Social associations between California sea lions influence the use of a novel foraging ground

Abstract

Social relationships define an individual's position in its social network, which can influence the acquisition and spread of information and behavioural variants through the population. Thus, when nuisance behaviours spread through wildlife populations, identifying central individuals may provide valuable insights for problem-species management. We studied the effects of network position on California sea lion (Zalophus californianus) discovery and foraging success at a novel foraging ground—the salmonids that aggregate at the Bonneville Dam tail-race, 235 km up the Columbia River. We found that an individual's centrality in their social network influenced discovery of the Bonneville Dam and whether they returned the next year. Foraging success once at the dam was independent of network position. Extensive lethal and non-lethal removal efforts have been implemented at Bonneville Dam and focused on reducing the number of individual sea lions at the dam. Since social relationships forged at the opening of the Columbia River influence both the discovery and return to the Bonneville Dam, efforts to increase salmon recovery may be enhanced by breaking apart social networks at the opening of the river.

Knowledgeable Lemurs Become More Central in Social Networks

“…Network connections predict individual variation in learning, including learning about the location of novel resources [1][2][3][4], the solution of a novel task [5][6][7], and foraging techniques [8,9]. Some individuals have higher network centrality than others, either because they are highly connected and have diverse and/or frequent connections or because they occupy key network positions by connecting the otherwise unconnected conspecifics [12,13].…”

“…Some individuals have higher network centrality than others, either because they are highly connected and have diverse and/or frequent connections or because they occupy key network positions by connecting the otherwise unconnected conspecifics [12,13]. Central individuals have better access to novel information than non-central individuals [2,3,5,6]. However, beyond age, sex, personality, and developmental stress [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], the factors that determine individual variation in social centrality are not fully understood.…”

“…Strong relationships exist between social connections and information transmission [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9], where individuals' network position plays a key role in whether or not they acquire novel information [2,3,5,6]. The relationships between social connections and information acquisition may be bidirectional if learning novel information, in addition to being influenced by it, influences network position.…”

How does cognition shape social relationships?

“…Individuals who occupy central network positions have more opportunities than non-central individuals for learning from others and tend to acquire novel information faster [116][117][118][119]. Thus, social connections can directly influence individual differences in learning performance, by affecting who learns novel information from whom and when it is learnt [116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124]. The links between individual differences in network connections (including indirect connections) and learning performance, when animals have opportunities to learn from each other, can be quantified through network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA), which infers social transmission of a behaviour if its spread follows social network connections [125,126].…”

One of the gang: social group dynamics in a juvenile passerine bird

“…Regardless of whether groups arose due to active choice by individuals or a more incidental aggregation based on environment, the result was that non-random associations formed between juveniles which could mediate behaviours such finding food, and avoiding predators or disease (Krause and Ruxton, 2002; Krause, Lusseau and James, 2009; Drewe, 2010; Aplin et al , 2012; Schakner et al , 2017). As we found limited co-occurrence and associations between differently-aged animals, are there benefits to aggregating with other juveniles rather than adults?…”