ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2019
Hierarchical social modularity in gorillas.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 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
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Freedom of choice supports social complexity in chimpanzees.iScience · 2026Article
- Outbreaks of human respiratory syncytial virus in wild gorillas highlight the importance of prevention measures and integrated surveillance for risk mitigation.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2026Article
- Close encounters of the friendly kind: pacific between-group interactions in primates.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Social and spatial drivers of the multitiered structure of zebra finch social networks.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The extent of western lowland gorilla social relationships within and between groups.PloS one · 2025Article
- Homophily in social and demographic traits predict association patterns in female western and mountain gorillas.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Group structure and individual relationships of sanctuary-living Grauer's gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri).PloS one · 2024Article
- Fine-scale collective movements reveal present, past and future dynamics of a multilevel society in Przewalski's horses.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Association patterns of female gorillas.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Flexibility in the social structure of male chimpanzees (Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Characterization ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Temporal patterns in the social network of core units in Rwenzori Angolan colobus monkeys: Effects of food availability and interunit dispersal.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Article
- Comparing measures of social complexity: larger mountain gorilla groups do not have a greater diversity of relationships.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Innovation, life history and social networks in human evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- What is resilience: an affiliative neuroscience approach.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Modern human societies show hierarchical social modularity (HSM) in which lower-order social units like nuclear families are nested inside increasingly larger units. It has been argued that this HSM evolved independently and after the chimpanzee-human split due to greater recognition of, and bonding between, dispersed kin. We used network modularity analysis and hierarchical clustering to quantify community structure within two western lowland gorilla populations. In both communities, we detected two hierarchically nested tiers of social structure which have not been previously quantified. Both tiers map closely to human social tiers. Genetic data from one population suggested that, as in humans, social unit membership was kin structured. The sizes of gorilla social units also showed the kind of consistent scaling ratio between social tiers observed in humans, baboons, toothed whales, and elephants. These results indicate that the hierarchical social organization observed in humans may have evolved far earlier than previously asserted and may not be a product of the social brain evolution unique to the hominin lineage.
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.