ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2024
More social species live longer, have longer generation times and longer reproductive windows.
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 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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
11 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
- Animal Social Network Structures Across the Fast-Slow Continuum.Ecology letters · 2026Article
- Demographic buffering in natural populations: A multi-level perspective.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Drivers of Variation in the Optimal Spatial Structure of Collective Information Gatherers.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- Social Organisation Predicts Lifespan in Mammals.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Non-breeding social behaviour as an investment in reducing future territoriality costs.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Inhibition of the lateral hypothalamus emboldens adult female spiny mice to huddle with an established group of novel peers.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- 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
- More social species live longer, have longer generation times and longer reproductive windows.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Understanding age and society using natural populations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Life expectancy in ants explains variation in helpfulness regardless of phylogenetic relatedness.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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
The role of sociality in the demography of animals has become an intense focus of research in recent decades. However, efforts to understand the sociality-demography nexus have hitherto focused on single species or isolated taxonomic groups. Consequently, we lack generality regarding how sociality associates with demographic traits within the Animal Kingdom. Here, I propose a continuum of sociality, from solitary to tightly social, and test whether this continuum correlates with the key demographic properties of 152 species, from jellyfish to humans. After correction for body mass and phylogenetic relationships, I show that the sociality continuum is associated with key life history traits: more social species live longer, postpone maturity, have longer generation time and greater probability of achieving reproduction than solitary, gregarious, communal or colonial species. Contrary to the social buffering hypothesis, sociality does not result in more buffered populations. While more social species have a lower ability to benefit from disturbances, they display greater resistance than more solitary species. Finally, I also show that sociality does not shape reproductive or actuarial senescence rates. This cross-taxonomic examination of sociality across the demography of 13 taxonomic classes highlights key ways in which individual interactions shape most aspects of animal demography.This article is part of the discussion meeting issue 'Understanding age and society using natural populations'.
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