Movements reveal present, past and future dynamics of horse society

Fine-scale collective movements reveal present, past and future dynamics of a multilevel society in Przewalski’s horses

Nat Commun. 2023 Sep 5;14(1):5096. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-40523-3.
Authors
Katalin Ozogány 1 2 , Viola Kerekes 3 , Attila Fülöp 4 5 6 7 8 , Zoltán Barta # 4 5 , Máté Nagy # 9 10 11 12
Affiliations

1 ELKH-DE Behavioural Ecology Research Group, University of Debrecen, Egyetem tér 1, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary. katalin.ozogany@gmail.com.
2 Department of Evolutionary Zoology and Human Biology, University of Debrecen, Egyetem tér 1, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary. katalin.ozogany@gmail.com.
3 Hortobágy National Park Directorate, Sumen u. 2, Debrecen, 4024, Hungary.
4 ELKH-DE Behavioural Ecology Research Group, University of Debrecen, Egyetem tér 1, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary.
5 Department of Evolutionary Zoology and Human Biology, University of Debrecen, Egyetem tér 1, Debrecen, 4032, Hungary.
6 Evolutionary Ecology Group, Hungarian Department of Biology and Ecology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Str. Clinicilor 5-7, 400006, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
7 Centre for Systems Biology, Biodiversity and Bioresources (3B), Babeș-Bolyai University, Str. Clinicilor 5-7, 400006, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
8 STAR-UBB Institute of Advanced Studies in Science and Technology, Babeş-Bolyai University, Str. Mihail Kogălniceanu 1, 400084, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
9 MTA-ELTE “Lendület” Collective Behaviour Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Pázmány P. Stny. 1A, Budapest, 1117, Hungary. nagymate@hal.elte.hu.
10 Department of Biological Physics, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány P. Stny. 1A, Budapest, 1117, Hungary. nagymate@hal.elte.hu.
11 MTA-ELTE Statistical and Biological Physics Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Pázmány P. Stny. 1A, Budapest, 1117, Hungary. nagymate@hal.elte.hu.
12 Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Universitätsstraße 10, 78457, Konstanz, Germany. nagymate@hal.elte.hu.

# Contributed equally.

PMID: 37669934
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40523-3

Abstract

Studying animal societies needs detailed observation of many individuals, but technological advances offer new opportunities in this field. Here, we present a state-of-the-art drone observation of a multilevel herd of Przewalski’s horses, consisting of harems (one-male, multifemale groups). We track, in high spatio-temporal resolution, the movements of 238 individually identified horses on drone videos, and combine movement analyses with demographic data from two decades of population monitoring. Analysis of collective movements reveals how the structure of the herd’s social network is related to kinship and familiarity of individuals. The network centrality of harems is related to their age and how long the harem stallions have kept harems previously. Harems of genetically related stallions are closer to each other in the network, and female exchange is more frequent between closer harems. High movement similarity of females from different harems predicts becoming harem mates in the future. Our results show that only a few minutes of fine-scale movement tracking combined with high throughput data driven analysis can reveal the structure of a society, reconstruct past group dynamics and predict future ones.

© 2023. Springer Nature Limited.