Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Cantor, Maurício
• Maldonado‐Chaparro, Adriana A.
• Beck, Kristina B.
• Brandl, Hanja B.
• Carter, Gerald G.
• He, Peng
• Hillemann, Friederike
• Klarevas‐Irby, James A.
• Ogino, Mina
• Papageorgiou, Danai
• Prox, Lea
• Farine, Damien R.
• Vander‐Wal, Eric

Titel

The importance of individual‐to‐society feedbacks in animal ecology and evolution

Ist Teil von

• The Journal of animal ecology, 2021-01, Vol.90 (1), p.27-44

Ort / Verlag

England: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

Wiley-Blackwell Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The social decisions that individuals make—who to interact with and how frequently—give rise to social structure. The resulting social structure then determines how individuals interact with their surroundings—resources and risks, pathogens and predators, competitors and cooperators. However, despite intensive research on (a) how individuals make social decisions and (b) how social structure shapes social processes (e.g. cooperation, competition and conflict), there are still few studies linking these two perspectives. These perspectives represent two halves of a feedback loop: individual behaviour scales up to define the social environment, and this environment, in turn, feeds back by shaping the selective agents that drive individual behaviour. We first review well‐established research areas that have captured both elements of this feedback loop—host–pathogen dynamics and cultural transmission. We then highlight areas where social structure is well studied but the two perspectives remain largely disconnected. Finally, we synthesise existing research on 14 distinct research topics to identify new prospects where the interplay between social structure and social processes are likely to be important but remain largely unexplored. Our review shows that the inherent links between individuals’ traits, their social decisions, social structure and social evolution, warrant more consideration. By mapping the existing and missing connections among many research areas, our review highlights where explicitly considering social structure and the individual‐to‐society feedbacks can reveal new dimensions to old questions in ecology and evolution. The authors highlight the importance of feedbacks and co‐evolutionary pathways between animals’ behaviour and the structure of their societies; individual social decisions generate social structures that, in turn, influence their behaviour or state. Drawing insights from 14 classic and emergent research areas, the authors suggest that explicitly considering these feedbacks will reveal new dimensions to old questions in animal ecology and evolution.