Trends in Ecology & Evolution
OpinionSocial competence: an evolutionary approach
Section snippets
Behavioural flexibility as phenotypic plasticity
Adaptation to the environment is a universal characteristic of living systems. According to classic evolutionary theory, adaptation by natural selection relies on heritable phenotypic variation produced by genetic variation. However, when the rate of genetic evolutionary change is outpaced by changes in the environment the need for adaptive change without genetic mutation emerges [1]. In this scenario, the evolution of phenotypic plasticity is favoured, that is, a certain genotype produces
Adaptive behavioural flexibility in the social domain
The social domain is arguably the most complex and fluctuating component of an animal's environment as it involves interaction with other behavioural agents with inherently associated higher levels of unpredictability. An animal interacting with its non-social abiotic or biotic environment will often modify this environment, thereby creating ecological feedback on the individual itself forcing it to flexibly adjust its behaviour (e.g., a foraging individual changes the local resource density
Animal social competence
To date the study of social competence has been mainly a domain of the social sciences, with a strong focus on causal relationships between social factors and the development and expression of social competence in humans 12, 18, 19. However, indications of social competence are also well known from non-human animals. Interacting animals respond to the presence of bystanders (‘audience effect’) by changing their signalling behaviour according to the type of audience and social context (e.g., 20,
Social competence versus general cognition
Since social competence can give rise to consistent expression of appropriate flexible behavioural responses across different social contexts, it appears similar to the concept of general intelligence. In humans, performance on diverse cognitive tasks shows robust positive correlations, so that individuals scoring high on one cognitive ability are also likely to score well in others. This positive manifold of correlations has been interpreted as being caused by a latent single factor named
An evolutionary framework for the study of social competence
If we understand social competence as a general ability affecting individual performance in a social environment, it should have the key properties of an ecological performance trait [42], namely (i) the existence of inter-individual variation in performance ranging from low to high, and (ii) this variation should be positively correlated with fitness [43]. Furthermore, for it to be an evolvable trait, potential evolutionary costs, benefits, and trade-offs of social competence should also be
Integrating proximate mechanisms in the evolutionary study of social competence
The idea that social competence – like any other adaptive behaviour – relies on optimal behavioural rules is unrealistic, since its proximate mechanisms will impose constraints and limits to flexible behavioural responses 57, 58. Being a plastic trait, social competence relies on the generation of multiple social phenotypes from the same genotype, a process that is expected to result from interactions between genetic, environmental, and epigenetic processes that lead to neural and behavioural
Concluding remarks
Here we draw attention to the evolutionary importance of adaptive behavioural plasticity in the social domain and propose an integrated framework for its study that combines investigating proximate mechanisms and ultimate consequences. Placing social competence in an evolutionary framework will facilitate exploration of its evolvability and potential evolutionary consequences. For example, if variation between individuals exists in social competence, individuals with a slightly better social
Acknowledgements
During the writing of this paper B.T. was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, Project 31003A_133066) and R.F.O. by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Grants RG-LVT-331-2352 and PTDC/PSI-PCO/118776/2010). We thank Ralph Bergmüller for productive conceptual discussions on this topic that prompted the writing of this paper, and Miguel Simões for helping with the preparation of Figure I in Box 2.
Glossary
- Behavioural reaction norm (BRN)
- the set of behavioural phenotypes that a single individual produces in a given set of environments [8]. This is in contrast to ‘reaction norms’ describing typically irreversible, developmental plasticity of a single genotype. Thus BRNs describe fast responses (within a life time) by an individual to variation in the environment.
- Developmental plasticity
- variation in the traits of individuals that results from processes during development as a consequence of
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