Maintaining tandem movement cohesion through antennal movements in termites

How do animals coordinate their motion during migration? Traditional models of collective motion, for example, describing bird flocks or fish schools, rely on visual interactions. However, many animals are blind, requiring movement coordination through maintenance of physical contact. The risks and costs of becoming accidentally separated may encourage the evolution of compensatory strategies. Here we study tandem running in blind termites. We quantitatively investigate how these animals use their appendages to maintain stable pair movements. During tandem runs, male followers use shorter palps and longer antennae to maintain physical contact with female leaders. Our posture-tracking analysis revealed that termites dynamically change their antennal movements. Males stabilize their antennae to maintain contact with their partners while their palps are in contact. When the male palps lost contact with a female, males started swinging their antennae while increasing movement speed. Antenna..., , , # Data from: Maintaining tandem movement cohesion through antennal movements in termites

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn94q](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn94q)

## Description of the data and file structure

This repository provides access to the data and source code used for this manuscript.

This study investigates the termite tandem run, focusing on how termites use antennae and regulate movement patterns according to physical contact with the partner. We recorded movement patterns of single termites and mating pairs in two different species, *Reticulitermes speratus* and *Coptotermes formosanus*. We also observe tandem running behavior of *R. speratus* when we cut their antennae. We used the posture tracking software, SLEAP, to extract trajectories of each body part. All these raw data were stored in the `data_raw` folder.

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## Table of Contents

This repository includes tracking data and Python/R codes for analysis. The en...,