ArticleBiology letters2018
Primate social group sizes exhibit a regular scaling pattern with natural attractors.
Article in Biology letters, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Socioecological complexity in primate groups and its cognitive correlates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Pooled it
- Group size modulates kinship dynamics and selection on social traits.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Evolution of primate vocal repertoires: vocal systems as embodied capital for mediating within-group conflict.Primates; journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Article
- Social and spatial drivers of the multitiered structure of zebra finch social networks.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Self-control has a social role in primates, but not in other mammals or birds.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Ecological Interactions Drive a Power-Law Relationship Between Group Size and Population Density in Social Foragers.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- Why friendship and loneliness affect our health.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- The origins and function of musical performance.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Laughter and its role in the evolution of human social bonding.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Number of adult females in a group affects infant motor development of a cooperative breeding primate (Callithrix jacchus).Primates; journal of primatology · 2022Article
- Chimpanzees organize their social relationships like humans.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The Long-Term Efficacy of "Social Buffering" in Artificial Social Agents: Contextual Affective Perception Matters.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2022Article
- The scaling of social interactions across animal species.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Structure and function in human and primate social networks: implications for diffusion, network stability and health.Proceedings. Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2020Review
- Article
- The fractal structure of communities of practice: Implications for business organization.PloS one · 2020Article
- Primate hippocampus size and organization are predicted by sociality but not diet.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- A theory of discrete hierarchies as optimal cost-adjusted productivity organisations.PloS one · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Primate groups vary considerably in size across species. Nonetheless, the distribution of mean species group size has a regular scaling pattern with preferred sizes approximating 2.5, 5, 15, 30 and 50 individuals (although strepsirrhines lack the latter two), with a scaling ratio of approximately 2.5 similar to that observed in human social networks. These clusters appear to form distinct social grades that are associated with rapid evolutionary change, presumably in response to intense environmental selection pressures. These findings may have wider implications for other highly social mammal taxa.
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