The correlated evolution of social competence and social cognition

Abstract

Knowing which of correlated traits are more strongly targeted by selection is crucial to understand the evolutionary process. For example, it could help in understanding how behavioural and cognitive adaptations to social living have evolved. Social competence is the ability of animals to optimize their social behaviours according to the demands of their social environment. It is a behavioural performance trait that expresses how well a whole organism performs complex social tasks, such as choosing mates, raising offspring, participating in dominance hierarchies, solving conflicts or forming social bonds. Non‐social competence, on the other hand, is the ability of animals to optimize their non‐social behaviours according to the demands of their non‐social environment, such as finding food or avoiding predators. Social and non‐social cognition are correlated lower‐level traits of social and non‐social competence, respectively, encompassing the underlying psychological and neural mechanisms of behaviour that allow animals to acquire, encode, store and recall information about their social and non‐social environments. Here, we employ the theoretical framework that selection acts on performance traits first and on lower‐level traits only secondarily, to propose a new approach to the study of the evolution of social cognition. We hypothesize that when selection favours social competence, the cognitive system becomes more adapted to the social domain, making species biased for social information, and increasing their degree of sociality. The opposite can happen when selection favours non‐social competence. The level of specialization that the cognitive system can attain depends on whether social and non‐social competence are correlated with the same cognitive lower‐level traits. This in turn will determine whether species will evolve a type of social cognition that is general—that contributes with cognitive abilities that can be used in both social and non‐social environments—or modular—that contributes with cognitive abilities that are specific to the social environment. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Brain morphology predicts social intelligence in wild cleaner fish

“…forebrain size, cerebellum size, and cerebellum cell density) in predicting performance in the previous analyses. With the new analyses, we tested predictions for social competence instead 42 , 43 , 55 . Here, we found that individuals making optimal strategies, that is, having social competence, had relatively larger forebrains than those adopting not-optimal strategies (GLM: X 2 = 6.118, p = 0.013, Fig.…”

“…Our study showed that linking social complexity, brain features and cognitive performance in wild animals is rather complex. By incorporating information about the ecology of cleaning interactions as a function of cleaner fish densities, the concept of social competence emerged as a suitable framework to link forebrain size to cognitive performance (see review by Varela et al 55 ). As it stands, ecological conditions can determine what decision-rules are locally adaptive and apparently a larger forebrain facilitates the acquisition of these rules.…”

Reproductive skew, fitness costs, and winner-loser effects in social-dominance evolution

“…The perspective of social competence (Taborsky and Oliveira 2012;Bshary and Oliveira 2015;Fernald 2017;Varela et al 2020) is relevant for these winner and loser effects. A key idea is that individuals adjust their fighting behaviour based on the consequences of winning or losing an interaction, using information obtained through learning.…”

The role of sensory ecology and cognition in social decisions: Costs of acquiring information matter

“…To respond appropriately to the environment may pose a cognitively demanding challenge particularly with regard to the social environment of an individual, due to the inherent dynamics and involved conflicts of interest (Varela, Teles, & Oliveira, ; Weitekamp & Hofmann, ). The first difficulties for desiring receivers of social cues and signals regard perception, detection and recognition of relevant signals.…”

“…In their article, Susana Varela, Magda Teles and Rui Oliveira (Varela, Teles, & Oliveira, ) draw a firm line between social cognition and social competence, the former being viewed as a by‐product of natural selection on the latter. Their conceptual framework highlights that selection directly acts on functional performance traits such as choosing mates, raising offspring and forming social bonds, while lower ranking traits such as social and non‐social cognition constitute correlated, secondary targets of selection.…”