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Social network and decision-making in primates: a report on Franco-Japanese research collaborations

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  • French-Japanese collaborations in primatology
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Abstract

Sociality is suggested to evolve as a strategy for animals to cope with challenges in their environment. Within a population, each individual can be seen as part of a network of social interactions that vary in strength, type and dynamics (Sueur et al. 2011a). The structure of this social network can strongly impact upon not only on the fitness of individuals and their decision-making, but also on the ecology of populations and the evolution of a species. Our Franco-Japanese collaboration allowed us to study social networks in several species (Japanese macaques, chimpanzees, colobines, etc.) and on different topics (social epidemiology, social evolution, information transmission). Individual attributes such as stress, rank or age can affect how individuals take decisions and the structure of the social network. This heterogeneity is linked to the assortativity of individuals and to the efficiency of the flow within a network. It is important, therefore, that this heterogeneity is integrated in the process or pattern under study in order to provide a better resolution of investigation and, ultimately, a better understanding of behavioural strategies, social dynamics and social evolution. How social information affects decision-making could be important to understand how social groups make collective decisions and how information may spread throughout the social group. In human beings, road-crossing behaviours in the presence of other individuals is a good way to study the influence of social information on individual behaviour and decision-making, for instance. Culture directly affects which information — personal vs social — individuals prefer to follow. Our collaboration contributed to the understanding of the relative influence of different factors, cultural and ecological, on primate, including human, sociality.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Kunio Watanabe for welcoming us in Japan. The project of social network influence on disease and information transmission involved one Ph.D student (Valéria Romano de Paula, IPHC, CNRS-University of Strasbourg) and one post-doctoral researcher (Julie Duboscq, IPHC, CNRS-University of Strasbourg). We thank them for their collaboration. The work on multilevel social systems was carried out in collaboration with Ikki Matsuda from the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University. The work on social play networks in chimpanzees was carried out with the collaboration of Masaki Shimada, from the Department of Animal Sciences at Teikyo University of Science (Uenohara, Japan). The project on pedestrian road crossing was done with the help of a grant from the “Groupe Japon” of the University of Strasbourg.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Département Ecologie, Physiologie et Ethologie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Strasbourg, France

    Cédric Sueur

  2. Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

    Cédric Sueur

  3. Ethobiosciences, Research and Consultancy Agency in Animal Wellbeing and Behaviour, Strasbourg, France

    Marie Pelé

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  1. Cédric Sueur
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  2. Marie Pelé
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Correspondence to Cédric Sueur.

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Sueur, C., Pelé, M. Social network and decision-making in primates: a report on Franco-Japanese research collaborations. Primates 57, 327–332 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-015-0505-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-015-0505-z

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