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Dryad

Piecewise continuous sampling: a method for minimizing bias and sampling effort for estimated metrics of animal behavior

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Apr 05, 2024 version files 2.56 MB

Abstract

Capturing qualitative features of animal behavior requires recording occurrences of behavior over time. Continuous sampling is best for capturing brief behaviors, but can be very time consuming. Instantaneous sampling can reduce the amount of labor required, but can miss short-duration behaviors. We therefore synthesized these techniques by continuously sampling during randomly scattered time intervals; a technique we call piecewise continuous sampling. To optimize and test the efficacy of this technique, we collected a continuous behavioral dataset of harvester ant workers, and then we developed a protocol to estimate the amount of sampling time necessary to reconstruct the proportion of time animals spend in different behavioral states. This protocol finds the sample size needed for the variance of the sample to converge on the variation of the population. We then divided this estimated time into equal-duration intervals that were randomly distributed across the entire continuous dataset. Finally, we calculated both time-dependent and time-independent error from this sample. We found that 4 to 16 sampling intervals minimize both types of error simultaneously. This finding was robust to differences in underlying behavior and was validated with simulations, implying that this method could be used for many types of organisms.