Social contexts and behavioural decisions in animals

在种群中，个体动物（包括人类）在行为和繁殖成功率方面存在不同程度的差异。尽管最近取得了一些进展，但仍有许多工作要做，以阐明产生和维持这种变异的机制，以及后者对选择和进化过程的影响。为了应对这一挑战，目前提出的研究旨在短期内确定社会背景（社会因素）和社会获得的信息对生活在社会群体中的个人的行为决策的影响程度。更具体地说，我建议调查某些重要的社会因素对以下方面的潜在影响：(I)女性模仿观察到的其他女性的配偶选择的倾向（即配偶选择复制行为），从而影响性选择的强度；（ii）男性交配策略；（iii）个体之间特定社会联系的形成和维持，以及这种联系对自然种群中社会网络的影响。

Within populations, individual animals (including humans) differ to varying degrees in their behaviour and reproductive success. Despite recent advances, much work remains to elucidate the mechanisms generating and maintaining such variation, and the consequences of the latter for the processes of selection and evolution. Towards meeting this challenge, the current proposed research aims in the short term to ascertain the extent to which social contexts (social factors) and socially-acquired information influence the behavioural decisions of individuals that live in social groups. More specifically, I propose to investigate the potential influences of certain important social factors on: (i) the tendency of females to copy the observed mate choice of other females (i.e. mate-choice copying behaviour) and thereby on the intensity of sexual selection, (ii) male mating tactics, and (iii) the formation and maintenance of particular social associations among individuals and the implications of such associations for social networks in natural populations.