ArticleAnimal behaviour2015
Friends of friends: are indirect connections in social networks important to animal behaviour?
Article in Animal behaviour, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 60 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
60 citing papers in PubMed.
- Network analysis highlights socio-demographic patterns of stone tool-using primates.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Strategic third-party interventions in feral ungulate affiliation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Why friendship and loneliness affect our health.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- Social control is associated with increased reproductive skew in a wild mammal.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Similarity Among Friends Serves as a Social Prior: The Assumption That "Birds of a Feather Flock Together" Shapes Social Decisions and Relationship Beliefs.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2024Article
- Article
- Effect of behavioural sampling methods on local and global social network metrics: a case-study of three macaque species.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Age-related social selectivity: An adaptive lens on a later life social phenotype.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Third-party intervention and post-conflict behaviour in agonistic encounters of pigs (Sus scrofa).Frontiers in zoology · 2023Article
- Indirect genetic effects for social network structure inPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Ageing in a collective: the impact of ageing individuals on social network structure.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Dynamics of cooperative networks associated with gender among South Indian Tamils.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Preferential associations in an unstable social network: applying social network analysis to a dynamic sow herd.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2023Article
- Article
- Individual differences in co-representation in three monkey species (Callithrix jacchus, Sapajus apella and Macaca tonkeana) in the joint Simon task: the role of social factors and inhibitory control.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Social Support and Network Formation in a Small-Scale Horticulturalist Population.Scientific data · 2022Article
- Ageing red deer alter their spatial behaviour and become less social.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
- Social connections predict brain structure in a multidimensional free-ranging primate society.Science advances · 2022Article
- Social hierarchies and social networks in humans.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Simulated poaching affects global connectivity and efficiency in social networks of African savanna elephants-An exemplar of how human disturbance impacts group-living species.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
Friend of a friend relationships, or the indirect connections between people, influence our health, well-being, financial success and reproductive output. As with humans, social behaviours in other animals often occur within a broad interconnected network of social ties. Yet studies of animal social behaviour tend to focus on associations between pairs of individuals. With the increase in popularity of social network analysis, researchers have started to look beyond the dyad to examine the role of indirect connections in animal societies. Here, I provide an overview of the new knowledge that has been uncovered by these studies. I focus on research that has addressed both the causes of social behaviours, i.e. the cognitive and genetic basis of indirect connections, as well as their consequences, i.e. the impact of indirect connections on social cohesion, information transfer, cultural practices and fitness. From these studies, it is apparent that indirect connections play an important role in animal behaviour, although future research is needed to clarify their contribution.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.