Grand Challenge — Analysing Multimodal Communication: Networks, Repertoires, and Communicative Complexity

Multimodality is a virtually ubiquitous feature of communication. With the increasing interest in how animals, including humans, use multimodal and multicomponent signals in social interactions, there is an acute need for standardised and rigorous tools that will allow us to visualise and analyse these signals as they occur in naturalistic interactions — as a complex, integrated system.

This Grand Challenge presents two frameworks that use network theory, a powerful methodology for intuitively visualising and investigating the relationships between entities, as a tool for analysing multimodal repertoires.

Hosted by Severine Hex.

Talk 1 — A network-based framework for multimodal repertoires: structure, meaning, and function (Severine Hex)

Severine Hex presents a framework that leverages network-based methods to (1) describe the relationships between simultaneously produced signals within and between modalities and (2) infer signal meaning and function. She embeds these tools in a theoretical framework that can be used to interpret and describe both the global structure of the repertoire and the role individual signals play in shaping and modulating meaning.

Talk 2 — Characterising communicative complexity across taxa with cross-modal repertoire networks (Louise Peckre)

Louise Peckre presents a framework based on network analyses of cross-modal signal repertoires that aims to characterise communicative systems across taxa using easily quantifiable data. This framework addresses complexity at the level of the whole communicative system and allows communicative complexity to be quantified in a multidimensional way, potentially helping to disentangle the evolutionary trade-offs underlying the evolution of communicative complexity.

Speakers

Severine Hex (Harvard University; Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows) is a comparative ethologist and behavioural ecologist who studies how animals living in complex societies navigate the challenges of their social worlds using multimodal communication, social cognition, and social bonds.

Louise Peckre (University Sorbonne Paris Nord; Associate Professor) is a behavioural and evolutionary biologist. Her research examines the evolution of social behaviour and communication across taxa, focusing on how social and ecological factors shape signalling strategies. She is particularly interested in multimodal communication, the interplay between communicative and social complexity, and the cognitive and functional underpinnings of behavioural diversity.