Aggression, grooming and group‐level cooperation in white‐faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus): insights from social networks

Abstract

The form of animal social systems depends on the nature of agonistic and affiliative interactions. Social network theory provides tools for characterizing social structure that go beyond simple dyadic interactions and consider the group as a whole. We show three groups of capuchin monkeys from Barro Colorado Island, Panama, where there are strong connections between key aspects of aggression, grooming, and proximity networks, and, at least among females, those who incur risk to defend their group have particular "social personalities." Although there is no significant correlation for any of the network measures between giving and receiving aggression, suggesting that dominance relationships do not follow a simple hierarchy, strong correlations emerge for many measures between the aggression and grooming networks. At the local, but not global, scale, receiving aggression and giving grooming are strongly linked in all groups. Proximity shows no correlation with aggression at either the local or the global scale, suggesting that individuals neither seek out nor avoid aggressors. Yet, grooming has a global but not local connection to proximity. Extensive groomers who tend to direct their efforts at other extensive groomers also spend time in close proximity to many other individuals. These results indicate the important role that prosociality plays in shaping female social relationships. We also show that females who receive the least aggression, and thus pay low costs for group living, are most likely to participate in group defense. No consistent "social personality" traits characterize the males who invest in group defense.

Network characteristics and development of social structure of agonistic behaviour in pigs across three repeated rehousing and mixing events

“…On the other hand, only a small proportion of possible agonistic interactions were observed in the growing and the breeding stables. This sparseness of agonistic interaction networks was also seen in other studies (Crofoot et al, 2011). Beside the larger group and pens sizes, another possible reason for these findings could be a habituation effect in growing pigs and gilts due to the repeated rehousing and mixing situations.…”

“…As the results illustrate, these cycles included on average more than two animals, which suggests that agonistic interactions have a group-wide structure which is not immediately obvious in a dyadic analysis (Crofoot et al, 2011). Indeed, the strongly connected components included about 90% of the animals in weaned pigs, 70% in growing pigs and 60 % in gilts, indicating that these animals were involved in mutual agonistic interactions.…”

“…Also D'Eath (2004) stated that success in fighting has a long-lasting effect on the dominance status of the individual pig in a newly mixed group, meaning more dominant animals fight less than animals with a lower rank position. The results indicate that complex patterns of agonistic interactions were common in all three rehousing and mixing events, which can only be understood by an analysis of the entire network structure instead of simple dyadic connections (Crofoot et al, 2011).…”

Seasonal changes in the structure of rhesus macaque social networks

“…To cope with this challenge, many researchers adopt social network analysis, an analytical tool of increasing importance in the study of animal behavior (Wey et al 2008; Brent et al 2011), which uses complex algorithms to visualise and quantify social structure topology (Croft et al 2008). Social network-based studies have examined, for example, whether topologies differ between species (Maryanski 1987; Sundaresan et al 2007; Kasper and Voelkl 2009; Sueur et al 2011), or between groups of the same species (Hanby 1980; Godfrey et al 2009; Madden et al 2009; Crofoot et al 2011), and have demonstrated that social structures often exhibit certain fundamental topological properties (e.g. small-world properties: Lusseau 2003; Croft et al 2005; Sundaresan et al 2007).…”

Kinship Shapes Affiliative Social Networks but Not Aggression in Ring-Tailed Coatis

“…The inclusion of additional parameters such as the risk of infanticide and habitat saturation have created expanded socioecological models that can predict female grouping in gorillas and lions, and the formation of ‘friendships’ in chacma baboons ( Papio cynocephalus ursinus ) [15]–[19]. Within a social group, age, sex, social status, and hunger level can greatly influence an individual's choice of whom to interact with and in what manner [20]–[24]. Some species exhibit age-based homophily, in which individuals preferentially interact with conspecifics of the same age, regardless of relatedness [25].…”