ArticleNature communications2016
Social inheritance can explain the structure of animal social networks.
Article in Nature communications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Social network dynamics under experimental manipulations of predation risk and food abundance in wild rock hyraxes.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Pooled it
- Animal Social Network Structures Across the Fast-Slow Continuum.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Social compatibility in opposite-sex prairie vole pairs is modulated by early-life sleep experience.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- The coevolution of cognition and sociality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Cavity nesting birds show behavioural plasticity to simulated territorial intrusions in response to natural resource pulses.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Breeding-Related Changes in Social Interactions Among Female Vulturine Guineafowl.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Understanding age and society using natural populations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Social ageing and higher-order interactions: social selectiveness can enhance older individuals' capacity to transmit knowledge.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- What you have, not who you know: food-enhanced social capital and changes in social behavioural relationships in a non-human primate.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Variation in local population size predicts social network structure in wild songbirds.The Journal of animal ecology · 2023Article
- Social and early life determinants of survival from cradle to grave: A case study in wild baboons.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Mechanisms of equality and inequality in mammalian societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Demographic turnover can be a leading driver of hierarchy dynamics, and social inheritance modifies its effects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Fission-fusion dynamics in the social networks of a North American pitviper.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- The impact of threshold decision mechanisms of collective behavior on disease spread.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Social network inheritance and differentiation in wild baboons.Royal Society open science · 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
- Pathways to cultural adaptation: the coevolution of cumulative culture and social networks.Evolutionary human sciences · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The social network structure of animal populations has major implications for survival, reproductive success, sexual selection and pathogen transmission of individuals. But as of yet, no general theory of social network structure exists that can explain the diversity of social networks observed in nature, and serve as a null model for detecting species and population-specific factors. Here we propose a simple and generally applicable model of social network structure. We consider the emergence of network structure as a result of social inheritance, in which newborns are likely to bond with maternal contacts, and via forming bonds randomly. We compare model output with data from several species, showing that it can generate networks with properties such as those observed in real social systems. Our model demonstrates that important observed properties of social networks, including heritability of network position or assortative associations, can be understood as consequences of social inheritance.
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