Compression principle and Zipf’s Law of brevity in infochemical communication
Compression has been presented as a general principle of animal communication. Zipf’s Law of brevity is a manifestation of this postulate and can be generalized as the tendency of more frequent communicative elements to be shorter. Previous works supported this claim, showing evidence of Zipf’s Law...
| Autores: | , |
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| Formato: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2022 |
| País: | España |
| Recursos: | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) |
| Repositorio: | UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/374318 |
| Acesso em linha: | https://hdl.handle.net/2117/374318 https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0162 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palavra-chave: | Zipf’s law Pheromones Linguistics -- Statistical methods Infochemicals Semiochemicals Allomones Allelochemicals Handicap Principle Chemical communication Zipf's law of brevity Brevity law Linguistic laws Compression Communication systems Zipf's, Llei de Feromones Lingüística -- Mètodes estadístics Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Intel·ligència artificial::Llenguatge natural |
| Resumo: | Compression has been presented as a general principle of animal communication. Zipf’s Law of brevity is a manifestation of this postulate and can be generalized as the tendency of more frequent communicative elements to be shorter. Previous works supported this claim, showing evidence of Zipf’s Law of brevity in animal acoustical communication and human language. However, a significant part of the communicative effort in biological systems is carried out in other transmission channels, such as those based on infochemicals. To fill this gap, we seek, for the first time, evidence of this principle in infochemical communication by analysing the statistical tendency of more frequent infochemicals to be chemically shorter and lighter. We analyse data from the largest and most comprehensive open-access infochemical database known as Pherobase, recovering Zipf’s Law of brevity in interspecific communication (allelochemicals) but not in intraspecific communication (pheromones). Moreover, these results are robust even when addressing different magnitudes of study or mathematical approaches. Therefore, different dynamics from the compression principle would dominate intraspecific chemical communication, defying the universality of Zipf’s Law of brevity. To conclude, we discuss the exception found for pheromones in the light of other potential communicative paradigms such as pressures on successful communication or the Handicap principle. |
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