Comparative approaches in social network ecology

Social systems vary enormously across the animal kingdom, with important implications for ecological and evolutionary processes such as infectious disease dynamics, anti‐predator defence, and the evolution of cooperation. Comparing social network structures between species offers a promising route t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology letters 2024-01, Vol.27 (1), p.e14345-n/a
Main Authors: Albery, Gregory F., Bansal, Shweta, Silk, Matthew J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Comparative analysis
Datasets
disease dynamics
Ecology
Empirical analysis
Evolution
group stability
Infectious diseases
meta‐analysis
network analysis
pathogen spread
Social conditions
social dominance
Social Networking
Social networks
Social organization
social system
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Summary:Social systems vary enormously across the animal kingdom, with important implications for ecological and evolutionary processes such as infectious disease dynamics, anti‐predator defence, and the evolution of cooperation. Comparing social network structures between species offers a promising route to help disentangle the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape this diversity. Comparative analyses of networks like these are challenging and have been used relatively little in ecology, but are becoming increasingly feasible as the number of empirical datasets expands. Here, we provide an overview of multispecies comparative social network studies in ecology and evolution. We identify a range of advancements that these studies have made and key challenges that they face, and we use these to guide methodological and empirical suggestions for future research. Overall, we hope to motivate wider publication and analysis of open social network datasets in animal ecology. Comparing social network structures between species offers a promising route to help disentangle the ecological and evolutionary processes that shape them. We provide an overview of existing multispecies comparative social network studies in ecology and evolution. We then identify key challenges facing comparative social network analyses, and we use these to guide methodological and empirical suggestions for future research.
ISSN:1461-023X
1461-0248
DOI:10.1111/ele.14345