RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Ageing in a collective: The impact of ageing individuals on social network structure
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2022.08.10.503309
DO 10.1101/2022.08.10.503309
A1 Erin R. Siracusa
A1 André S. Pereira
A1 Josefine Bohr Brask
A1 Josué E. Negron-Del Valle
A1 Daniel Phillips
A1 Cayo Biobank Research Unit
A1 Michael L. Platt
A1 James P. Higham
A1 Noah Snyder-Mackler
A1 Lauren J. N. Brent
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/11/09/2022.08.10.503309.abstract
AB Ageing affects many phenotypic traits, but its consequences for social behaviour have only recently become apparent. Social networks emerge from associations between individuals. The changes in sociality that occur as individuals get older are thus likely to impact network structure, yet this remains unstudied. Here we use empirical data from free-ranging rhesus macaques and an agent-based model to test how age-based changes in social behaviour feed up to influence: (1) an individual’s level of indirect connectedness in their network; and (2) overall patterns of network structure. Our empirical analyses revealed that female macaques became less indirectly connected as they aged for some, but not all network measures examined, suggesting that indirect connectivity is affected by ageing, and that ageing animals can remain well integrated in some social contexts. Surprisingly, we did not find evidence for a relationship between age distribution and the structure of female macaque networks. We used an agent-based model to gain further understanding of the link between age-based differences in sociality and global network structure, and under which circumstances global effects may be detectable. Overall, our results suggest a potentially important and underappreciated role of age in the structure and function of animal collectives, which warrants further investigation.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.