Matthew J Hasenjager

Royal Holloway, University of London | RHUL · Department of Biological Sciences

The societies of honeybees (Apis spp.) are microcosms of divided labour where the fitness interests of individuals are so closely aligned that, in some contexts, the colony behaves as an entity in itself. Self-organization at this extraordinary level requires sophisticated communication networks, so it is not surprising that the celebrated waggle d...

Coordinated responses in eusocial insect colonies arise from worker interaction networks that enable collective processing of ecologically relevant information. Previous studies have detected a structural motif in these networks known as the feed-forward loop, which functions to process information in other biological regulatory networks (e.g. tran...

Honey bees famously use waggle dances to communicate foraging locations to nestmates in the hive, thereby recruiting them to those sites. The decision to dance is governed by rules that, when operating collectively, are assumed to direct foragers to the most profitable locations with little input from potential recruits, who are presumed to respond...

Honeybees famously use waggle dances to communicate foraging locations to nestmates in the hive, thereby recruiting them to those sites. The decision to dance is governed by rules that, when operating collectively, are assumed to direct foragers to the most profitable locations with little input from potential recruits, who are presumed to respond...

In shaping how individuals explore their environment and interact with others, personality may mediate both individual and social learning. Yet increasing evidence indicates that personality expression is contingent on social context, suggesting that group personality composition may be key in determining how individuals learn about their environme...

Although social learning capabilities are taxonomically widespread, demonstrating that freely interacting animals (whether wild or captive) rely on social learning has proved remarkably challenging. Network‐based diffusion analysis (NBDA) offers a means for detecting social learning using observational data on freely interacting groups. Its core as...

The honeybee (Apis mellifera) dance communication system is a marvel of collective behaviour, but the added value it brings to colony foraging efficiency is poorly understood. In temperate environments, preventing communication of foraging locations rarely decreases colony food intake, potentially because simultaneous transmission of olfactory info...

Honeybees transmit food-related information to nestmates via waggle dances and food-sharing. A new study reveals that learning about food scents can also be mediated by social contact alone, suggesting unexpected complexity in honeybee foraging networks.

Spatio-temporal variation in predation risk is predicted to select for plastic anti-predator responses, which may in turn impact the fine-scale social structure of prey groups and processes mediated by that structure. To test these predictions, we manipulated the ambient predation risk experienced by Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) groups b...

How individuals respond toward one another can depend on the level of familiarity between them. Variation in the proportion of familiar individuals comprising a group can shape group-level outcomes and group members’ fitness, but less is known about how this variation shapes the emergence and structure of social networks or the resulting consequenc...

In a wide variety of species, who befriends whom strongly influences how individuals and the larger group behave

In recent years, behavioral ecologists have embraced social network analysis in order to explore the structure of animal societies and the functional consequences of that structure. We provide a conceptual introduction to the field that focuses on historical developments, as well as on novel insights generated by recent work. First, we discuss majo...

Repetitive movement patterns are commonly observed in zoo elephants. The extent to which these behaviors constitute a welfare concern varies, as their expression ranges from stereotypies to potentially beneficial anticipatory behaviors. Nevertheless, their occurrence in zoo animals is often viewed negatively. To better identify conditions that prom...