scholarly journals Foster carers influence brood pathogen resistance in ants

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1792) ◽  
pp. 20141338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Purcell ◽  
Michel Chapuisat
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Pathogen Resistance ◽  
Maternal Factors ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Fungal Entomopathogen ◽  
Cross Fostering

Social organisms face a high risk of epidemics, and respond to this threat by combining efficient individual and collective defences against pathogens. An intriguing and little studied feature of social animals is that individual pathogen resistance may depend not only on genetic or maternal factors, but also on the social environment during development. Here, we used a cross-fostering experiment to investigate whether the pathogen resistance of individual ant workers was shaped by their own colony of origin or by the colony of origin of their carers. The origin of care-giving workers significantly influenced the ability of newly eclosed cross-fostered Formica selysi workers to resist the fungal entomopathogen Beauveria bassiana . In particular, carers that were more resistant to the fungal entomopathogen reared more resistant workers. This effect occurred in the absence of post-infection social interactions, such as trophallaxis and allogrooming. The colony of origin of eggs significantly influenced the survival of the resulting individuals in both control and pathogen treatments. There was no significant effect of the social organization (i.e. whether colonies contain a single or multiple queens) of the colony of origin of either carers or eggs. Our experiment reveals that social interactions during development play a central role in moulding the resistance of emerging workers.

scholarly journals Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick A. R. Jones ◽  
Helen C. Spence-Jones ◽  
Mike Webster ◽  
Luke Rendell
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Behavioural Phenotype ◽  
Social Species ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning. Significance statement Some individuals learn faster than others. Many factors can affect an animal’s learning rate—for example, its behavioural phenotype may make it more or less likely to engage with novel objects. The social environment can play a big role too—affecting learning directly and modifying the effects of an individual’s traits. Effects of social context on learning mostly come from highly social species, but recent research has focused on less-social animals. Archerfish display high intra-specific competition, and our study suggests that social context has no strong effect on their learning to shoot novel objects for rewards. Our results may have some relevance for social enrichment and welfare of this increasingly studied species, suggesting there are no negative effects of short- to medium-term isolation of this species—at least with regards to behavioural performance and learning tasks.

scholarly journals What does social support sound like? Challenges and opportunities for using passive episodic audio collection to assess the social environment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anubhuti Poudyal ◽  
Alastair van Heerden ◽  
Ashley Hagaman ◽  
Celia Islam ◽  
Ada Thapa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Adolescent Mothers ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The Social ◽  
Audio Data

Abstract Background: The social environment, including social support, social burden, and quality of interactions, influences a range of health outcomes, including mental health. Passive audio data collection on mobile phones (e.g., episodic recording of the auditory environment without requiring any active input from the phone user) enables new opportunities to understand the social environment. We evaluated the use of passive audio collection on mobile phones as a window onto the relationship between the social environment within a study of mental health among adolescent mothers in Nepal.Methods: We enrolled 23 adolescent mothers who first participated in qualitative interviews to describe their social support and identify sounds potentially associated with that support. Then episodic recordings were collected for two weeks from the same women using an app to capture 30 seconds of audio every 15 minutes from 4am to 9pm. Audio data were processed and classified using a pretrained model. Each classification category was accompanied by a predicted accuracy score. Manual validation of the machine-predicted speech and non-speech categories (10%) was done for accuracy.Results: In qualitative interviews, mothers described a range of positive and negative social interactions and the sounds that accompanied these. Potential positive sounds included adult speech and laughter, baby babbling and laughter, and sounds from baby toys. Sounds characterizing negative stimuli included yelling, crying, screaming by adults and crying by babies. Sounds associated with social isolation included silence and TV or radio noises. Speech comprised of 43% of all passively recorded audio clips (n=7725). Manual validation showed a 23% false positive rate and 62% false-negative rate for speech, demonstrating potential underestimation of speech exposure. Other common sounds included music and vehicular noises.Conclusions: Passively capturing audio has the potential to improve understanding of the social environment. However, the limited accuracy of the pre-trained model used in this study did not adequately distinguish between positive and negative social interactions. To improve the contribution of passive audio collection to understanding the social environment, future work should improve the accuracy of audio categorization, code for constellations of sounds, and combine audio with other smartphone data collection such as location and activity.

The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostadin Kushlev ◽  
Ryan Dwyer ◽  
Elizabeth W. Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Mobile Technology ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sampling Studies ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Smartphone Use

Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being.

Attachment to the Physical Dimension of Places

2002 ◽  
Vol 91 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1177-1182 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Carmen Hidalgo ◽  
Bernardo Hernández
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Social Aspect ◽  
Strong Emphasis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Previous Contact

Social relationships had been important in explanation and prediction of attachment to places. Although some have asserted the importance of physical aspects of the environment in the formation of attachment ties to a place, the social environment is required for the formation of bonds to a place, although strong emphasis on the social aspect has been questioned and the importance of the physical environment noted. The present objective in two studies was to test whether college students ( ns = 30 and 27) show a preference for a place they know, independently of the social interactions developed in them. Results confirmed the hypothesis, i.e., after a very brief stay in a certain place with nobody else there, these college students preferred that place to another with which they had not had previous contact.

scholarly journals КОМУНИКАЦИОНЕН ОКТАГОН: АСПЕКТИ НА ИНТЕЛИГЕНТНОСТТА ПРЕЗ ПРИЗМАТА НА КОМУНИКАЦИОННАТА СРЕДА

2021 ◽  
Vol XXХII A (1) ◽  
pp. 193-207
Author(s):  
Айля Илиязова ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Intelligent System ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Communication Links ◽  
Biological Differences

The aim of the paper is to highlight certain aspects of the semantic profile of the concept of "intelligence" through a model called "communication octagon", focusing on the theory of dynamics of communication links, and to analyze the interaction between the intelligent system and the social environment. The focus of interest in the study is human intelligence, based on individual biological differences, which can be modified as a result of construction and transmission of knowledge, mutual emotional transfer, making cognitive requirements (directed inwards and outwards, towards the environment), and as a result of dynamic social interactions.

‘Neurosis' and the Personal Social Environment

1993 ◽  
Vol 162 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. P. Sims ◽  
D. H. Heard ◽  
C. E. Rowe ◽  
M. M. P. Gill ◽  
V. Maddock
Keyword(s):  
Inner City ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Day Treatment ◽  
Interview Schedule ◽  
Neurotic Disorder ◽  
The Social

The Interview Schedule for Social Interactions (ISSI) was used to assess the social environment of 65 British inner-city patients suffering from severe neurotic disorder; all patients were offered a 12-week course of intensive day treatment with an educational and psychodynamic basis. Compared with a general population in Canberra, the neurosis sufferers had lower (morbid) scores on the ISSI for the extent and quality of their social relationships. Of the 34 subjects who completed treatment and attended for the post-treatment investigation, 21 attained a PSE score below the level for ‘caseness'. Twenty-five subjects who attended for follow-up at 18–24 months had improved significantly on all four of the standard ISSI measures, although they had not done so immediately after treatment. This suggests that although symptoms may improve at the time of treatment, social relationships improve only over several months.

scholarly journals The economic situation and social interactions of prisoners’ families

2020 ◽  
pp. 193-210
Author(s):  
Sonia Dzierzyńska-Breś
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Foreign Literature ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depth Analysis

This article shows the current state of knowledge about: the economic situation and social interactions of families of prisoners. An in-depth analysis of own research, as well as those presented so far in Polish and foreign literature, has allowed to distinguish three types of social situations of families of prisoners, with particular emphasis on their economic situation and social interactions, namely; (1) the social situation of a family supporting the resocialization of the prisoner, (2) the social situation of a prisoner’s family, which is in opposition to the process of resocialization, (3) the social situation of a family focused on the reconstruction of its own social environment.

scholarly journals Individual, but not population asymmetries, are modulated by social environment and genotype in Drosophila melanogaster

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Versace ◽  
Matteo Caffini ◽  
Zach Werkhoven ◽  
Benjamin L. de Bivort
Keyword(s):  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Position And Orientation ◽  
Female Male Female

AbstractTheory predicts that social interactions can induce an alignment of behavioral asymmetries between individuals (i.e., population-level lateralization), but evidence for this effect is mixed. To understand how interaction with other individuals affects behavioral asymmetries, we systematically manipulated the social environment of Drosophila melanogaster, testing individual flies and dyads (female-male, female-female and male-male pairs). In these social contexts we measured individual and population asymmetries in individual behaviors (circling asymmetry, wing use) and dyadic behaviors (relative position and orientation between two flies) in five different genotypes. We reasoned that if coordination between individuals drives alignment of behavioral asymmetries, greater alignment at the population-level should be observed in social contexts compared to solitary individuals. We observed that the presence of other individuals influenced the behavior and position of flies but had unexpected effects with respect to individual and population asymmetries: individual-level asymmetries were strong and modulated by the social context but population-level asymmetries were mild or absent. Moreover, the strength of individual-level asymmetries differed between strains, but this was not the case for population-level asymmetries. These findings suggest that the degree of social interaction found in Drosophila is insufficient to drive population-level behavioral asymmetries.

scholarly journals Wild acorn woodpeckers recognize associations between individuals in other groups

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1882) ◽  
pp. 20181017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Pardo ◽  
Emilee A. Sparks ◽  
Tejal S. Kuray ◽  
Natasha D. Hagemeyer ◽  
Eric L. Walters ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Substantial Effect ◽  
Social Intelligence Hypothesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Melanerpes Formicivorus ◽  
Acorn Woodpeckers

According to the social intelligence hypothesis, understanding the cognitive demands of the social environment is key to understanding the evolution of intelligence. Many important socio-cognitive abilities, however, have primarily been studied in a narrow subset of the social environment—within-group social interactions—despite the fact that between-group social interactions often have a substantial effect on fitness. In particular, triadic awareness (knowledge about the relationships and associations between others) is critical for navigating many types of complex social interactions, yet no existing study has investigated whether wild animals can track associations between members of other social groups. We investigated inter-group triadic awareness in wild acorn woodpeckers ( Melanerpes formicivorus ), a socially complex group-living bird. We presented woodpeckers with socially incongruous playbacks that simulated two outsiders from different groups calling together, and socially congruous playbacks that simulated two outsiders from the same group calling together. Subjects responded more quickly to the incongruous playbacks, suggesting that they were aware that the callers belonged to two different groups. This study provides the first demonstration that animals can recognize associations between members of other groups under natural circumstances, and highlights the importance of considering how inter-group social selection pressures may influence the evolution of cognition.

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