Institute of behavioural physiology, Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology, Dummerstorf, Germany.
Department of Ecology, Physiology and Ethology, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, IPHC, UMR 7178, F-67000 Strasbourg, France.
Biol Lett. 2020 Sep;16(9):20200384. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2020.0384. Epub 2020 Sep 16.
The extent of differentiation of social relationships within groups is a means to assess social complexity, with greater differentiation indicating greater social complexity. Socio-ecological factors are likely to influence social complexity, but no attempt has been made to explain the differentiation of social relationships using multiple socio-ecological factors. Here, we propose a conceptual framework based on four components underlying multiple socio-ecological factors that influence the differentiation of social relationships: the extent of within-group contest competition to access resources, the extent to which individuals differ in their ability to provide a variety of services, the need for group-level cooperation and the constraints on social interactions. We use the framework to make predictions about the degree of relationship differentiation that can be expected within a group according to the cumulative contribution of multiple socio-ecological factors to each of the four components. The framework has broad applicability, since the four components are likely to be relevant to a wide range of animal taxa and to additional socio-ecological factors not explicitly dealt with here. Hence, the framework can be used as the basis for the development of novel and testable hypotheses about intra- and interspecific differences in relationship differentiation and social complexity.
群体内部社会关系的分化程度是评估社会复杂性的一种手段，分化程度越高表明社会越复杂。社会生态因素可能会影响社会复杂性，但尚未有人尝试用多种社会生态因素来解释社会关系的分化。在这里，我们提出了一个基于影响社会关系分化的四个潜在社会生态因素的概念框架：群体内为获取资源而展开的竞争程度，个体在提供各种服务能力方面的差异程度，群体合作的必要性以及社会互动的限制。我们利用该框架根据多个社会生态因素对四个组成部分的累积贡献，对群体内预期的关系分化程度做出预测。该框架具有广泛的适用性，因为四个组成部分可能与广泛的动物类群以及这里未明确涉及的其他社会生态因素相关。因此，该框架可作为发展关于关系分化和社会复杂性的种内和种间差异的新的、可检验假说的基础。
