Department of Anthropology, University College London, 14 Taviton Street, London, WC1H 0BW, UK.
Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, 21 Allée de Brienne, 31015, Toulouse Cedex 6, France.
Sci Rep. 2017 Apr 25;7(1):1153. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-01310-5.
Individuals' centrality in their social network (who they and their social ties are connected to) has been associated with fertility, longevity, disease and information transmission in a range of taxa. Here, we present the first exploration in humans of the relationship between reproductive success and different measures of network centrality of 39 Agta and 38 BaYaka mothers. We collected three-meter contact ('proximity') networks and reproductive histories to test the prediction that individual centrality is positively associated with reproductive fitness (number of living offspring). Rather than direct social ties influencing reproductive success, mothers with greater indirect centrality (i.e. centrality determined by second and third degree ties) produced significantly more living offspring. However, indirect centrality is also correlated with sickness in the Agta, suggesting a trade-off. In complex social species, the optimisation of individuals' network position has important ramifications for fitness, potentially due to easy access to different parts of the network, facilitating cooperation and social influence in unpredictable ecologies.
个体在其社交网络中的中心地位（他们及其社交关系与谁相联系）与一系列生物类群中的生育能力、寿命、疾病和信息传播有关。在这里，我们首次在人类中探索了生殖成功与 39 名阿格塔和 38 名巴雅卡母亲的网络中心性不同衡量指标之间的关系。我们收集了三米接触（“接近”）网络和生育史，以检验个体中心性与生殖适应性（活产子女数量）正相关的预测。影响生殖成功的不是直接的社会关系，而是具有更大间接中心性（即由第二和第三度关系决定的中心性）的母亲生育的活产子女数量显著更多。然而，间接中心性也与阿格塔人的疾病有关，这表明存在一种权衡。在复杂的社会物种中，个体网络位置的优化对适应性具有重要影响，这可能是因为可以更容易地访问网络的不同部分，从而在不可预测的生态环境中促进合作和社会影响。
