Knockouts of high-ranking males have limited impact on baboon social networks
Knockouts of high-ranking males have limited impact on baboon social networks
复制标题
DOI：
10.1093/czoolo/61.1.107
复制
发表时间：
2015-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
Alberts, Susan C.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Franz, Mathias;Altmann, Jeanne;Alberts, Susan C.
社会网络结构可以对复杂的社会进程产生重大影响，如集体行为或信息传播和疾病传播。然而，目前人们对社交网络如何随时间变化知之甚少。先前对灵长类动物的研究表明，高级个体的“淘汰”（由于死亡或分散）可能是动物社交网络结构变化的重要驱动因素。在这里，我们测试这一假设使用长期的数据对狒狒的自然种群，研究29自然敲除阿尔法或贝塔男性成年女性社交网络的影响。我们研究了基因敲除是否以及如何影响（1）成年女性中梳理和关联率的变化，以及（2）这些网络中平均度和全局聚类系数的变化。我们发现的唯一显著影响是在敲除后的第一个月内梳理网络的平均程度下降，但这种下降相当小，并且在敲除后的第二个月梳理网络反弹到基线水平。总之，我们的研究结果表明，去除高级别的男性只有有限的或没有持久的影响社交网络的成年雌性狒狒。这一发现质疑了一个假设，即在社会性动物中，高级别个体的移除会对社会网络结构产生不稳定影响。
Social network structures can crucially impact complex social processes such as collective behaviour or the transmission of information and diseases. However, currently it is poorly understood how social networks change over time. Previous studies on primates suggest that 'knockouts' (due to death or dispersal) of high-ranking individuals might be important drivers for structural changes in animal social networks. Here we test this hypothesis using long-term data on a natural population of baboons, examining the effects of 29 natural knockouts of alpha or beta males on adult female social networks. We investigated whether and how knockouts affected (1) changes in grooming and association rates among adult females, and (2) changes in mean degree and global clustering coefficient in these networks. The only significant effect that we found was a decrease in mean degree in grooming networks in the first month after knockouts, but this decrease was rather small, and grooming networks rebounded to baseline levels by the second month after knockouts. Taken together our results indicate that the removal of high-ranking males has only limited or no lasting effects on social networks of adult female baboons. This finding calls into question the hypothesis that the removal of high-ranking individuals has a destabilizing effect on social network structures in social animals