Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Behavioral variability reflects differences in internal and external parameters and provides a substrate for natural selection. However, uncovering its structure is challenging because behavior evolves nonlinearly across multiple timescales. Our goal is to reconstruct phenotypic variation from finite behavioral observations without prescribing the scales at which individuals should be compared. To achieve this, we introduce a multiscale dissimilarity that compares dynamics across all statistically resolvable resolutions by constructing reduced transfer operators at progressively finer scales and weighting their differences by finite-sampling uncertainty. This dissimilarity defines a geometry of dynamical phenotypes, which we reconstruct using diffusion maps. We show that the resulting phenotypic coordinates locally follow the parameter directions to which dynamics are most sensitive. We validate our approach in a stochastic model and apply it to bacterial and larval zebrafish behavior. In bacteria, we identify run speed as a major component of inter-individual variability, associated with the chemotaxis protein CheB. In zebrafish, we find that prior prey experience reshapes behavioral dynamics and phenotypic variability, with paramecia experience concentrating fish in a prey-capture-associated region of phenotypic space. Together, these results provide a framework for identifying internal and environmental variables that structure dynamical phenotypes across scales.
Language: English
Subfield: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funders: National Science Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, European Commission, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Awards: Unraveling the neural circuits controlling the circadian modulation of locomotion in a diurnal vertebrate, Emergent variability for foraging in unpredictable environments, Investigating a newly-identified structural asymmetry of the vertebrate centriole and its impact on development and health, Causal information transmission in locomotion, G3398237449, G4238527680, G4406896106, G4689434848, ZEbrafish Neuroscience Interdisciplinary Training Hub, G5356677024, Matching motoneuron subtypes and myofiber subtypes: from embryonic development to pathogenesis, G6882451501, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, The Role of Competitive Selection Mechanisms in the Asymmetric Pathway, G7080048889, G7182031487, G876022237
OpenAlex ID: W7220680164