ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2024
Social ageing can protect against infectious disease in a group-living primate.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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.
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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
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Ageing effects of social environments in 'non-social' insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Article
- Age-dependent shaping of the social environment in a long-lived seabird: a quantitative genetic approach.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The ecology of ageing in wild societies: linking age structure and social behaviour.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Early life adversity has sex-dependent effects on survival across the lifespan in rhesus macaques.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
- Divergent age-related changes in parasite infection occur independently of behaviour and demography in a wild ungulate.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- 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
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Abstract
The benefits of social living are well established, but sociality also comes with costs, including infectious disease risk. This cost-benefit ratio of sociality is expected to change across individuals' lifespans, which may drive changes in social behaviour with age. To explore this idea, we combine data from a group-living primate for which social ageing has been described with epidemiological models to show that having lower social connectedness when older can protect against the costs of a hypothetical, directly transmitted endemic pathogen. Assuming no age differences in epidemiological characteristics (susceptibility to, severity and duration of infection), older individuals suffered lower infection costs, which was explained largely because they were less connected in their social networks than younger individuals. This benefit of 'social ageing' depended on epidemiological characteristics and was greatest when infection severity increased with age. When infection duration increased with age, social ageing was beneficial only when pathogen transmissibility was low. Older individuals benefited most from having a lower frequency of interactions (strength) and network embeddedness (closeness) and benefited less from having fewer social partners (degree). Our study provides a first examination of the epidemiology of social ageing, demonstrating the potential for pathogens to influence the evolutionary dynamics of social ageing in natural populations.This article is part of the discussion meeting issue 'Understanding age and society using natural populations'.
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