Social Network Analysis and Nutritional Behavior: An Integrated Modeling Approach

Abstract

Animals have evolved complex foraging strategies to obtain a nutritionally balanced diet and associated fitness benefits. Recent research combining state-space models of nutritional geometry with agent-based models (ABMs), show how nutrient targeted foraging behavior can also influence animal social interactions, ultimately affecting collective dynamics and group structures. Here we demonstrate how social network analyses can be integrated into such a modeling framework and provide a practical analytical tool to compare experimental results with theory. We illustrate our approach by examining the case of nutritionally mediated dominance hierarchies. First we show how nutritionally explicit ABMs that simulate the emergence of dominance hierarchies can be used to generate social networks. Importantly the structural properties of our simulated networks bear similarities to dominance networks of real animals (where conflicts are not always directly related to nutrition). Finally, we demonstrate how metrics from social network analyses can be used to predict the fitness of agents in these simulated competitive environments. Our results highlight the potential importance of nutritional mechanisms in shaping dominance interactions in a wide range of social and ecological contexts. Nutrition likely influences social interactions in many species, and yet a theoretical framework for exploring these effects is currently lacking. Combining social network analyses with computational models from nutritional ecology may bridge this divide, representing a pragmatic approach for generating theoretical predictions for nutritional experiments.

Macronutrient intakes and the lifespan-fecundity trade-off: a geometric framework agent-based model

“…Importantly, ABMs may use the GFN to explore interactions between nutritional state and foraging behaviour [23]. Several such models have previously been developed [24][25][26][27]. However, none of these models have explicitly decomposed fitness into its component life-history traits.…”

Exploring Interactions between the Gut Microbiota and Social Behavior through Nutrition

“…In the field, it is possible to reconstruct the gut microbiota composition of an animal and its nutrient intake by monitoring the animals’ food choices, and analyzing food samples and feces composition (see [ 81 , 82 ] for details). At the collective level, social network analyses constitute powerful tools to assess how gut microbiota influence social interactions and structures [ 83 , 84 ]. By quantifying social interactions and characterizing the nutritional needs of experimentally manipulated individuals, it is possible to picture the associations between microbiota-induced phenotypic changes (e.g., variation in holobiont nutritional needs) and the temporal dynamics of social interactions.…”

Nicotinamide as Independent Variable for Intelligence, Fertility, and Health: Origin of Human Creative Explosions?

“…The rich elite was an intellectual force, not a primate dominance structure: meat was not another material good to show off, but a need, not just a want – just as a lack of meat enabled a more fertile and labour class (who even may appreciate their children more). 398–401 Observations that ‘proles’ (by definition) outreproduced the rich go back to at least Roman times in writings by Pliny and laws by Augustus entreating the rich to produce more children. 402–404…”