Social inheritance can explain the structure of animal social networks

Ilany, Amiyaal; Akçay, Erol

doi:10.1038/ncomms12084

Cited by 115 publications

(123 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…These findings represent an important contribution to understanding the social consequences of losing individuals from wild animal societies, as previous knowledge has been largely based on computer simulations [29–31,35,53]. Although simulations could potentially be applied to a variety of systems, any such findings are currently difficult to interpret given the lack of understanding regarding biological systems' responses to perturbations [33–35].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wild birds respond to flockmate loss by increasing their social network associations to others

et al. 2017

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Understanding the consequences of losing individuals from wild populations is a current and pressing issue, yet how such loss influences the social behaviour of the remaining animals is largely unexplored. Through combining the automated tracking of winter flocks of over 500 wild great tits (Parus major) with removal experiments, we assessed how individuals' social network positions responded to the loss of their social associates. We found that the extent of flockmate loss that individuals experienced correlated positively with subsequent increases in the number of their social associations, the average strength of their bonds and their overall connectedness within the social network (defined as summed edge weights). Increased social connectivity was not driven by general disturbance or changes in foraging behaviour, but by modifications to fine-scale social network connections in response to losing their associates. Therefore, the reduction in social connectedness expected by individual loss may be mitigated by increases in social associations between remaining individuals. Given that these findings demonstrate rapid adjustment of social network associations in response to the loss of previous social ties, future research should examine the generality of the compensatory adjustment of social relations in ways that maintain the structure of social organization.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wild birds respond to flockmate loss by increasing their social network associations to others

et al. 2017

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“…1). This mechanism drives the dynamics of social networks [11][12][13], as well as social media, such as Facebook, where people are invited to connect to a friend of a friend (see, e.g., [14,15]). Copying is also related to triadic closure [16][17][18][19][20][21], which naturally generates highly clustered networks.…”

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confidence: 99%

Structural Transitions in Densifying Networks

et al. 2016

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We introduce an evolving network model in which a new node attaches to a randomly selected target node and also to each of its neighbors with probability p. The resulting network is sparse for p < 1 2 and dense (average degree increasing with number of nodes N ) for p ≥ 1 2 . In the dense regime, individual networks realizations built by this copying mechanism are disparate and not selfaveraging. Further, there is an infinite sequence of structural anomalies at p = , etc., where the dependences on N of the number of triangles (3-cliques), 4-cliques, undergo phase transitions. When linking to second neighbors of the target can occur, the probability that the resulting graph is complete-where all nodes are connected-is non-zero as N → ∞.

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“…For example, heritability of fitness in cheetahs (Kelly 2001) may also be related to social inheritance (Nomura 2002). Although inheritance of social status and the relation between socials status and RS have not been studied in wild ass, heritability of social status does occur in equids (Houpt & Wolski 1980;Feh 1999) and other social mammals (e.g., Holekamp & Smale 1991;Pereira 1995;Ilany & Akçay 2016). Social learning is the focus of many studies (Galef & Laland 2005) and has been observed in wild asses (Rubenstein et al 2015), but there is little information regarding parent-offspring information transfer in this species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revealing life‐history traits by contrasting genetic estimations with predictions of effective population size

Greenbaum

Renan

Templeton

et al. 2018

Conservation Biology

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Effective population size, a central concept in conservation biology, is now routinely estimated from genetic surveys and can also be theoretically predicted from demographic, life-history, and mating-system data. By evaluating the consistency of theoretical predictions with empirically estimated effective size, insights can be gained regarding life-history characteristics and the relative impact of different life-history traits on genetic drift. These insights can be used to design and inform management strategies aimed at increasing effective population size. We demonstrated this approach by addressing the conservation of a reintroduced population of Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus). We estimated the variance effective size (N ) from genetic data (N ev =24.3) and formulated predictions for the impacts on N of demography, polygyny, female variance in lifetime reproductive success (RS), and heritability of female RS. By contrasting the genetic estimation with theoretical predictions, we found that polygyny was the strongest factor affecting genetic drift because only when accounting for polygyny were predictions consistent with the genetically measured N . The comparison of effective-size estimation and predictions indicated that 10.6% of the males mated per generation when heritability of female RS was unaccounted for (polygyny responsible for 81% decrease in N ) and 19.5% mated when female RS was accounted for (polygyny responsible for 67% decrease in N ). Heritability of female RS also affected N ; hf2=0.91 (heritability responsible for 41% decrease in N ). The low effective size is of concern, and we suggest that management actions focus on factors identified as strongly affecting Nev, namely, increasing the availability of artificial water sources to increase number of dominant males contributing to the gene pool. This approach, evaluating life-history hypotheses in light of their impact on effective population size, and contrasting predictions with genetic measurements, is a general, applicable strategy that can be used to inform conservation practice.

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Social inheritance can explain the structure of animal social networks

Cited by 115 publications

References 63 publications

Wild birds respond to flockmate loss by increasing their social network associations to others

Wild birds respond to flockmate loss by increasing their social network associations to others

Structural Transitions in Densifying Networks

Revealing life‐history traits by contrasting genetic estimations with predictions of effective population size

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