Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25673683›Full record

ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015

Interspecific social networks promote information transmission in wild songbirds.

Damien R Farine, Lucy M Aplin, Ben C Sheldon, William Hoppitt

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 76 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
76citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

76 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Demonstrating the reproductive consequences of cognition: learning from experience.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Article
  4. Cultural processes and demography: implications for conservation and beyond.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025
    Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. The contribution of movement to social network structure and spreading dynamics under simple and complex transmission.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024
    Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
  10. Inferring the decision rules that drive co-foraging affiliations in wild mixed-species parrot groups.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
    Article
  11. A classification scheme for mixed-species bird flocks.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
    Review
  12. Mixed-species flock composition matters: interspecific influences on finding novel food in North American parids.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
    Article
  13. Article
  14. Indirect genetic effects for social network structure inPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
    Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Article
  19. Social information use shapes the coevolution of sociality and virulence.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2022
    Article
  20. Captive Asian short-clawed otters (Royal Society open science · 2022
    Article

16 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Damien R FarineDepartment of Zoology, Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK damien.farine@zoo.ox.ac.uk.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2208-7613
Lucy M AplinDepartment of Zoology, Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Acton, Australian Capital Territory 2000, Australia.
Ben C SheldonDepartment of Zoology, Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
William HoppittAnimal and Environment Research Group, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge CB1 1PT, UK.

Funding

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council BB/I007997/1Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council BB/L006081/1
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Understanding the functional links between social structure and population processes is a central aim of evolutionary ecology. Multiple types of interactions can be represented by networks drawn for the same population, such as kinship, dominance or affiliative networks, but the relative importance of alternative networks in modulating population processes may not be clear. We illustrate this problem, and a solution, by developing a framework for testing the importance of different types of association in facilitating the transmission of information. We apply this framework to experimental data from wild songbirds that form mixed-species flocks, recording the arrival (patch discovery) of individuals to novel foraging sites. We tested whether intraspecific and interspecific social networks predicted the spread of information about novel food sites, and found that both contributed to transmission. The likelihood of acquiring information per unit of connection to knowledgeable individuals increased 22-fold for conspecifics, and 12-fold for heterospecifics. We also found that species varied in how much information they produced, suggesting that some species play a keystone role in winter foraging flocks. More generally, these analyses demonstrate that this method provides a powerful approach, using social networks to quantify the relative transmission rates across different social relationships.

Indexed as

AnimalsBehavior, AnimalCompetitive BehaviorEcosystemFeeding BehaviorSocial BehaviorSongbirdsmixed-species flockingnetwork-based diffusion analysispublic informationsocial informationsocial networkstransmission networks

Identifiers

PMID25673683
PMCPMC4345451

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.