Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz-Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Invalidenstraße 43, 10115 Berlin, Germany; Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University, 318 West 12th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Republic of Panama.
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University, 318 West 12th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 0843-03092, Balboa, Republic of Panama.
Curr Biol. 2019 Dec 2;29(23):4139-4144.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.10.024. Epub 2019 Oct 31.
Social bonds, maintained by mutual investments of time and energy, have greatly influenced the evolution of social cognition and cooperation in many species [e.g., 1-8]. However, there are two pitfalls regarding "social bonds" as an explanation for social structure and cooperation [1, 9-11]. First, studies often incorrectly assume that frequent association implies partner fidelity based on mutual social preference, but even seemingly complex nonrandom interaction networks can emerge solely from habitat or spatial structure [12-16]. Second, the false appearance of partner fidelity can result from stable options in the "partner market" [1, 9-11, 17]. For instance, individuals might preferentially groom the same partner, even if the decision depends entirely on the immediate costs and benefits rather than relationship history. Given these issues, a key challenge has been testing the extent to which social structure is driven by the intrinsic relationship history versus the extrinsic physical and social environment. If stable bonds exist, they should persist even if the individuals are moved to a dramatically different physical and social environment. We tested this prediction by tracking social relationships among common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) moved from the lab to the wild. We show that allogrooming and food sharing among female vampire bats induced in captivity over 22 months predicted their assortativity and association rates when we subsequently tracked them in the wild with custom-made high-resolution proximity sensors. The persistence of many relationships across different physical and social environments suggests that social structure is caused by both extrinsic constraints and intrinsic partner fidelity.
社会联系通过时间和精力的相互投入得以维持，这极大地影响了许多物种的社会认知和合作的进化[例如，1-8]。然而，关于“社会联系”作为社会结构和合作的解释存在两个陷阱[1、9-11]。首先，研究往往错误地假设频繁的交往暗示着基于相互社会偏好的伴侣忠诚，但即使是看似复杂的非随机相互作用网络也可能仅仅源自栖息地或空间结构[12-16]。其次，伴侣忠诚的虚假表象可能来自“伴侣市场”中的稳定选择[1、9-11、17]。例如，个体可能更倾向于梳理同一个伴侣，即使这种决策完全取决于当前的成本和收益，而不是关系史。鉴于这些问题，一个关键挑战是检验社会结构在多大程度上是由内在的关系历史驱动的，而不是由外在的物理和社会环境驱动的。如果存在稳定的联系，即使个体被转移到一个截然不同的物理和社会环境中，它们也应该持续存在。我们通过追踪从实验室转移到野外的普通吸血蝙蝠（Desmodus rotundus）之间的社会关系来检验这一预测。我们表明，在 22 个月的时间里，在圈养环境中诱导的同种吸血蝙蝠之间的相互梳理和食物分享，预测了它们在随后用定制的高分辨率接近传感器在野外追踪时的聚类和关联率。许多关系在不同的物理和社会环境中的持续存在表明，社会结构是由外在的约束和内在的伴侣忠诚共同引起的。
