Taking sociality seriously: the structure of multi-dimensional social networks as a source of information for individuals

Barrett, Louise; Henzi, S. Peter; Lusseau, David

doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0113

Cited by 154 publications

(140 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(101 reference statements)

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“…collective animal behavior | hierarchy | high-throughput ethology | leadership | dominance network F or a group of humans or nonhuman animals, networks can be constructed from a number of different types of interaction and across a range of contexts, including association, aggression, courtship, and leadership (1)(2)(3)(4). This aspect of interaction networks raises the question as to whether network structure is maintained across contexts because of stable relationships or underlying individual differences, or whether network structure reorganizes in every new situation, where the same individuals may have different competences.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Context-dependent hierarchies in pigeons

Nagy

Vásárhelyi

Pettit

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

170

175

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Hierarchical organization is widespread in the societies of humans and other animals, both in social structure and in decision-making contexts. In the case of collective motion, the majority of case studies report that dominant individuals lead group movements, in agreement with the common conflation of the terms "dominance" and "leadership." From a theoretical perspective, if social relationships influence interactions during collective motion, then social structure could also affect leadership in large, swarm-like groups, such as fish shoals and bird flocks. Here we use computer-vision-based methods and miniature GPS tracking to study, respectively, social dominance and in-flight leader-follower relations in pigeons. In both types of behavior we find hierarchically structured networks of directed interactions. However, instead of being conflated, dominance and leadership hierarchies are completely independent of each other. Although dominance is an important aspect of variation among pigeons, correlated with aggression and access to food, our results imply that the stable leadership hierarchies in the air must be based on a different set of individual competences. In addition to confirming the existence of independent and context-specific hierarchies in pigeons, we succeed in setting out a robust, scalable method for the automated analysis of dominance relationships, and thus of social structure, applicable to many species. Our results, as well as our methods, will help to incorporate the broader context of animal social organization into the study of collective behavior.collective animal behavior | hierarchy | high-throughput ethology | leadership | dominance network F or a group of humans or nonhuman animals, networks can be constructed from a number of different types of interaction and across a range of contexts, including association, aggression, courtship, and leadership (1-4). This aspect of interaction networks raises the question as to whether network structure is maintained across contexts because of stable relationships or underlying individual differences, or whether network structure reorganizes in every new situation, where the same individuals may have different competences. For example, does social dominance routinely endow individuals with leadership roles within the group? By leadership, we refer to an individual's degree of influence over a group's decision: in the case of collective travel, this largely concerns the timing or direction of the group's movements (5). Dominance signifies the consistent winning of agonistic interactions (6). Most studies of the relationship between leadership and social structure have focused on mammals, especially primates. In species with highly asymmetrical dominance relationships, such as gray wolves (7), mountain gorillas (8), and chacma baboons (9), there is a consistent trend for dominants to lead. This effect may be mediated by factors other than dominance, such as the central position of dominants in the association network (10) or their greater metabo...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Context-dependent hierarchies in pigeons

Nagy

Vásárhelyi

Pettit

et al. 2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

170

175

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“…Indeed, sociality as an emergent process is a long-held view that dates back at least to Hinde's [26,64] view of social behaviour, which focused on how interactions among and between individuals form the basis for bonds and relationships. Such a relationship-focused view of sociality lends itself very nicely to social network analysis [65][66][67][68][69]. And, in contrast to the traditional socioecological model that focuses mostly on the ultimate consequences of social behaviour and one that treats mechanism largely as a search for identifying the key ecological factors that explain variation, an emergent view of sociality lends itself to both proximate and ultimate studies.…”

Section: Sociality: An Emergent Viewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Yellow-bellied marmots: insights from an emergent view of sociality

Blumstein

2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Ecological factors explain variation in sociality both within and between species of marmots—large alpine ground squirrels. Fifty years of study, by me and my colleagues, of the yellow-bellied marmots ( Marmota flaviventris ) at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, near Crested Butte, CO, USA, has created opportunities to see how sociality changes with population and group size. Over the past decades, we have witnessed a natural experiment whereby the population tripled in size. If we view sociality as an emergent process, then demography acts as a constraint on interactions between individuals, and the threefold increase in population size should have consequences for group structure. We have used social network statistics to study the causes and consequences of social interactions by capitalizing on this demographic variation. Such an emergent view is ideally studied in an integrative Tinbergian way that focuses on both mechanism and function. We have determined that some social attributes are heritable, that social cohesion is established through age and kin structure, that well-embedded females (but not males) are less likely to disperse, and that there are fitness consequences of social attributes. Together, this integrative relationship-centred view expands on the traditional ecological model of sociality and offers a framework that can be applied to other systems.

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“…As Schradin [33] argues, it is probably this flexibility at the individual level that allows them to maintain their species-specific social organization in a 'homeostatic' fashion (see also [34,35]). Henzi et al's [36] inter-population comparison of vervet monkeys illustrates this point perfectly: increased group size has scalar effects on social structure (i.e.…”

Section: Social Flexibility Versus Flexibility In Social Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking note of Tinbergen, or: the promise of a biology of behaviour

Barrett

Blumstein

Clutton‐Brock

et al. 2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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In this concluding paper, we revisit Tinbergen's 1963 article and assess its impact on the field of behavioural research in general, and the papers in this volume in particular. We show how Tinbergen's insistence that greater attention should be paid to studies of ‘survival value’ has yielded immense returns over the past 50 years, allowing an integrative biology of behaviour to emerge and thrive, and that his addition of ontogeny to the ‘major problems of biology’ was both insightful and prescient.

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Taking sociality seriously: the structure of multi-dimensional social networks as a source of information for individuals

Cited by 154 publications

References 56 publications

Context-dependent hierarchies in pigeons

Context-dependent hierarchies in pigeons

Yellow-bellied marmots: insights from an emergent view of sociality

Taking note of Tinbergen, or: the promise of a biology of behaviour

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