Rimbach Rebecca, Bisanzio Donal, Galvis Nelson, Link Andrés, Di Fiore Anthony, Gillespie Thomas R
School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, WITS 2050 Johannesburg, South Africa; Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology Unit, German Primate Center, Kellnerweg 4, 37077 Göttingen, Germany Fundación Proyecto Primates Colombia, Cra. 11a No. 91-55, Bogotá, Colombia.
Department of Environmental Sciences and Program in Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2015 May 26;370(1669). doi: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0110.
Elevated risk of disease transmission is considered a major cost of sociality, although empirical evidence supporting this idea remains scant. Variation in spatial cohesion and the occurrence of social interactions may have profound implications for patterns of interindividual parasite transmission. We used a social network approach to shed light on the importance of different aspects of group-living (i.e. within-group associations versus physical contact) on patterns of parasitism in a neotropical primate, the brown spider monkey (Ateles hybridus), which exhibits a high degree of fission-fusion subgrouping. We used daily subgroup composition records to create a 'proximity' network, and built a separate 'contact' network using social interactions involving physical contact. In the proximity network, connectivity between individuals was homogeneous, whereas the contact network highlighted high between-individual variation in the extent to which animals had physical contact with others, which correlated with an individual's age and sex. The gastrointestinal parasite species richness of highly connected individuals was greater than that of less connected individuals in the contact network, but not in the proximity network. Our findings suggest that among brown spider monkeys, physical contact impacts the spread of several common parasites and supports the idea that pathogen transmission is one cost associated with social contact.
疾病传播风险升高被认为是群居生活的一项主要代价，尽管支持这一观点的实证证据仍然不足。空间凝聚力的变化以及社交互动的发生可能对个体间寄生虫传播模式产生深远影响。我们采用社会网络方法，以揭示群居生活不同方面（即群体内关联与身体接触）对新热带灵长类动物——褐蜘蛛猴（Ateles hybridus）寄生虫感染模式的重要性，褐蜘蛛猴表现出高度的裂变融合亚群划分。我们利用每日亚群组成记录创建了一个“接近度”网络，并使用涉及身体接触的社交互动构建了一个单独的“接触”网络。在接近度网络中，个体之间的连接性是均匀的，而接触网络则突出了动物与其他个体身体接触程度上的个体间高度差异，这与个体的年龄和性别相关。在接触网络中，连接性高的个体的胃肠道寄生虫物种丰富度高于连接性低的个体，但在接近度网络中并非如此。我们的研究结果表明，在褐蜘蛛猴中，身体接触会影响几种常见寄生虫的传播，并支持病原体传播是与社会接触相关的一项代价这一观点。
