DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Probing the Social Interactome: How Social Network Position Affects Physiology and Behavior

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Social animals, including humans, interact frequently and can affect each other in numerous ways. For example, long-term studies have found that measures of human health such as obesity, smoking cessation, and depression can in part be predicted by social relationships. In order to understand how these peer effects spread through a social network, the researchers will use a highly social fish that is strongly affected by social environment and the behavior of social partners as model system. This research project will closely monitor social groups and manipulate one individual within each group to determine how changes in the behavior of one individual affect the behavior, hormones, and neuromolecular responses of the other group members. The results will provide a better understanding of the mechanistic basis of these social network effects that can be harnessed to improve the health of social groups. This work will also provide outstanding opportunities for middle school students through class room visits, high school seniors who are interns in the laboratory, and undergraduate students who desire to become involved in the molecular and behavioral research. These students will be primarily recruited from programs that encourage the participation of underrepresented groups in the sciences. Finally, results of this project will be communicated through media interviews and public presentations and in an on-going children's summer science program. The African cichlid fish, Astatotilapia burtoni, offers a uniquely tractable system for investigating the effects that individuals have on each other's physiology, neurogenomic state and behavior within naturalistic social communities. The researchers have developed a descriptive statistical framework for studying community dynamics in this system. The aggression of one male in each group will be experimentally increased using an estrogen receptor agonist which has been previously shown to cause an approximately two-fold increase in aggression. These manipulated communities will be observed and compared to control treatments to determine how the change in behavior of one male cascades throughout the social network to affect the behavior of the other group members. Blood and brain samples will be collected to determine how these social network perturbations affect sex steroid hormone levels and sensitivity to those hormones in key areas of the brain of members of the social group. These experiments will give causal insights into the physiological, neuroendocrine and behavioral mechanisms underlying social network effects.