title: High-order social interactions in groups of mice.
abstract: Social behavior in mammals is often studied in pairs under artificial conditions, yet groups may rely on more complicated social structures. Here, we use a novel system for tracking multiple animals in a rich environment to characterize the nature of group behavior and interactions, and show strongly correlated group behavior in mice. We have found that the minimal models that rely only on individual traits and pairwise correlations between animals are not enough to capture group behavior, but that models that include third-order interactions give a very accurate description of the group. These models allow us to infer social interaction maps for individual groups. Using this approach, we show that environmental complexity during adolescence affects the collective group behavior of adult mice, in particular altering the role of high-order structure. Our results provide new experimental and mathematical frameworks for studying group behavior and social interactions. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00759.001.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology , Weizmann Institute of Science , Rehovot , Israel.
authors.forename: Yair
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shemesh
authors.forename: Yehezkel
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sztainberg
authors.forename: Oren
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Forkosh
authors.forename: Tamar
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shlapobersky
authors.forename: Alon
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Elad
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schneidman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D051379:Mice; D012919:Social Behavior; D014466:Ultraviolet Rays
keywords: Mouse; environmental complexity; group behavior; maximum entropy models; pairwise and high-order correlations; social interaction maps; tracking individuals in groups