A complex social structure with fission–fusion properties can emerge from a simple foraging model

By Gabriel Ramos-Fernandez, Denis Boyer, V. Gomez. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2005

145 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Precisely how ecological factors influence animal social structure is far from clear. We explore this question using an agent-based model inspired by the fission–fusion society of spider monkeys (Ateles spp). Our model introduces a realistic, complex foraging environment composed of many resource patches with size varying as an inverse power law frequency distribution with exponent β. Foragers do not interact among them and start from random initial locations. They have either a complete or a partial knowledge of the environment and maximize the ratio between the size of the next visited patch and the distance traveled to it, ignoring previously visited patches. At intermediate values of β, when large patches are neither too scarce nor too abundant, foragers form groups (coincide at the same patch) with a similar size frequency distribution as the spider monkey’s subgroups. Fission–fusion events create a network of associations that contains weak bonds among foragers that meet only rarely and strong bonds among those that repeat associations more frequently than would be expected by chance. The latter form subnetworks with the highest number of bonds and a high clustering coefficient at intermediate values of β. The weak bonds enable the whole social network to percolate. Some of our results are similar to those found in long-term field studies of spider monkeys and other fission–fusion species. We conclude that hypotheses about the ecological causes of fission–fusion and the origin of complex social structures should consider the heterogeneity and complexity of the environment in which social animals live.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/76555c2cd3c51c0216ec60cc751b30cfd928a0fe

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Citations in the corpus

Association networks in spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) (2009, methodology): “has been demonstrated in an agent-based model by Ramos-Fernandez et al. (2006) .”
Fissioning minimizes ranging costs in spider monkeys: a multiple-level approach (2009, unknown): “The lack of a clear-cut relationship is partly due to the difficulties of expressing the complex phenology of tropical trees as an overall value (Ramos-Fernandez et al. 2006; Chapman and Wrangham 1994).”
Fission‐Fusion Dynamics (2008, methodology): “Throughout the history of primate socioecological research, these kinds of models have been used by various researchers (Boyer et al. 2004, 2006; Ramos-Fernandez, Boyer, and Gómez 2006; Rodman and Di Fiore 1993; te Boekhorst and Hogeweg 1994; reviewed by Dunbar 2002), but they have yet to gain…”
Social cohesion in a hierarchically structured embayment population of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (2009, background): “Fine-scale site fidelity of gregarious animals that are capable of individual recognition creates an environment for social relationships to develop (Ramos-Fernandez et al. 2006; Wolf et al. 2007).”
Animal social networks: an introduction (2009, methodology): “One nice example is the work of Ramos-Fernandez et al. (2006) which used an individualbased model of foraging in an environment where feeding patches vary in size.”
Multilevel social organization and space use in reticulated giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) (2014, background): “Fission–fusion dynamics can result from simple foraging models with no description of how actors should behave socially (Ramos-Fernández et al. 2006).”
Social network theory: new insights and issues for behavioral ecologists (2009, background): “This idea also extends to differences among groups that might appear similar unless one quantifies the SNS. Comparing two groups of the same size, if individuals in one group are better connected (higher degree) than the other, females encounter more males to choose among, and should thus be choosie”