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Changes in group size during resource shifts reveal drivers of sociality across the tree of life

View ORCID ProfileAlbert B. Kao, View ORCID ProfileAmanda K. Hund, View ORCID ProfileFernando P. Santos, View ORCID ProfileJean-Gabriel Young, Deepak Bhat, View ORCID ProfileJoshua Garland, View ORCID ProfileRebekah A. Oomen, View ORCID ProfileHelen F. McCreery
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.17.994343
Albert B. Kao
1Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
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  • For correspondence: albert.kao@gmail.com hmccreery@gmail.com
Amanda K. Hund
2Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA
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Fernando P. Santos
3Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
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Jean-Gabriel Young
4Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
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Deepak Bhat
5Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Onna, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan
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Joshua Garland
1Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
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Rebekah A. Oomen
6Centre for Ecological & Evolutionary Synthesis, University of Oslo, 0315 Oslo, Norway
7Centre for Coastal Research, University of Agder, 4360 Kristiansand, Norway
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Helen F. McCreery
8School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
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  • ORCID record for Helen F. McCreery
  • For correspondence: albert.kao@gmail.com hmccreery@gmail.com
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ABSTRACT

From biofilms to whale pods, organisms have repeatedly converged on sociality as a strategy to improve individual fitness. Yet, it remains challenging to identify the most important drivers—and by extension, the evolutionary mechanisms—of sociality for particular species. Here, we present a conceptual framework, literature review, and model demonstrating that the direction and magnitude of the response of group size to sudden resource shifts provides a strong indication of the underlying drivers of sociality. We catalog six functionally distinct mechanisms related to the acquisition of resources, and we model these mechanisms’ effects on the survival of individuals foraging in groups. We find that whether, and to what degree, optimal group size increases, decreases, or remains constant when resource abundance declines depends strongly on the dominant mechanism. Existing empirical data support our model predictions, and we demonstrate how our framework can be used to predict the dominant social benefit for particular species. Together, our framework and results show that a single easily measurable characteristic, namely, group size under different resource abundances, can illuminate the potential drivers of sociality across the tree of life.

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Posted March 19, 2020.
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Changes in group size during resource shifts reveal drivers of sociality across the tree of life
Albert B. Kao, Amanda K. Hund, Fernando P. Santos, Jean-Gabriel Young, Deepak Bhat, Joshua Garland, Rebekah A. Oomen, Helen F. McCreery
bioRxiv 2020.03.17.994343; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.17.994343
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Changes in group size during resource shifts reveal drivers of sociality across the tree of life
Albert B. Kao, Amanda K. Hund, Fernando P. Santos, Jean-Gabriel Young, Deepak Bhat, Joshua Garland, Rebekah A. Oomen, Helen F. McCreery
bioRxiv 2020.03.17.994343; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.17.994343

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