Social cohesion in yellow-bellied marmots is established through age and kin structuring

Wey, Tina W.; Blumstein, Daniel T.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.03.008

Cited by 126 publications

(125 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…Silk et al, 1999;Wey & Blumstein, 2010], but at a proximate level, it is the interactions both positive and negative between individuals that determine who spends time with whom. Aggression and affiliation are conspicuous features of life in most primate social groups [Carpenter, 1942].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Crofoot

Rubenstein

Maiya

et al. 2011

American J Primatol

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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.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Crofoot

Rubenstein

Maiya

et al. 2011

American J Primatol

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“…Furthermore, we wished to identify patterns among similar traits in an attempt to discover which interaction types are important in animal social networks. Previous studies of yellow-bellied marmot (Marmota flaviventris) social networks have addressed the robustness of network estimates (7), the correlations between network position and dispersal (15), and the roles of age and kinship in structuring networks (10); however, the genetic basis and fitness consequences of network traits are unknown.…”

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confidence: 99%

Heritable victimization and the benefits of agonistic relationships

Lea

Blumstein²,

Wey³

et al. 2010

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

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100

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Here, we present estimates of heritability and selection on network traits in a single population, allowing us to address the evolutionary potential of social behavior and the poorly understood link between sociality and fitness. To evolve, sociality must have some heritable basis, yet the heritability of social relationships is largely unknown. Recent advances in both social network analyses and quantitative genetics allow us to quantify attributes of social relationships and estimate their heritability in free-living populations. Our analyses addressed a variety of measures (in-degree, out-degree, attractiveness, expansiveness, embeddedness, and betweenness), and we hypothesized that traits reflecting relationships controlled by an individual (i.e., those that the individual initiated or were directly involved in) would be more heritable than those based largely on the behavior of conspecifics. Identifying patterns of heritability and selection among related traits may provide insight into which types of relationships are important in animal societies. As expected, we found that variation in indirect measures was largely explained by nongenetic variation. Yet, surprisingly, traits capturing initiated interactions do not possess significant additive genetic variation, whereas measures of received interactions are heritable. Measures describing initiated aggression and position in an agonistic network are under selection (0.3 < |S| < 0.4), although advantageous trait values are not inherited by offspring. It appears that agonistic relationships positively influence fitness and seemingly costly or harmful ties may, in fact, be beneficial. Our study highlights the importance of studying agonistic as well as affiliative relationships to understand fully the connections between sociality and fitness.animal model | animal social networks | yellow-bellied marmots B ehavioral ecologists have long viewed sociality and social relationships as adaptive traits shaped by evolution (1, 2). However, if we are to study the evolution of sociality and social relationships, there must be heritable variation in traits describing individual social behavior. Numerous studies have identified heritable variation in animal dispositions (3, 4), morphological characteristics, and behavioral traits (5) that may affect how individuals interact with conspecifics, yet the role of genetics in social interactions themselves is poorly understood. If traits affecting social interactions are heritable, we may expect measures of social relationships to be explained somewhat by additive genetic factors.There has been a recent upsurge in using animal social networks as tools for studying the ecology, evolution, and adaptive significance of sociality (6-8). Networks are based on interactions between individuals, and a variety of measures have been developed to quantify how connected individuals are with others in the group (9). Although studies of nonhuman species have explored the development of social networks (10) as well as the causes (11-13) and...

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“…It is interesting to note that previous attempts to associate kinship and behavioural interactions, using either a dyadic or a network approach, have almost exclusively focused on single groups of individuals (e.g. Toth et al, 2004;King et al, 2011;Maher, 2009;Hooglund, 1986, but see Wey and Blumstein, 2010 for analyses of multiple groups). We suggest that such patterns may vary between groups depending on ecological, stochastic or social factors and that single groups may not be representative of the species as a whole.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When specific forms of interactions are considered rather than simple associations, the relationship between social structure and kin structure becomes more ambiguous. Affiliative interactions tend to be kin structured in woodchucks Marmota monax (Maher 2009) and yellow-bellied marmots Marmota flaviventris (Wey and Blumstein, 2010), but co-feeding by baboons Papio ursinus shows no such kin structure (King et al, 2011). Kin may act antagonistically towards each other when competing for resources (Hooglund 1986 when group size grows (Vick and Pereira, 1989), but patterns of antagonistic interactions did not reflect relatedness in woodchucks (Maher, 2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

Do networks of social interactions reflect patterns of kinship?

2012

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The underlying kin structure of groups of animals may be glimpsed from patterns of spatial position or temporal association between individuals, and is presumed to facilitate inclusive fitness benefits. Such structure may be evident at a finer, behavioural, scale with individuals preferentially interacting with kin. We tested whether kin structure within groups of meerkats Suricata suricatta matched three forms of social interaction networks: grooming, dominance or foraging competitions. Networks of dominance interactions were positively related to networks of kinship, with close relatives engaging in dominance interactions with each other. This relationship persisted even after excluding the breeding dominant pair and when we restricted the kinship network to only include links between first order kin, which are most likely to be able to discern kin through simple rules of thumb. Conversely, we found no relationship between kinship networks and either grooming networks or networks of foraging competitions. This is surprising because a positive association between kin in a grooming network, or a negative association between kin in a network of foraging competitions offers opportunities for inclusive fitness benefits. Indeed, the positive association between kin in a network of dominance interactions that we did detect does not offer clear inclusive fitness benefits to group members. We conclude that kin structure in behavioural interactions in meerkats may be driven by factors other than indirect fitness benefits, and that networks of cooperative behaviours such as grooming may be driven by direct benefits accruing to indi- Keywords Social network, Kinship, Social structure, Grooming, Dominance, Meerkats Kin structure in populations or groups has been demonstrated across a range of taxa (reviewed by Hatchwell, 2010) and is suggested to act to facilitate or enhance inclusive fitness benefits (Hamilton, 1964). This may explain the emergence of cooperative behaviours between kin, such as collective male display (Kokko and Lindstrom, 1996;Krakauer, 2005), grooming (Kappeler, 2008), or food sharing (Nolin, 2010). Typically, evidence for kin structure has been based on spatial associations between kin within a population as a whole, for example with related males displaying in close proximity to one another (e.g. Petrie et al., 1999;Shorey et al., 2000, but see Madden et al., 2004Gibson et al., 2005) or females rearing young in close proximity to relatives (e.g. Lee et al., 2009;Fowler, 2005;MacColl et al., 2000). Fine-scale kin structure persists within smaller, coherent groups, when networks of association are considered. Groups of male elephants Loxodonta africana (Chiyo et al., 2011) and female dolphins Tursiops aduncus (Wiszniewski et al., 2010) show kin structure in their patterns of association, with relatives preferentially associating with kin (but see Hansen et al., 2009 working on river otters Lontra canadensis). However, associations can occur for a variety of reasons encompassing both affiliative ...

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Social cohesion in yellow-bellied marmots is established through age and kin structuring

Cited by 126 publications

References 62 publications

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

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

Heritable victimization and the benefits of agonistic relationships

Do networks of social interactions reflect patterns of kinship?

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