scholarly journals Plumage manipulation alters the integration of social behavior, physiology, internal microbiome, and fitness

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Conor C. Taff ◽  
Cedric Zimmer ◽  
David Scheck ◽  
Thomas A. Ryan ◽  
Jennifer L. Houtz ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTSignals often covary with physiological and behavioral traits to form an axis of integrated phenotypic variation associated with reproductive performance. This pattern of phenotypic integration could result from intrinsic between-individual differences that are causally related to signal production, physiology, and behavior. Alternatively, signal expression itself might generate dynamic feedback between physiology, behavior, and the experienced social environment, resulting in an integrated phenotype. Here, we manipulated the plumage of female tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) to decouple the expression of a social signal from any pre-existing behavioral or physiological differences. We collected a time series of physiological samples, monitored social interactions with a sensor network, and tracked reproductive performance. Relative to sham controls, dulled females experienced an altered social environment; overall, these females were visited more by conspecific females and less by males. Dulled females subsequently changed their own behavior by initiating fewer interactions and increasing nestling provisioning. These differences resulted in an altered internal microbiome and glucose levels and, ultimately, dulled females produced more offspring. Moreover, dulled females produced larger clutches than control females in the year after the manipulation. Thus, signal variation alone—independent from any pre-existing differences—had a sustained causal affect on a suite of integrated traits. This finding suggests that dynamic feedback may play an important role in coordinating an integrated signaling phenotype. Our results have implications for understanding how variation in signal expression arises and is maintained and the extent to which the information encoded in signals is contingent upon their use in a social environment.

2014 ◽  
Vol 281 (1775) ◽  
pp. 20132680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cody J. Dey ◽  
James Dale ◽  
James S. Quinn

Signals of dominance and fighting ability (i.e. status signals) are found in a wide range of taxa and are used to settle disputes between competitive rivals. Most previous research has considered status-signal phenotype as an attribute of the individual; however, it is more likely that signal expression is an emergent property that also incorporates aspects of the social environment. Furthermore, because an individual's signal phenotype is likely to influence its social interactions, the relationships between status signals, social environment and individual quality are probably much more complex than previously appreciated. Here, we explore the dynamic relationship between social interactions and signal expression in a previously undescribed status signal, the frontal shield of the pukeko ( Porphyrio porphyrio melanotus : Aves). We demonstrate that frontal shield size is a strong predictor of dominance status within social groups, even after controlling for potentially confounding variables. Then, we evaluate the relationship between social interactions and signal expression by testing whether manipulating apparent shield size influences (i) dominance interactions and (ii) future signal expression. By showing that decreasing apparent shield size causes both an increase in the amount of aggression received and a decrease in an individual's true shield size, we provide the first evidence of dynamic feedback between signal expression and social interactions. Our study provides important insight into the role of receiver-dependent (i.e. social) costs in maintaining signal honesty and demonstrates a unique approach to studying status signalling applicable to future studies on dynamic morphological signals.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0192513X2098555
Author(s):  
Shiv Ratan Agrawal

The present study was an attempt to identify the most prevailing means of digital devices and its impact as digital pollution on family and social interactions. Despite the obvious benefits of digital devices, in recent years researchers have taken more concern about its potential negative effect on human attitude and behavior, which in turn affects our society. A total of 613 usable responses were collected from Bangalore, India of excessive users of digital devices, such as a smartphone, computer/laptop, and television. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 23.0, AMOS 23.0, and SmartPLS 3.0. The results indicated that as the use of smartphone and computer/laptop increases, levels of digital pollution also increase, which in turn significantly triggers unfavorable impact on family and social interactions. The study indicated that digital pollution appears as an important predictor, which significantly affects social interaction unfavorably. The present study explored the various critical dimensions within this domain and delineated gaps in our knowledge of digital pollution. It was found that smartphones are more responsible for digital pollution among all the identified digital devices, followed by computer/laptop.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedikt Holtmann ◽  
Julia Buskas ◽  
Matthew Steele ◽  
Kristaps Solokovskis ◽  
Jochen B. W. Wolf

Abstract Cooperation is a prevailing feature of many animal systems. Coalitionary aggression, where a group of individuals engages in coordinated behaviour to the detriment of conspecific targets, is a form of cooperation involving complex social interactions. To date, evidence has been dominated by studies in humans and other primates with a clear bias towards studies of male-male coalitions. We here characterize coalitionary aggression behaviour in a group of female carrion crows consisting of recruitment, coordinated chase, and attack. The individual of highest social rank liaised with the second most dominant individual to engage in coordinated chase and attack of a lower ranked crow on several occasions. Despite active intervention by the third most highly ranked individual opposing the offenders, the attack finally resulted in the death of the victim. All individuals were unrelated, of the same sex, and naïve to the behaviour excluding kinship, reproduction, and social learning as possible drivers. Instead, the coalition may reflect a strategy of the dominant individual to secure long-term social benefits. Overall, the study provides evidence that members of the crow family engage in coordinated alliances directed against conspecifics as a possible means to manipulate their social environment.


2009 ◽  
Vol 106 (17) ◽  
pp. 7203-7208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei-Yu Wang ◽  
Anna Protheroe ◽  
Andrew N. Clarkson ◽  
Floriane Imhoff ◽  
Kyoko Koishi ◽  
...  

Many behavioral traits and most brain disorders are common to males and females but are more evident in one sex than the other. The control of these subtle sex-linked biases is largely unstudied and has been presumed to mirror that of the highly dimorphic reproductive nuclei. Sexual dimorphism in the reproductive tract is a product of Müllerian inhibiting substance (MIS), as well as the sex steroids. Males with a genetic deficiency in MIS signaling are sexually males, leading to the presumption that MIS is not a neural regulator. We challenge this presumption by reporting that most immature neurons in mice express the MIS-specific receptor (MISRII) and that male Mis−/− and Misrii−/− mice exhibit subtle feminization of their spinal motor neurons and of their exploratory behavior. Consequently, MIS may be a broad regulator of the subtle sex-linked biases in the nervous system.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Snow

The lessons I have learned over the last many years seem always to come in pairs – a lesson about the findings that brings with it a lesson about life as a researcher...Lesson 1. Even as a doctoral student, I believed that the sorts of social interactions young children had with adults supported language acquisition. In 1971, when I completed my dissertation, that was a minority view, and one ridiculed by many. I was, unfortunately, deflected from a full-on commitment to research on the relationship between social environment and language development for many years by the general atmosphere of disdain for such claims. In the intervening years, of course, evidence to support the claim has accumulated, and now it is generally acknowledged that a large part of the variance among children in language skills can be explained by their language environments. This consensus might have been achieved earlier had I and others been braver about pursuing it.[Download the PDF and read more...]


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anubhuti Poudyal ◽  
Alastair van Heerden ◽  
Ashley Hagaman ◽  
Celia Islam ◽  
Ada Thapa ◽  
...  

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yilu Sun ◽  
Andrea Stevenson Won

The ability to perceive emotional states is a critical part of social interactions, shaping how people understand and respond to each other. In face-to-face communication, people perceive others’ emotions through observing their appearance and behavior. In virtual reality, how appearance and behavior are rendered must be designed. In this study, we asked whether people conversing in immersive virtual reality (VR) would perceive emotion more accurately depending on whether they and their partner were represented by realistic or abstract avatars. In both cases, participants got similar information about the tracked movement of their partners’ heads and hands, though how this information was expressed varied. We collected participants’ self-reported emotional state ratings of themselves and their ratings of their conversational partners’ emotional states after a conversation in VR. Participants’ ratings of their partners’ emotional states correlated to their partners’ self-reported ratings regardless of which of the avatar conditions they experienced. We then explored how these states were reflected in their nonverbal behavior, using a dyadic measure of nonverbal behavior (proximity between conversational partners) and an individual measure (expansiveness of gesture). We discuss how this relates to measures of social presence and social closeness.


Author(s):  
Sunkanmi Peter Ayenimo ◽  
Dipak Chauhan

This research that was completed in partial fulfillment of a master’s degree at Lough borough University examined the Influence of foreign workers' engagement barriers on Management attitude and behavior within a warehouse Organization located across three sites in Canada. Quantitative data were collected from the three operating sites of an anonymous warehouse Company.350 responses were received out of 515 questionnaires distributed. This project found a positive regression coefficient more than 40% between the variables of management commitment and the variables of the workers' engagement barriers at a 95% confidence level and a P-value less than 5%. Evidence from the open-ended questions suggested language barriers, cultural differences, discriminations, and lack of social interactions amongst the inter-racial workers were the barriers for workers' engagement in the organization.


Author(s):  
Gil G. Rosenthal

This chapter focuses on social interactions, in the broadest sense, as sources of variation in mate choice and mating preferences. These interactions can be divided into three categories corresponding to when they are specified and which individuals are involved. The first includes effects that are determined before birth and transmitted vertically from parents: epigenetic modifications to the genome and the fetal or embryonic environment. The second includes influences between birth and sexual maturity, when the phenotypes of parents and/or other sexually mature, older individuals (oblique transmission) direct the development of preferences in choosers. Experience with courters and choosers after sexual maturity, or experience with other juveniles that shapes subsequent preferences, constitutes peer (horizontal) transmission.


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