research paper thumbnail of Homing pigeons respond to time-compensated solar cues even in sight of the loft

PloS one, 2013

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Research paper thumbnail of Chimpanzees' use of conspecific cues in matching-to-sample tasks: public information use in a fully automated testing environment

Animal cognition, 2011

Social animals have much to gain from observing and responding appropriately to the actions of th... more Social animals have much to gain from observing and responding appropriately to the actions of their conspecific group members. This can in turn lead to the learning of novel behavior patterns (social learning) or to foraging, ranging, or social behavioral choices copied from fellow group members, which do not necessarily result in long-term learning, but at the time represent adaptive responses to environmental cues (public information use). In the current study, we developed a novel system for the study of public information use under fully automated conditions. We modified a classic single-subject laboratory paradigm—matching-to-sample (MTS)—and examined chimpanzees’ ability to interpret and utilize cues provided by the behavior of a conspecific to solve the task. In Experiment 1, two subjects took turns on an identity MTS task, with one subject (the model) performing the first half of the trial and the other subject (the observer) completing the trial using the model’s actions as discriminative cues. Both subjects performed above chance from the first session onwards. In Experiment 2, the subjects were tested on a symbolic version of the same MTS task, with one subject showing spontaneous transfer. Our study establishes a novel method for examining public information use within a highly controlled and automated setting.

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Research paper thumbnail of Information transfer in moving animal groups

Theory in Biosciences, 2008

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Research paper thumbnail of Hierarchical group dynamics in pigeon flocks

Nature, 2010

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