Spontaneous behavior predicts colony membership, individual identity, and rank in naked mole-rat societies
- 1Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute; Department of Biological Sciences and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University
Abstract
Animal societies are organized across scales, from moment-to-moment actions of individuals to dynamic group structure. A central challenge in sociobiology is to understand how behaviors of individuals shape group structure. Here, using machine vision to map recurrent fine-scale behavioral modules in the eusocial naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), we show that spontaneous behavior in isolation predicts group-level social organization, including colony membership and individual identity. We determined dominance relationships and found highly linear hierarchies, with ranks stable over months to years. Remarkably, fine-scale behavioral profiles in isolation correctly predicted pairwise dominance relationships, allowing reconstruction of rank order within each colony. Models trained within one colony predicted rank poorly in others, suggesting that naked mole-rats express social position through behavioral patterns specific to each colony. Together, our results connect fine-scale behavior to social structure maintained over years and show that, even when an animal is alone, its behavior carries signatures of its identity, colony, and place within that society.
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BibTeX
@misc{haba2026spontaneous,
title = {{Spontaneous behavior predicts colony membership, individual identity, and rank in naked mole-rat societies}},
author = {Y. Haba and R. Schwark and C. Weinreb and S. Ogundare and W. Foster and Y.-Y. W. Tsai and J. Lyu and M. Mohamed and P. Chang and A. Arnold and E. Schaffer and K. Rajan and S. R. Datta and I. Abdus-Saboor},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.27.754730},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.27.754730v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Spontaneous behavior predicts colony membership, individual identity, and rank in naked mole-rat societies
AU - Y. Haba
AU - R. Schwark
AU - C. Weinreb
AU - S. Ogundare
AU - W. Foster
AU - Y.-Y. W. Tsai
AU - J. Lyu
AU - M. Mohamed
AU - P. Chang
AU - A. Arnold
AU - E. Schaffer
AU - K. Rajan
AU - S. R. Datta
AU - I. Abdus-Saboor
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/27
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.27.754730
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.27.754730v1
AB - Animal societies are organized across scales, from moment-to-moment actions of individuals to dynamic group structure. A central challenge in sociobiology is to understand how behaviors of individuals shape group structure. Here, using machine vision to map recurrent fine-scale behavioral modules in the eusocial naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), we show that spontaneous behavior in isolation predicts group-level social organization, including colony membership and individual identity. We determined dominance relationships and found highly linear hierarchies, with ranks stable over months to years. Remarkably, fine-scale behavioral profiles in isolation correctly predicted pairwise dominance relationships, allowing reconstruction of rank order within each colony. Models trained within one colony predicted rank poorly in others, suggesting that naked mole-rats express social position through behavioral patterns specific to each colony. Together, our results connect fine-scale behavior to social structure maintained over years and show that, even when an animal is alone, its behavior carries signatures of its identity, colony, and place within that society.
ER -