English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

A framework for conceptualizing dimensions of social organization in mammals

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons246010

Prox,  Lea
Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Max Planck Society;

/persons/resource/persons191649

Farine,  Damien R.
Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Prox, L., & Farine, D. R. (2020). A framework for conceptualizing dimensions of social organization in mammals. Ecology and Evolution, 10(2), 791-807. doi:10.1002/ece3.5936.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0005-DCB3-9
Abstract
Mammalian societies represent many different types of social systems. While some aspects of social systems have been extensively studied, there is little consensus on how to conceptualize social organization across species. Here, we present a framework describing eight dimensions of social organization to capture its diversity across mammalian societies. The framework uses simple information that is clearly separated from the three other aspects of social systems: social structure, care system, and mating system. By applying our framework across 208 species of all mammalian taxa, we find a rich multidimensional landscape of social organization. Correlation analysis reveals that the dimensions have relatively high independence, suggesting that social systems are able to evolve different aspects of social behavior without being tied to particular traits. Applying a clustering algorithm allows us to identify the relative importance of key dimensions on patterns of social organization. Finally, mapping mating system onto these clusters shows that social organization represents a distinct aspect of social systems. In the future, this framework will aid reporting on important aspects of natural history in species and facilitate comparative analyses, which ultimately will provide the ability to generate new insights into the primary drivers of social patterns and evolution of sociality.