Detection of Anticipatory Dynamics Between a Pair of Zebrafish

Date: Wednesday, Nov 29

Time: 15:00-16:00

Location: Lab4, level E, L4E48

Speaker: Prof. C. K. Chan, Professor Emeritus, Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Title :  Detection of Anticipatory Dynamics Between a Pair of Zebrafish

Abstract:

Anticipatory dynamics (AD) is unusual in that responses from an information receiver can appear ahead of triggers from the source and direction of information flow (DIF) is needed to establish causality. Although it is believed that anticipatory dynamics is important for animals' survival, natural examples are rare. Time series (trajectories) from a pair of interacting zebrafish are used to look for the existence of AD in natural systems. In order to obtain DIF between the two trajectories, we have made use of a special experimental design to designate information source. On the other hand, we have also used common statistical tools such as Granger causality and transfer entropy to detect DIF. In our experiments, we found that a majority of the fish pairs does not show any anticipatory behaviors and only a few pairs displayed possible AD. Interestingly, for fish in this later group, they do not display AD all the time. Our findings suggest that the formation of schooling of fish might not need the help of AD and new tools are needed in the detection of causality in AD system.