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Social Structure

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Book cover Animal Behaviour

Abstract

The individuals of a species do not interact with their conspecifics randomly. These interactions involve the exchange of actions and/or signals. The exchange of signals is called communication and is an important contribution to the establishment and maintenance of social relationships, but also to the general exchange of information among individuals. An additional function of signals is to coordinate the activities of the members of a social unit with each other. The emergent structures of cooperative and competitive interactions describe the cornerstones of social structure. Since different species differ in their ability to perceive and process communication signals and other sensory stimuli and adjust their behaviour accordingly, cognitive abilities play an important explanatory role in the analysis of social structures. Furthermore, within species, there are sometimes variable patterns of social structure and other behaviours that are interpreted as cultural traits. These are the issues addressed in this chapter.

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  1. Department of Sociobiology/Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Peter M. Kappeler

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Kappeler, P.M. (2021). Social Structure. In: Animal Behaviour. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82879-0_14

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