The scaling of social interactions across animal species

Abstract Social animals self-organise to create groups to increase protection against predators and productivity. One-to-one interactions are the building blocks of these emergent social structures and may correspond to friendship, grooming, communication, among other social relations. These structu...

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Autores principales:	Luis E. C. Rocha, Jan Ryckebusch, Koen Schoors, Matthew Smith
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/eddc18ed28e54f8481542168149d6739
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:eddc18ed28e54f8481542168149d67392021-12-02T16:04:13ZThe scaling of social interactions across animal species10.1038/s41598-021-92025-12045-2322https://doaj.org/article/eddc18ed28e54f8481542168149d67392021-06-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-92025-1https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Social animals self-organise to create groups to increase protection against predators and productivity. One-to-one interactions are the building blocks of these emergent social structures and may correspond to friendship, grooming, communication, among other social relations. These structures should be robust to failures and provide efficient communication to compensate the costs of forming and maintaining the social contacts but the specific purpose of each social interaction regulates the evolution of the respective social networks. We collate 611 animal social networks and show that the number of social contacts E scales with group size N as a super-linear power-law $$E=CN^\beta$$ E = C N β for various species of animals, including humans, other mammals and non-mammals. We identify that the power-law exponent $$\beta$$ β varies according to the social function of the interactions as $$\beta = 1+a/4$$ β = 1 + a / 4 , with $$a \approx {1,2,3,4}$$ a ≈ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 . By fitting a multi-layer model to our data, we observe that the cost to cross social groups also varies according to social function. Relatively low costs are observed for physical contact, grooming and group membership which lead to small groups with high and constant social clustering. Offline friendship has similar patterns while online friendship shows weak social structures. The intermediate case of spatial proximity (with $$\beta =1.5$$ β = 1.5 and clustering dependency on network size quantitatively similar to friendship) suggests that proximity interactions may be as relevant for the spread of infectious diseases as for social processes like friendship.Luis E. C. RochaJan RyckebuschKoen SchoorsMatthew SmithNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-10 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Luis E. C. Rocha Jan Ryckebusch Koen Schoors Matthew Smith The scaling of social interactions across animal species
description	Abstract Social animals self-organise to create groups to increase protection against predators and productivity. One-to-one interactions are the building blocks of these emergent social structures and may correspond to friendship, grooming, communication, among other social relations. These structures should be robust to failures and provide efficient communication to compensate the costs of forming and maintaining the social contacts but the specific purpose of each social interaction regulates the evolution of the respective social networks. We collate 611 animal social networks and show that the number of social contacts E scales with group size N as a super-linear power-law $$E=CN^\beta$$ E = C N β for various species of animals, including humans, other mammals and non-mammals. We identify that the power-law exponent $$\beta$$ β varies according to the social function of the interactions as $$\beta = 1+a/4$$ β = 1 + a / 4 , with $$a \approx {1,2,3,4}$$ a ≈ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 . By fitting a multi-layer model to our data, we observe that the cost to cross social groups also varies according to social function. Relatively low costs are observed for physical contact, grooming and group membership which lead to small groups with high and constant social clustering. Offline friendship has similar patterns while online friendship shows weak social structures. The intermediate case of spatial proximity (with $$\beta =1.5$$ β = 1.5 and clustering dependency on network size quantitatively similar to friendship) suggests that proximity interactions may be as relevant for the spread of infectious diseases as for social processes like friendship.
format	article
author	Luis E. C. Rocha Jan Ryckebusch Koen Schoors Matthew Smith
author_facet	Luis E. C. Rocha Jan Ryckebusch Koen Schoors Matthew Smith
author_sort	Luis E. C. Rocha
title	The scaling of social interactions across animal species
title_short	The scaling of social interactions across animal species
title_full	The scaling of social interactions across animal species
title_fullStr	The scaling of social interactions across animal species
title_full_unstemmed	The scaling of social interactions across animal species
title_sort	scaling of social interactions across animal species
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/eddc18ed28e54f8481542168149d6739
work_keys_str_mv	AT luisecrocha thescalingofsocialinteractionsacrossanimalspecies AT janryckebusch thescalingofsocialinteractionsacrossanimalspecies AT koenschoors thescalingofsocialinteractionsacrossanimalspecies AT matthewsmith thescalingofsocialinteractionsacrossanimalspecies AT luisecrocha scalingofsocialinteractionsacrossanimalspecies AT janryckebusch scalingofsocialinteractionsacrossanimalspecies AT koenschoors scalingofsocialinteractionsacrossanimalspecies AT matthewsmith scalingofsocialinteractionsacrossanimalspecies
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The scaling of social interactions across animal species

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