Assessment of long-range correlation in animal behaviour time series: the temporal pattern of locomotor activity of Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix) and mosquito larva (Culex quinquefasciatus).

KEMBRO, J. M.; FLESIA, A. G.; GLEISER, R. M.; PERILLO, M. A.; MARIN R. H.

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam ; Año: 2013 vol. 392 p. 6400 - 6413

0378-4371

Detrended Fluctuation Analysis(DFA) is a method that has been frequently used to determine the presence of long-range correlations in human and animal behavior.  However, according toprevious authors using statistical  model systems, inorderto correctly  use DFA different aspects shouldbe taken into account  such as: 1) the establishment by hypothesis testingof the absence ofshortterm correlation,  2) an accurate estimation of a straight line in the log- log plot of the fluctuation function, 3) the elimination of artificial  crossovers in the fluctuation  function, and 4) the length of the time series. Taking into consideration these factors, herein we evaluatedthe presence of long-range correlation in the temporal pattern of locomotoractivity of Japanese quail (Coturnix  coturnix) and mosquito larva (Culex quinquefasciatus). In our study, modeling the data with the generalautoregressive integrated moving average (ARFIMA) model, we rejected the hypothesis of short range correlations (d=0) in all cases. We also observed that DFA was able to distinguish between the artificial crossover observed in the temporal patternof locomotion of Japanese quail, and the crossovers inthe correlation behavior observed in mosquito larvae locomotion.  Although the test durationcan slightly  influence the parameter estimation, no qualitative  differences were observed between different test durations.