Knockouts of high-ranking males have limited impact on baboon social networks  

作　　者：Mathias FRANZ Jeanne ALTMANN Susan C. ALBERTS 

机构地区：[1]Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0719, USA [2]Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-2016, USA

出　　处：《Current Zoology》2015年第1期107-113,共7页动物学报（英文版）

摘　　要：Social network structures can crucially impact complex social processes such as collective behaviour or the transmission of information and diseases. However, currently it is poorly understood how social networks change over time. Previous studies on primates suggest that ＇knockouts＇ （due to death or dispersal） of high-ranking individuals might be important drivers for structural changes in animal social networks. Here we test this hypothesis using long-term data on a natural population of ba- boons, examining the effects of 29 natural knockouts of alpha or beta males on adult female social networks. We investigated whether and how knockouts affected （i） changes in grooming and association rates among adult females, and （2） changes in mean degree and global clustering coefficient in these networks. The only significant effect that we found was a decrease in mean degree in grooming networks in the first month after knockouts, but this decrease was rather small, and grooming networks re- bounded to baseline levels by the second month after knockouts. Taken together our results indicate that the removal of high-ranking males has only limited or no lasting effects on social networks of adult female baboons. This finding calls into question the hypothesis that the removal of high-ranking individuals has a destabilizing effect on social network structures in social animals [Current Zoology 61 （1）： 107-113, 2015].

关 键 词：Social network analysis Social network dynamics KNOCKOUTS BABOONS 

分 类 号：Q959.848[生物学—动物学] TN929.5[电子电信—通信与信息系统]