ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
Sociality and health: impacts of sociality on disease susceptibility and transmission in animal and human societies.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 99 papers.
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.
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.
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Who cites it
99 citing papers in PubMed, 248 citations in OpenAlex.
- Social status impacts T-cell responses through synapse strength in the prefrontal cortex.Cell research · 2026Article
- Social Organisation Predicts Lifespan in Mammals.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Evolutionary Complexity of Primate Immune System Uncovered by the Extensive Phylogenomic Sampling.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Impact of group size and habitat disturbance on parasitic infection in free-ranging proboscis monkeys.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2026Article
- Identifying Social-Epidemiological Roles Associated with Viral Exposure Using Regular Equivalence Blockmodeling.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Sociability Linked to Reproductive Status Affects Intestinal Parasite Infections in the Red-Billed Chough.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Reevaluating the relationship between female sociality and infant survival in wild baboons.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Dissecting transmission to understand parasite evolution.PLoS pathogens · 2025Review
- Effects of gastrointestinal parasites on fecal glucocorticoids and behaviour in vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus).PloS one · 2025Article
- Close and more distant relatives are associated with child mortality risk in historical Finland.Evolutionary human sciences · 2025Article
- Associations between social behaviour and proinflammatory immune activation are modulated by age in a free-ranging primate population.Animal behaviour · 2025Article
- Social ageing can protect against infectious disease in a group-living primate.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- More social species live longer, have longer generation times and longer reproductive windows.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Social network analysis to predict social behavior in dairy cattle.JDS communications · 2024Article
- Prairie voles seek social contact with peer companions during immune challenge.Hormones and behavior · 2024Article
- Social ageing can protect against infectious disease in a group-living primate.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Bridging the Gap: Integrating Knowledge from the Study of Social Network Analysis and Infectious Disease Dynamics in Human and Nonhuman Primates.Annual review of anthropology · 2024Article
- SIR+ models: accounting for interaction-dependent disease susceptibility in the planning of public health interventions.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Effect of Human Activity and Presence on the Behavior of Long-Tailed Macaques (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Article
- Social network shrinking is explained by active and passive effects but not increasing selectivity with age in wild macaques.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
39 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This paper introduces a theme issue presenting the latest developments in research on the impacts of sociality on health and fitness. The articles that follow cover research on societies ranging from insects to humans. Variation in measures of fitness (i.e. survival and reproduction) has been linked to various aspects of sociality in humans and animals alike, and variability in individual health and condition has been recognized as a key mediator of these relationships. Viewed from a broad evolutionary perspective, the evolutionary transitions from a solitary lifestyle to group living have resulted in several new health-related costs and benefits of sociality. Social transmission of parasites within groups represents a major cost of group living, but some behavioural mechanisms, such as grooming, have evolved repeatedly to reduce this cost. Group living also has created novel costs in terms of altered susceptibility to infectious and non-infectious disease as a result of the unavoidable physiological consequences of social competition and integration, which are partly alleviated by social buffering in some vertebrates. Here, we define the relevant aspects of sociality, summarize their health-related costs and benefits, and discuss possible fitness measures in different study systems. Given the pervasive effects of social factors on health and fitness, we propose a synthesis of existing conceptual approaches in disease ecology, ecological immunology and behavioural neurosciences by adding sociality as a key factor, with the goal to generate a broader framework for organismal integration of health-related research.
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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.