Biology subjects

Larter, L. C.

Publications and source records attributed to Larter, L. C..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

4-Dimensional Chess: Acoustic Localisation Reveals Nested Spatio-temporal Strategies in an Arboreal Communication Network

1. Adaptive behavioural strategies require animals to simultaneously navigate social and ecological domains across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Although drones and computer vision have recently transformed the study of wild animal societies, many nocturnal species and those occupying structurally complex habitats remain inaccessible to these approaches, limiting our understanding of behaviour in natural settings. 2. We aimed to determine how behavioural strategies are organised across nested spatial and temporal scales within a wild communication network. 3. We used three-dimensional acoustic localisation and source separation to track individual male Hyperolius sp. A, a nocturnal African reed frog, within a natural rainforest chorus and quantify patterns of site fidelity, movement, spatial organisation, and call-timing interactions. 4. Males exhibited significant site fidelity across nights, while chorus spatial structure varied with local caller density. Within nights, individuals followed a stereotyped behavioural sequence, descending from elevated arboreal refugia before settling into lower calling positions near breeding sites. At finer temporal scales, call-timing interactions varied according to both local competitor density and the proximity of neighbouring rivals. 5. These findings demonstrate that behavioural strategies emerge across nested spatial and temporal scales and that long-term spatial positioning, short-term movement decisions, and moment-to-moment signalling interactions are tightly linked within natural communication networks. More broadly, acoustic localisation provides a powerful framework for studying behaviour in species and habitats that remain difficult to observe using conventional approaches.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2026

Coordination Failures Generate Selection Gradients in Animal Collectives

Collective animal behavior occurs in high-stakes contexts like predator evasion and mate attraction. Consequently, individuals that fail to effectively coordinate their behavior with neighbors can face severe costs. While the coordination strategies individuals in collectives follow are well-described, sensorimotor limitations frequently subvert successful execution of these strategies. Yet, how the resulting coordination errors influence the evolution of collective strategies remains relatively unexplored, largely because quantifying errors and their costs in dynamic animal groups is immensely challenging. To address this, we investigated the causes and consequences of coordination errors in tungara frog choruses. Here, neighboring males typically alternate their calls. However, due to sensorimotor limitations, inadvertent synchronous calls are common. Synchronous calls are highly stereotyped and strongly disfavored by mate-searching females and so represent unambiguous and costly coordination errors. Additionally, within synchronous call pairs, females strongly disfavor following calls relative to leading calls. We found that synchrony outcomes varied non-randomly by sensorimotor phenotype. Inter-male compatibility in intrinsic call rhythms structured synchrony, leading males with slower rhythms to synchronize at overall higher rates. Furthermore, during synchrony, males with lengthier response latencies more often produced costlier following calls. Data-driven simulations revealed that, due to these mechanistic linkages between sensorimotor phenotype and synchrony outcomes, female biases against synchronous and following calls systematically penalized males with slower call rhythms and longer response latencies. Thus, coordination errors are not unstructured noise. Rather, phenotype-dependent variation in the frequency and severity of coordination errors can generate strong directional selection on sensorimotor phenotypes in animal collectives.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Cadences of the Collective: Conspecific Stimulation Patterns Interact with Endogenous Rhythms to Cue Socially Mediated Response Shifts

Many animals form behavioral collectives, and optimal interaction patterns often differ across social contexts. Sensory scenes generated by many interacting conspecifics are complex. Thus, maintaining socially-calibrated interaction patterns necessitates that individuals distill key features from conspecific scenes to guide continued adjustments to social fluctuations. Tungara frogs produce mating calls in choruses varying in size, and interaction patterns differ across social environments; rivals alternate their calls in smaller choruses, but increasingly overlap one anothers calls in a stereotyped fashion as choruses increase in size. We used automated playback to investigate the cues guiding this socially-mediated shift in response modes. We played conspecific stimulus calls to males at various delays relative to their own calls, preceded by various acoustic motifs mimicking conspecific interaction patterns observed across varied chorusing environments. Males almost never overlapped isolated stimulus calls at any delays. However, their probabilities of overlapping stimulus calls increased markedly when stimulus calls were preceded by motifs exhibiting intense conspecific stimulation patterns characteristic of larger choruses, especially when these stimulus calls were also presented at later delays. Thus, a multifaceted cue to social context primes varied interaction patterns on a call-by-call basis: that, in larger choruses, males experience intense conspecific stimulation during their inter-call periods, and that this stimulation extends throughout the latter reaches of their call cycles. Our results highlight that inactive phases within behavioral rhythms provide critical assessment windows for fine-tuning upcoming responses, and that behavioral rhythms act as crucial temporal filters for mapping conspecific stimulation patterns to behavioral outputs.

animal behavior and cognition↗