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Analysis of institutional authors

Torre, IgCorresponding Author

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August 8, 2022
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Compression principle and Zipf's Law of brevity in infochemical communication

Publicated to:Biology Letters. 18 (7): 20220162- - 2022-01-01 18(7), DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0162

Authors: Hernandez-Fernandez, Antoni; Torre, Ivan G.;

Affiliations

Univ Basque Country, Language & Speech Lab, Justo Velez Elorriaga Kalea 1, Vitoria 01006, Spain - Author
Univ Politecn Cataluna, Inst Ciencies Educ, Complex & Quantitat Linguist Lab, Av Doctor Maranon 44-50, Barcelona 08028, Catalonia, Spain - Author
Univ Politecn Madrid, Dept Matemat Aplicada, Avda Puerta Hierro 2-4, Madrid 28040, Spain - Author
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Animal communicationAnimalsCommunicationCompressionCuesDatabases, factualEcologyEvolutionHumansInfochemicalsInformation theoryLanguageMenzeraths lawOriginPheromonesSexual selectionSignals

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Biology Letters due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2022, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category Agricultural and Biological Sciences (Miscellaneous). Notably, the journal is positioned above the 90th percentile.

Independientemente del impacto esperado determinado por el canal de difusión, es importante destacar el impacto real observado de la propia aportación.

Según las diferentes agencias de indexación, el número de citas acumuladas por esta publicación hasta la fecha 2025-10-25:

  • WoS: 1
  • Scopus: 4

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-10-25:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 11.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 11 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 62.2.
  • The number of mentions on the social network Facebook: 1 (Altmetric).
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 32 (Altmetric).
  • The number of mentions in news outlets: 5 (Altmetric).

It is essential to present evidence supporting full alignment with institutional principles and guidelines on Open Science and the Conservation and Dissemination of Intellectual Heritage. A clear example of this is:

  • The work has been submitted to a journal whose editorial policy allows open Open Access publication.

Leadership analysis of institutional authors

There is a significant leadership presence as some of the institution’s authors appear as the first or last signer, detailed as follows: Last Author (GONZALEZ TORRE, IVAN).

the author responsible for correspondence tasks has been GONZALEZ TORRE, IVAN.