ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2012
Is sociality required for the evolution of communicative complexity? Evidence weighed against alternative hypotheses in diverse taxonomic groups.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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20 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Vocal Repertoire of Gray-Cheeked Mangabeys (Lophocebus albigena) in the Bugoma Forest Reserve, Uganda.American journal of primatology · 2026Article
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- The Constructive Neutral Evolution of Behaviour.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Sociality does not predict signal complexity in response to playback in apteronotid weakly electric fishes.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2025Article
- Links Between Variation in Movement-Based Visual Signals and Social Communication Complexity in an Asian Agamid LizardAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Wild and captive immature orangutans differ in their non-vocal communication with others, but not with their mothers.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2024Article
- Neuroendocrine mechanisms contributing to the coevolution of sociality and communication.Frontiers in neuroendocrinology · 2023Review
- Coevolution of social and communicative complexity in lemurs.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Does Social Complexity Drive Vocal Complexity? Insights from the Two African Elephant Species.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Review
- Investment in chemical signalling glands facilitates the evolution of sociality in lizards.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Phenotypic integration and the evolution of signal repertoires: A case study of treefrog acoustic communication.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Cooperative breeding influences the number and type of vocalizations in avian lineages.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Vocal plasticity in a reptile.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Sociality and health: impacts of sociality on disease susceptibility and transmission in animal and human societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Article
- Social complexity as a proximate and ultimate factor in communicative complexity.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Review
- The social network and communicative complexity: preface to theme issue.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Article
- Linking social complexity and vocal complexity: a parid perspective.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Review
- Evolving communicative complexity: insights from rodents and beyond.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Review
- Volatile fatty acid and aldehyde abundances evolve with behavior and habitat temperature inBehavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Complex social communication is expected to evolve whenever animals engage in many and varied social interactions; that is, sociality should promote communicative complexity. Yet, informal comparisons among phylogenetically independent taxonomic groups seem to cast doubt on the putative role of social factors in the evolution of complex communication. Here, we provide a formal test of the sociality hypothesis alongside alternative explanations for the evolution of communicative complexity. We compiled data documenting variations in signal complexity among closely related species for several case study groups--ants, frogs, lizards and birds--and used new phylogenetic methods to investigate the factors underlying communication evolution. Social factors were only implicated in the evolution of complex visual signals in lizards. Ecology, and to some degree allometry, were most likely explanations for complexity in the vocal signals of frogs (ecology) and birds (ecology and allometry). There was some evidence for adaptive evolution in the pheromone complexity of ants, although no compelling selection pressure was identified. For most taxa, phylogenetic null models were consistently ranked above adaptive models and, for some taxa, signal complexity seems to have accumulated in species via incremental or random changes over long periods of evolutionary time. Becoming social presumably leads to the origin of social communication in animals, but its subsequent influence on the trajectory of signal evolution has been neither clear-cut nor general among taxonomic groups.
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