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Dukas R, Bailey NW. Evolutionary biology of social expertise. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2024. [PMID: 38946116 DOI: 10.1111/brv.13115] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/13/2023] [Revised: 06/17/2024] [Accepted: 06/19/2024] [Indexed: 07/02/2024]
Abstract
There is increasing evidence that competent handling of social interactions among conspecifics has positive effects on individual fitness. While individual variation in social competence has been appreciated, the role of long-term experience in the acquisition of superior social skills has received less attention. With the goal of promoting further research, we integrate knowledge across disciplines to assess social expertise, defined as the characteristics, skills and knowledge allowing individuals with extensive social experience to perform significantly better than novices on a given social task. We focus on three categories of social behaviour. First, animals can gain from adjusting social behaviour towards individually recognised conspecifics that they interact with on a regular basis. For example, there is evidence that some territorial animals individually recognise their neighbours and modify their social interactions based on experience with each neighbour. Similarly, individuals in group-living species learn to associate with specific group members based on their expected benefits from such social connections. Individuals have also been found to devote considerable time and effort to learning about the spatial location and timing of sexual receptivity of opposite-sex neighbours to optimise reproduction. Second, signallers can enhance their signals, and receivers can refine their response to signals with experience. In many birds and insects, individuals can produce more consistent signals with experience, and females across a wide taxonomic range can adaptively adjust mating preferences after perceiving distinct male signals. Third, in many species, individuals that succeed in reproducing encounter the novel, complex task of caring for vulnerable offspring. Evidence from a few species of mammals indicates that mothers improve in providing for and protecting their young over successive broods. Finally, for social expertise to evolve, heritable variation in social expertise has to be positively associated with fitness. Heritable variation has been shown in traits contributing to social expertise including social attention, empathy, individual recognition and maternal care. There are currently limited data associating social expertise with fitness, most likely owing to sparse research effort. Exceptions include maternal care, signal refinement, and familiarity with neighbours and group members. Overall, there is evidence that individuals in many species keep refining their social skills with experience throughout life. Hence we propose promising lines of research that can quantify more thoroughly the development of social expertise and its effects on fitness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Reuven Dukas
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4K1, Canada
| | - Nathan W Bailey
- Centre for Biological Diversity, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9TH, UK
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Sadoughi B, Mundry R, Schülke O, Ostner J. Social network shrinking is explained by active and passive effects but not increasing selectivity with age in wild macaques. Proc Biol Sci 2024; 291:20232736. [PMID: 38471563 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.2736] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2023] [Accepted: 02/13/2024] [Indexed: 03/14/2024] Open
Abstract
Evidence of social disengagement, network narrowing and social selectivity with advancing age in several non-human animals challenges our understanding of the causes of social ageing. Natural animal populations are needed to test whether social ageing and selectivity occur under natural predation and extrinsic mortality pressures, and longitudinal studies are particularly valuable to disentangle the contribution of within-individual ageing from the demographic processes that shape social ageing at the population level. Data on wild Assamese macaques (Macaca assamensis) were collected between 2013 and 2020 at the Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand. We investigated the social behaviour of 61 adult females observed for 13 270 h to test several mechanistic hypotheses of social ageing and evaluated the consistency between patterns from mixed-longitudinal and within-individual analyses. With advancing age, females reduced the size of their social network, which could not be explained by an overall increase in the time spent alone, but by an age-related decline in mostly active, but also passive, behaviour, best demonstrated by within-individual analyses. A selective tendency to approach preferred partners was maintained into old age but did not increase. Our results contribute to our understanding of the driver of social ageing in natural animal populations and suggest that social disengagement and selectivity follow independent trajectories during ageing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Baptiste Sadoughi
- Department of Behavioral Ecology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach Institute for Zoology and Anthropology, Kellnerweg 6, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Research Group Primate Social Evolution, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Center for Evolution and Medicine, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA
| | - Roger Mundry
- Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Department for Primate Cognition, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Oliver Schülke
- Department of Behavioral Ecology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach Institute for Zoology and Anthropology, Kellnerweg 6, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Research Group Primate Social Evolution, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
| | - Julia Ostner
- Department of Behavioral Ecology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Johann-Friedrich-Blumenbach Institute for Zoology and Anthropology, Kellnerweg 6, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Research Group Primate Social Evolution, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
- Leibniz ScienceCampus Primate Cognition, German Primate Center, Leibniz Institute for Primate Research, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
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Godoy I, Korsten P, Perry SE. Mother of all bonds: Influences on spatial association across the lifespan in capuchins. Dev Sci 2024:e13486. [PMID: 38414216 DOI: 10.1111/desc.13486] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/25/2023] [Revised: 12/22/2023] [Accepted: 01/08/2024] [Indexed: 02/29/2024]
Abstract
In humans, being more socially integrated is associated with better physical and mental health and/or with lower mortality. This link between sociality and health may have ancient roots: sociality also predicts survival or reproduction in other mammals, such as rats, dolphins, and non-human primates. A key question, therefore, is which factors influence the degree of sociality over the life course. Longitudinal data can provide valuable insight into how environmental variability drives individual differences in sociality and associated outcomes. The first year of life-when long-lived mammals are the most reliant on others for nourishment and protection-is likely to play an important role in how individuals learn to integrate into groups. Using behavioral, demographic, and pedigree information on 376 wild capuchin monkeys (Cebus imitator) across 20 years, we address how changes in group composition influence spatial association. We further try to determine the extent to which early maternal social environments have downstream effects on sociality across the juvenile and (sub)adult stages. We find a positive effect of early maternal spatial association, where female infants whose mothers spent more time around others also later spent more time around others as juveniles and subadults. Our results also highlight the importance of kin availability and other aspects of group composition (e.g., group size) in dynamically influencing spatial association across developmental stages. We bring attention to the importance of-and difficulty in-determining the social versus genetic influences that parents have on offspring phenotypes. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Having more maternal kin (mother and siblings) is associated with spending more time near others across developmental stages in both male and female capuchins. Having more offspring as a subadult or adult female is additionally associated with spending more time near others. A mother's average sociality (time near others) is predictive of how social her daughters (but not sons) become as juveniles and subadults (a between-mother effect). Additional variation within sibling sets in this same maternal phenotype is not predictive of how social they become later relative to each other (no within-mother effect).
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Affiliation(s)
- Irene Godoy
- Department of Animal Behaviour, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
- Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project, Lomas Barbudal Biological Reserve, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
| | - Peter Korsten
- Department of Life Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK
| | - Susan E Perry
- Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project, Lomas Barbudal Biological Reserve, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
- Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA
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Martin JS, Jaeggi AV, Koski SE. The social evolution of individual differences: Future directions for a comparative science of personality in social behavior. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2023; 144:104980. [PMID: 36463970 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104980] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2022] [Revised: 11/21/2022] [Accepted: 11/29/2022] [Indexed: 12/05/2022]
Abstract
Personality is essential for understanding the evolution of cooperation and conflict in behavior. However, personality science remains disconnected from the field of social evolution, limiting our ability to explain how personality and plasticity shape phenotypic adaptation in social behavior. Researchers also lack an integrative framework for comparing personality in the contextualized and multifaceted behaviors central to social interactions among humans and other animals. Here we address these challenges by developing a social evolutionary approach to personality, synthesizing theory, methods, and organizing questions in the study of individuality and sociality in behavior. We critically review current measurement practices and introduce social reaction norm models for comparative research on the evolution of personality in social environments. These models demonstrate that social plasticity affects the heritable variance of personality, and that individual differences in social plasticity can further modify the rate and direction of adaptive social evolution. Future empirical studies of frequency- and density-dependent social selection on personality are crucial for further developing this framework and testing adaptive theory of social niche specialization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jordan S Martin
- Human Ecology Group, Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
| | - Adrian V Jaeggi
- Human Ecology Group, Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
| | - Sonja E Koski
- Organismal and Evolutionary Biology, University of Helsinki, Finland.
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Genetic, maternal, and environmental influences on sociality in a pedigreed primate population. Heredity (Edinb) 2022; 129:203-214. [PMID: 36056208 PMCID: PMC9519975 DOI: 10.1038/s41437-022-00558-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/07/2021] [Revised: 07/26/2022] [Accepted: 07/28/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Various aspects of sociality in mammals (e.g., dyadic connectedness) are linked with measures of biological fitness (e.g., longevity). How within- and between-individual variation in relevant social traits arises in uncontrolled wild populations is challenging to determine but is crucial for understanding constraints on the evolution of sociality. We use an advanced statistical method, known as the 'animal model', which incorporates pedigree information, to look at social, genetic, and environmental influences on sociality in a long-lived wild primate. We leverage a longitudinal database spanning 20 years of observation on individually recognized white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus imitator), with a multi-generational pedigree. We analyze two measures of spatial association, using repeat sampling of 376 individuals (mean: 53.5 months per subject, range: 6-185 months per subject). Conditioned on the effects of age, sex, group size, seasonality, and El Niño-Southern Oscillation phases, we show low to moderate long-term repeatability (across years) of the proportion of time spent social (posterior mode [95% Highest Posterior Density interval]: 0.207 [0.169, 0.265]) and of average number of partners (0.144 [0.113, 0.181]) (latent scale). Most of this long-term repeatability could be explained by modest heritability (h2social: 0.152 [0.094, 0.207]; h2partners: 0.113 [0.076, 0.149]) with small long-term maternal effects (m2social: 0.000 [0.000, 0.045]; m2partners: 0.000 [0.000, 0.041]). Our models capture the majority of variance in our behavioral traits, with much of the variance explained by temporally changing factors, such as group of residence, highlighting potential limits to the evolvability of our trait due to social and environmental constraints.
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Kajokaite K, Whalen A, Koster J, Perry S. OUP accepted manuscript. Behav Ecol 2022; 33:807-815. [PMID: 35812363 PMCID: PMC9262163 DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arac043] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/06/2021] [Revised: 03/22/2022] [Accepted: 05/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Across multiple species of social mammals, a growing number of studies have found that individual sociality is associated with survival. In long-lived species, like primates, lifespan is one of the main components of fitness. We used 18 years of data from the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project to quantify social integration in 11 capuchin (Cebus capucinus) groups and tested whether female survivorship was associated with females’ tendencies to interact with three types of partners: (1) all group members, (2) adult females, and (3) adult males. We found strong evidence that females who engaged more with other females in affiliative interactions and foraged in close proximity experienced increased survivorship. We found some weak evidence that females might also benefit from engaging in more support in agonistic contexts with other females. These benefits were evident in models that account for the females’ rank and group size. Female interactions with all group members also increased survival, but the estimates of the effects were more uncertain. In interactions with adult males, only females who provided more grooming to males survived longer. The results presented here suggest that social integration may result in survival-related benefits. Females might enjoy these benefits through exchanging grooming for other currencies, such as coalitionary support or tolerance.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Andrew Whalen
- The Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, The University ofEdinburgh, Easter Bush Campus, Midlothian EH25 9RG, UK
| | - Jeremy Koster
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany
- Department of Anthropology, University of Cincinnati, PO BOX 210380 481 Braunstein Hall, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0380, USA
| | - Susan Perry
- Department of Anthropology, University of California, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
- Behavior, Evolution and Culture Program, University of California, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
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