Sebastian Sosa Orozco

University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study · Département Ecologie, Physiologie et Ethologie

The long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis) has been recently classified as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Meanwhile, fertility control has gain influence in the wild as an alternative to culling and translocation to manage conflicts between synanthropic primates and humans. Yet, behavioral changes associated with fertility control remain poorl...

Living in social groups may exacerbate interindividual competition for territory, food, and mates, leading to stress and possible health consequences. Unfavorable social contexts have been shown to elevate glucocorticoid levels (often used as biomarkers of individual stress), but the downstream consequences of socially stressful environments are ra...

Telomeres are specialized non-coding DNA sequences located at the end of chromosomes and that protect genetic information. Telomere loss over lifespan is generally viewed as a phenomenon associated with aging in animals. Recently, telomere elongation after hibernation has been described in several mammals. Whether this pattern is an adaptation to r...

Animal social network analyses (ASNA) have led to a foundational shift in our understanding of animal sociality that transcends the disciplinary boundaries of genetics, spatial movements, epidemiology, information transmission, evolution, species assemblages and conservation. However, some analytical protocols (i.e., permutation tests) used in ASNA...

Contraception is increasingly used to control wild animal populations. However, as reproductive condition influences social interactions in primates, the absence of new offspring could influence the females’ social integration. We studied two groups of wild macaques (Macaca fascicularis) including females recently sterilized in the Ubud Monkey Fore...

Social transmission of information is taxonomically widespread and could have profound effects on the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of animal communities. Demonstrating this in the wild, however, has been challenging. Here we show by field experiment that social transmission among predators can shape how selection acts on prey defences. Usin...

The study of non-human multilevel societies can give us insights into how group-level relationships function and are maintained in a social system, but their mechanisms are still poorly understood. The aim of this study was to apply spatial association data obtained from drones to verify the presence of a multilevel structure in a feral horse socie...

The possible role played by individual attributes, sociodemographic characteristics and/or ecological pressures in the interaction between animals and the development of social relationships between them is of great interest in animal ecology and evolutionary biology. Social Network Analysis is an ideal tool to study these types of questions. The A...

In social networks analysis, two different approaches have predominated in creating null models for hypothesis testing, namely pre‐network and node network permutation approaches. Although the pre‐network permutation approach appears more advantageous, its use has mainly been restricted to data on associations and sampling methods such as ‘group fo...

Social interactions among conspecifics can have marked effects on individual physiology, especially through their modulation of the stress axis by affecting the production of adrenal glucocorticoids (GCs). Previous research has focused on how individual GC levels may be influenced by social status, but few studies have considered how the balance be...

1. We provide an overview of the most commonly used social network measures in animal research for static networks or time-aggregated networks. 2. For each of these measures, we provide clear explanations as to what they measure, we describe their respective variants, we underline the necessity to consider these variants according to the research q...

The sociality of cattle facilitates the maintenance of herd cohesion and synchronization, making these species the ideal choice for domestication as livestock for humans. However, livestock populations are not self-regulated, and farmers transfer individuals across different groups. Individuals consequently have to adapt to different group composit...

https://methodsblog.com/2019/03/26/research-gaps-in-animal-social-network-analysis/ Here at Methods in Ecology & Evolution and the Journal of Animal Ecology we are excited by the new directions that the next decade of research into animal social networks will bring. We hope to encourage new advances in the study of animal social networks by callin...

How animals interact and develop social relationships in face of sociodemographic and ecological pressures is of great interest. New methodologies, in particular Social Network Analysis (SNA), allow us to elucidate these types of questions. However, the different methodologies developed to that end and the speed at which they emerge make their use...

Male migration is common in mammals and comes with associated benefits and costs. Male–male affiliative relationships are behavioural strategies that migrating males can adopt in order to maximise benefits and minimize costs. While we know that such strategies primarily serve to reduce tension, little is known about how they actually affect male im...

Group-living animals rely on efficient transmission of information for optimal exploitation of their habitat. How efficient and resilient a network is depend on its structure, which is a consequence of the social interactions of the individuals that comprise the network. In macaques, network structure differs according to dominance style. Networks...

Group-living animals rely on efficient transmission of information for optimal exploitation of their habitat. How efficient and resilient a network is depend on its structure, which is a consequence of the social interactions of the individuals that comprise the network. In macaques, network structure differs according to dominance style. Networks...

Since group-living animals are embedded in a network of social interactions, socioecological factors may not only affect individual behavioural strategies but also the patterning of group-level social interactions, i.e. the network structure. These co-variations between socioecological factors, individual behaviour, and group-level structure are im...

How animals interact and develop social relationships regarding, individual attributes, sociodemographic and ecological pressures is of great interest. New methodologies, in particular Social Network Analysis, allow us to elucidate these types of questions. However, the different methodologies developed to that end and the speed at which they emerg...

The sociality of cattle facilitates the maintenance of herd cohesion and synchronisation, making these species the ideal choice for domestication as livestock for humans. However, livestock populations are not self-regulated, and farmers transfer individuals across different groups throughout their lives for reasons such as genetic mixing, reproduc...

Three mechanisms have been proposed to underlie reciprocation of social behaviors in gregarious animals: "calculated reciprocity," "emotional bookkeeping," and "symmetry-based reciprocity." Among these explanations, emotional book-keeping has received the broadest support from experimental and observational studies. On the other hand, 3 individual-...

The social relationships that individuals experience at different life stages have a non-negligible influence on their lives, and this is particularly true for group living animals. The long lifespan of many primates makes it likely that these animals have various tactics of social interaction to adapt to complex changes in environmental or physica...

Presenting Animal Network Toolkit (ANT)

From a cognitive point of view, management and knowledge of social relationships is thought to be very challenging. Because of ecological and demographic constraints, relationships are likely to be prone to variation and hence need constant updating. Social network analysis is a potential tool to quantify the information that needs to be processed....

Among nonhuman primates, the evolutionary underpinnings of variation in social structure remain debated, with both ancestral relationships and adaptation to current conditions hypothesized to play determining roles. Here we assess whether interspecific variation in higher-order aspects of female macaque (genus: Macaca) dominance and grooming social...

Several, sometimes conflicting, explanatory frameworks have been put forward to posit inter- and intraspecific variation in non-human primate social relationships, particularly with regards to the emergence of the hierarchical structure, like the “prior attributes hypothesis” (i.e. through individuals’ intrinsic attributes), the “social dynamics hy...

The proximate mechanisms giving rise to reciprocation and interchange of social behaviours in primates have been extensively debated. Three mechanisms have been proposed: “calculated reciprocity,” “emotional bookkeeping” and “symmetry-based reciprocity”. Based on experimental and observational data, researchers appear to favour emotional bookkeepin...

Numerous studies have investigated the remarkable variation of social features and the resulting structures across species. Indeed, relationships are dynamic and vary in time according to various factors such as environmental conditions or individuals attributes. However, few studies have investigated the processes that stabilize the structures wit...

This study applied a temporal social network analysis model to describe three affiliative social networks (allogrooming, sleep in contact, and triadic interaction) in a non-human primate species, Macaca sylvanus. Three main social mechanisms were examined to determine interactional patterns among group members, namely preferential attachment (i.e.,...

Numerous studies have investigated the remarkable variation of social features and the resulting structures across species. Indeed, relationships are dynamic and vary in time according to various factors such as environmental conditions or individuals attributes. However, few studies have investigated the processes that stabilize the structures wit...

Social network analysis is a powerful tool that enables us to describe and quantify relationships between individuals. So far most of the studies rely on the analyses of various network snapshots, but do not capture changes over time. Here we use a stochastic actor-oriented model (SAOM) to test both the structure and the dynamics of relationships o...

Goodness of fit plots for the degree distribution, the geodesic distribution, and the triad census for each group.

A society is a complex system composed of individuals that can be characterized by their own attributes that influence their behaviors. In this study, a specific analytical protocol based on social network analysis was adopted to investigate the influence of four attributes (gender, age, matriline, and hierarchical rank) on affiliative (allogroomin...

Group-living is a social condition that arose independently many times in evolutionary history with variable degrees of specialization and complexity. Although living in group brings many advantages, it requires mechanisms to maintain the homeostasis between individuals (trade-off between individual costs and benefits), among them the establishment...

En entendant les termes « réseaux sociaux », vous penserez probablement à Facebook ou Twitter. Dans ce livre, ce terme est évidemment à comprendre autrement. Les animaux interagissent et communiquent notamment au sujet de la nourriture et de la reproduction. Dans un milieu écologique donné, les espèces tissent des liens de compétition, d’exclusion,...

En entendant les termes « réseaux sociaux », vous penserez probablement à Facebook ou Twitter. Dans ce livre, ce terme est évidemment à comprendre autrement. Les animaux interagissent et communiquent notamment au sujet de la nourriture et de la reproduction. Dans un milieu écologique donné, les espèces tissent des liens de compétition, d’exclusion,...

Le réseau social incarne une part significative des interactions entre organismes, il influence les paramètres sociodémographiques de la population tels que la dispersion des individus, le flux de gènes ou la transmission de comportements. Ce chapitre permet de comprendre l’intérêt de la caractérisation des réseaux sociaux dans l’étude de la social...

Networks are a means of representing complex interaction structures which can be used to model relations and processes in physical, biological, social and information systems. Most networks used to date have been static networks where interactions do not change over time, mainly due to computational limitations. However, many of the processes best...

For a decade, technological or natural networks have appeared to have a common mathematical architecture. This type of architecture has a node connectivity which follows a power law distribution. This architecture confers to these networks a resistance property to the loss of nodes. Such properties are advantageous for evolutional networks through...

When tested in rectangular arenas, the navigational behavior of the ant Gigantiops destructor can produce results similar to vertebrates. Such results are usually interpreted as supporting the ability of animals to segregate spatial geometry and features. Here, we combine a detailed analysis of ants' paths with panoramic images taken from the ant's...