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Author Cameron, E.Z.; Setsaas, T.H.; Linklater, W.L.
Title Social bonds between unrelated females increase reproductive success in feral horses Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Abbreviated Journal Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.
Volume 106 Issue 33 Pages 13850-13853
Keywords
Abstract In many mammals, females form close social bonds with members of their group, usually between kin. Studies of social bonds and their fitness benefits have not been investigated outside primates, and are confounded by the relatedness between individuals in primate groups. Bonds may arise from kin selection and inclusive fitness rather than through direct benefits of association. However, female equids live in long-term social groups with unrelated members. We present 4 years of behavioral data, which demonstrate that social integration between unrelated females increases both foal birth rates and survival, independent of maternal habitat quality, social group type, dominance status, and age. Also, we show that such social integration reduces harassment by males. Consequently, social integration has strong direct fitness consequences between nonrelatives, suggesting that social bonds can evolve based on these direct benefits alone. Our results support recent studies highlighting the importance of direct benefits in maintaining cooperative behavior, while controlling for the confounding influence of kinship.
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Notes 10.1073/pnas.0900639106 Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5152
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Author Mitani, J.C.
Title Male chimpanzees form enduring and equitable social bonds Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Animal Behaviour. Abbreviated Journal Anim. Behav.
Volume 77 Issue 3 Pages 633-640
Keywords chimpanzee; Pan troglodytes; social behaviour; social relationship
Abstract Controversy exists regarding the nature of primate social relationships. While individual primates are frequently hypothesized to form enduring social bonds with conspecifics, recent studies suggest that relationships are labile, with animals interacting only over short periods to satisfy their immediate needs. Here I use data collected over 10 years on a community of chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda, to investigate whether male chimpanzees establish long-term social relationships and to determine the factors that affect variation in relationship quality and the stability of social bonds. Kinship and dominance rank influenced the quality of relationships. Maternal brothers and males of the same dominance rank class groomed each other more equitably than did unrelated males and males that were dissimilar in rank. In addition, males that formed strong social bonds groomed more equitably than did males that displayed weaker bonds. Social bonds were stable over time, with relationships in one year predicting those in subsequent years. Kinship and the quality of social relationships affected bond stability. Maternal half siblings and males that groomed each other equitably maintained longer-lasting bonds than did nonkin and males that groomed each other unevenly. Virtually all of the males established at least one enduring relationship with another individual. The most enduring bonds formed between a few pairs of maternal brothers and dyads that maintained balanced grooming interactions. These results indicate that male chimpanzees maintain long-lasting and equitable social bonds whose formation is affected by maternal kinship and the quality of social relationships.
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Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0003-3472 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5164
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Author Kurvers, R.H.J.M.; Eijkelenkamp, B.; van Oers, K.; van Lith, B.; van Wieren, S.E.; Ydenberg, R.C.; Prins, H.H.T.
Title Personality differences explain leadership in barnacle geese Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Animal Behaviour. Abbreviated Journal Anim. Behav.
Volume 78 Issue 2 Pages 447-453
Keywords barnacle goose; boldness; Branta leucopsis; group behaviour; leadership; personality
Abstract Personality in animal behaviour describes the observation that behavioural differences between individuals are consistent over time and context. Studies of group-living animals show that movement order among individuals is also consistent over time and context, suggesting that some individuals lead and others follow. However, the relationship between leadership and personality traits is poorly studied. We measured several personality traits and leadership of individual barnacle geese, Branta leucopsis. We measured body size and scored the dominance of individuals living in a stable group situation before subjecting them to an open-field test, an activity test, a novel-object test, and a leadership test in which the order of the movement of individuals in pairs towards a feeding patch was scored. We found high repeatability for activity and novel-object scores over time. Leadership was strongly correlated with novel-object score but not with dominance rank, activity or exploration in an open field. These results provide evidence that leadership is closely related to some aspects of personality. Interestingly, an individual's arrival at the food patch was affected not only by the novel-object score of the focal individual, but also by the novel-object score of the companion individual, indicating that movement patterns of individuals living in groups are affected by the personality traits of other group members and suggesting that movement patterns of a group may be shaped by the mix of personality types present in the group.
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Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
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ISSN 0003-3472 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5172
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Author Eagle, N.; Pentland, A.
Title Eigenbehaviors: identifying structure in routine Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abbreviated Journal Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
Volume 63 Issue 7 Pages 1057-1066-1066
Keywords Biomedical and Life Sciences
Abstract Longitudinal behavioral data generally contains a significant amount of structure. In this work, we identify the structure inherent in daily behavior with models that can accurately analyze, predict, and cluster multimodal data from individuals and communities within the social network of a population. We represent this behavioral structure by the principal components of the complete behavioral dataset, a set of characteristic vectors we have termed eigenbehaviors. In our model, an individual’s behavior over a specific day can be approximated by a weighted sum of his or her primary eigenbehaviors. When these weights are calculated halfway through a day, they can be used to predict the day’s remaining behaviors with 79% accuracy for our test subjects. Additionally, we demonstrate the potential for this dimensionality reduction technique to infer community affiliations within the subjects’ social network by clustering individuals into a behavior space spanned by a set of their aggregate eigenbehaviors. These behavior spaces make it possible to determine the behavioral similarity between both individuals and groups, enabling 96% classification accuracy of community affiliations within the population-level social network. Additionally, the distance between individuals in the behavior space can be used as an estimate for relational ties such as friendship, suggesting strong behavioral homophily amongst the subjects. This approach capitalizes on the large amount of rich data previously captured during the Reality Mining study from mobile phones continuously logging location, proximate phones, and communication of 100 subjects at MIT over the course of 9 months. As wearable sensors continue to generate these types of rich, longitudinal datasets, dimensionality reduction techniques such as eigenbehaviors will play an increasingly important role in behavioral research.
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg Place of Publication Editor
Language (up) Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0340-5443 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5189
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Author Fischhoff, I.; Dushoff, J.; Sundaresan, S.; Cordingley, J.; Rubenstein, D.
Title Reproductive status influences group size and persistence of bonds in male plains zebra (Equus burchelli) Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abbreviated Journal Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
Volume 63 Issue 7 Pages 1035-1043-1043
Keywords Biomedical and Life Sciences
Abstract Animal groups arise from individuals’ choices about the number, characteristics, and identity of associates. Individuals make these choices to gain benefits from their associations. As the needs of an individual change with its phenotype, so too we expect the nature of its associations to vary. In this paper, we investigate how the social priorities of male plains zebra (Equus burchelli) depend on reproductive state. An adult male is either a bachelor, and lacking mating access, or a stallion defending a harem. Multiple harems and bachelor males aggregate in larger herds. Herds frequently split and merge, affording males opportunities to change associates. Over a 4-year period, we sampled the herd associations in a population of 500–700 zebras. To isolate the effects of reproductive state on male social behavior, we account for potential confounding factors: changes in population size, grouping tendencies, and sampling intensity. We develop a generally applicable permutation procedure, which allows us to test the null hypothesis that social behavior is independent of male status. Averaging over all individuals in the population, we find that a typical bachelor is found in herds containing significantly more adults, bachelors, and stallions than the herds of a typical stallion. Further, bachelors’ bonds with each other are more persistent over time than those among stallions. These results suggest that bachelors form cohesive cliques, in which we may expect cooperative behaviors to develop. Stallion–stallion associations are more diffuse, and less conducive to long-term cooperation.
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg Place of Publication Editor
Language (up) Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0340-5443 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5193
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Author Franks, D.; James, R.; Noble, J.; Ruxton, G.
Title A foundation for developing a methodology for social network sampling Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abbreviated Journal Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
Volume 63 Issue 7 Pages 1079-1088-1088
Keywords Biomedical and Life Sciences
Abstract Researchers are increasingly turning to network theory to understand the social nature of animal populations. We present a computational framework that is the first step in a series of works that will allow us to develop a quantitative methodology of social network sampling to aid ecologists in their social network data collection. To develop our methodology, we need to be able to generate networks from which to sample. Ideally, we need to perform a systematic study of sampling protocols on different known network structures, as network structure might affect the robustness of any particular sampling methodology. Thus, we present a computational tool for generating network structures that have user-defined distributions for network properties and for key measures of interest to ecologists. The user defines the values of these measures and the tool will generate appropriate network randomizations with those properties. This tool will be used as a framework for developing a sampling methodology, although we do not present a full methodology here. We describe the method used by the tool, demonstrate its effectiveness, and discuss how the tool can now be utilized. We provide a proof-of-concept example (using the assortativity measure) of how such networks can be used, along with a simulated egocentric sampling regime, to test the level of equivalence of the sampled network to the actual network.
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg Place of Publication Editor
Language (up) Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0340-5443 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5194
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Author Gácsi, M.; Gyoöri, B.; Virányi, Z.; Kubinyi, E.; Range, F.; Belényi, B.; Miklósi, Á.
Title Explaining Dog Wolf Differences in Utilizing Human Pointing Gestures: Selection for Synergistic Shifts in the Development of Some Social Skills Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication PLoS ONE Abbreviated Journal PLoS ONE
Volume 4 Issue 8 Pages e6584
Keywords
Abstract <sec> <title>Background</title> <p>The comparison of human related communication skills of socialized canids may help to understand the evolution and the epigenesis of gesture comprehension in humans. To reconcile previously contradicting views on the origin of dogs' outstanding performance in utilizing human gestures, we suggest that dog-wolf differences should be studied in a more complex way.</p> </sec><sec> <title>Methodology/Principal Findings</title> <p>We present data both on the performance and the behaviour of dogs and wolves of different ages in a two-way object choice test. Characteristic behavioural differences showed that for wolves it took longer to establish eye contact with the pointing experimenter, they struggled more with the handler, and pups also bit her more before focusing on the human's signal. The performance of similarly hand-reared 8-week-old dogs and wolves did not differ in utilizing the simpler proximal momentary pointing. However, when tested with the distal momentary pointing, 4-month-old pet dogs outperformed the same aged hand reared wolves. Thus early and intensive socialisation does not diminish differences between young dogs and wolves in behaviour and performance. Socialised adult wolves performed similarly well as dogs in this task without pretraining. The success of adult wolves was accompanied with increased willingness to cooperate.</p> </sec><sec> <title>Conclusion/Significance</title> <p>Thus, we provide evidence for the first time that socialised adult wolves are as successful in relying on distal momentary pointing as adult pet dogs. However, the delayed emergence of utilising human distal momentary pointing in wolves shows that these wild canines react to a lesser degree to intensive socialisation in contrast to dogs, which are able to control agonistic behaviours and inhibition of actions in a food related task early in development. We suggest a “synergistic” hypothesis, claiming that positive feedback processes (both evolutionary and epigenetic) have increased the readiness of dogs to attend to humans, providing the basis for dog-human communication.</p> </sec>
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Public Library of Science Place of Publication Editor
Language (up) Summary Language Original Title
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ISSN ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5196
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Author Henzi, S.; Lusseau, D.; Weingrill, T.; van Schaik, C.; Barrett, L.
Title Cyclicity in the structure of female baboon social networks Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abbreviated Journal Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
Volume 63 Issue 7 Pages 1015-1021-1021
Keywords Biomedical and Life Sciences
Abstract There is an established and very influential view that primate societies have identifiable, persistent social organizations. It assumes that association patterns reflect long-term strategic interests that are not qualitatively perturbed by short-term environmental variability. We used data from two baboon troops in markedly different habitats over three consecutive seasons to test this assumption. Our results demonstrate pronounced cyclicity in the extent to which females maintained differentiated relationships. When food was plentiful, the companionships identified by social network analysis in the food-scarce season disappeared and were replaced by casual acquaintanceships more representative of mere gregariousness. Data from the fourth, food-scarce, season at one site indicated that few companions were re-united. It is likely that this reflected stochastic variation in individual circumstances. These results suggest that attention could profitably be paid to the effects of short-term local contingencies on social dynamics, and has implications for current theories of primate cognitive evolution.
Address
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg Place of Publication Editor
Language (up) Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0340-5443 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5203
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Author James, R.; Croft, D.; Krause, J.
Title Potential banana skins in animal social network analysis Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abbreviated Journal Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
Volume 63 Issue 7 Pages 989-997-997
Keywords Biomedical and Life Sciences
Abstract Social network analysis is an increasingly popular tool for the study of the fine-scale and global social structure of animals. It has attracted particular attention by those attempting to unravel social structure in fission–fusion populations. It is clear that the social network approach offers some exciting opportunities for gaining new insights into social systems. However, some of the practices which are currently being used in the animal social networks literature are at worst questionable and at best over-enthusiastic. We highlight some of the areas of method, analysis and interpretation in which greater care may be needed in order to ensure that the biology we extract from our networks is robust. In particular, we suggest that more attention should be given to whether relational data are representative, the potential effect of observational errors and the choice and use of statistical tests. The importance of replication and manipulation must not be forgotten, and the interpretation of results requires care.
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg Place of Publication Editor
Language (up) Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0340-5443 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5206
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Author Krause, S.; Mattner, L.; James, R.; Guttridge, T.; Corcoran, M.; Gruber, S.; Krause, J.
Title Social network analysis and valid Markov chain Monte Carlo tests of null models Type Journal Article
Year 2009 Publication Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Abbreviated Journal Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
Volume 63 Issue 7 Pages 1089-1096-1096
Keywords Biomedical and Life Sciences
Abstract Analyses of animal social networks derived from group-based associations often rely on randomisation methods developed in ecology (Manly, Ecology 76:1109–1115, 1995) and made available to the animal behaviour community through implementation of a pair-wise swapping algorithm by Bejder et al. (Anim Behav 56:719–725, 1998). We report a correctable flaw in this method and point the reader to a wider literature on the subject of null models in the ecology literature. We illustrate the importance of correcting the method using a toy network and use it to make a preliminary analysis of a network of associations among eagle rays.
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Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Springer Berlin / Heidelberg Place of Publication Editor
Language (up) Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0340-5443 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes Approved no
Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 5208
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