Variation III: Social Environment and Epigenetics

Mate Choice ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gil G. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mate Choice ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Sexual Maturity ◽  
Horizontal Transmission ◽  
Epigenetic Modifications ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Mating Preferences ◽  
Sources Of Variation ◽  
Sexually Mature

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.

Juvenile-juvenile social signalling: a case for precocial sexual selection in the collared lizard, Crotaphytus collaris (Squamata: Crotaphytidae)?

2020 ◽  
Vol 130 (2) ◽  
pp. 336-344
Author(s):  
Stanley F Fox ◽  
Felipe De Jesús Rodríguez-Romero ◽  
Andrea Acevedo Crosby
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Sexual Maturity ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Crotaphytus Collaris ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collared Lizard ◽  
Juvenile Males ◽  
Sexually Mature

Abstract Sexual selection is widespread in animals, but quite naturally studied in adults. Juvenile males in most animals are not differentiated from females and coloration is usually drab. However, there is no reason to suspect that sexual differences cannot develop before puberty, influence social interactions, and then have fitness pay-offs later in life. Juvenile collared lizards (Crotaphytus collaris (Say, 1822)) show marked dichromatism: males develop bright dorsolateral orange bars whereas females do not. These juvenile orange bars (JOB) disappear at sexual maturity, when males develop different colour traits maintained by sexual selection. We conducted field experiments with juvenile males on their developing territories in which we utilized staged intruders of juvenile males (with JOB) and juvenile females (lacking JOB) and also juvenile male intruders whose JOB were manipulated. Residents reacted significantly more aggressively toward males vs. females, and also toward males whose JOB were emphasized with paint than those whose JOB were masked by paint. These JOB are used in signalling among juveniles and we suggest the social relations established then are retained until sexual maturation the next spring (after the JOB are lost) to benefit males that previously displayed strong JOB by increased matings in the spring as sexually mature yearlings as per a phenomenon we call precocial sexual selection.

Perceived Voice Disorders in Older Adults and Impact on Social Interactions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Connie K. Porcaro ◽  
Clare Singer ◽  
Boris Djokic ◽  
Ali A. Danesh ◽  
Ruth Tappen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Treatment Strategies ◽  
Voice Disorders ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Cross Sectional

Purpose Many aging individuals, even those who are healthy, report voice changes that can impact their ability to communicate as they once did. While this is commonly reported, most do not seek evaluation or management for this issue. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence and differences in voice disorders in older adults, along with the effect of fatigue on their social interactions. Method This is a cross-sectional investigation of a community-dwelling sample of individuals aged 60 years or older. Participants completed the Questionnaire on Vocal Performance, the Social Engagement Index subset “Engagement in Social or Leisure Activities,” and the Fatigue Severity Scale. Results Results indicated 32.5% of the 332 participants reported symptoms of voice problems with no difference found between male and female respondents. A slight increase in report of voice problems was noted with each year of age. Participants who self-reported voice problems indicated less interaction in social activities involving communication than those who did not. Finally, as severity of self-reported voice problems increased, an increase was reported by the same individuals for signs of fatigue. Conclusions Voice problems and resulting decreased social interaction are commonly experienced by older individuals. Voice symptoms in older adults have been found to benefit from evidence-based treatment strategies. It is critical to provide education to encourage older individuals to seek appropriate evaluation and management for voice issues through a speech-language pathologist or medical professional.

scholarly journals Approaches to Anti-Ageism Interventions

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 672-672
Author(s):  
Tracey Gendron ◽  
Jennifer Inker
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Self Development ◽  
And Behaviors ◽  
Aging Anxiety ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Systemic Nature

Abstract Ageism, a multidimensional construct, is also understood as a relational process whereby perceptions and behaviors toward older individuals by younger individuals not only damage the self-esteem of elders, but also create a hostile environment for their own future social interactions and their own future self-development as elders. Anti-ageism interventions have the hefty task of improving attitudes and behaviors toward aging within all of these contexts. This presentation will discuss findings from two different anti-ageism interventions both designed to mitigate the negative impacts of ageism. Results from a study on an intergenerational arts-based program found that after participation students demonstrated a positive change in their attitudes toward older adults. Findings from a video-based ageism intervention among a sample of 265 staff members in 15 senior living communities demonstrated decreased internalized aging anxiety as well as decreased ageist behaviors directly after the training and at three month post follow-up. Given the complex and systemic nature of ageism, diversity is necessary in scope and type of intervention in order to reach the broadest audience.

scholarly journals Dominance relationships and coalitionary aggression against conspecifics in female carrion crows

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedikt Holtmann ◽  
Julia Buskas ◽  
Matthew Steele ◽  
Kristaps Solokovskis ◽  
Jochen B. W. Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dominance Relationships ◽  
Dominant Individual ◽  
The Individual

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.

scholarly journals MATE CHOICE AND HUMAN STATURE: HOMOGAMY AS A UNIFIED FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING MATING PREFERENCES

Evolution ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Courtiol ◽  
Michel Raymond ◽  
Bernard Godelle ◽  
Jean-Baptiste Ferdy
Keyword(s):  
Mate Choice ◽  
Unified Framework ◽  
Mating Preferences

Exteroceptive Factors, Sexual Maturation and Reproduction in the Female Rat

1979 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. L. Norris ◽  
C. E. Adams
Keyword(s):  
Reproductive Performance ◽  
Sexual Maturation ◽  
Sexual Maturity ◽  
Mature Male ◽  
Female Rat ◽  
Vaginal Opening ◽  
Sexually Mature

Summary Keeping a sexually mature male with a weanling female rat advanced neither the time of vaginal opening nor that of 1st oestrus. In 2 of 3 experiments females kept singly after weaning reached sexual maturity significantly earlier than did grouped females. The reproductive performance of females mated at 1st oestrus was not significantly different from that of older primiparae. 26 rats gave birth to an average of 9·3 young at 59·5 days of age, and 22 of them reared 96% of the young to weaning.

scholarly journals Doubling down on serendipity

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Snow
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Doctoral Student ◽  
To Come ◽  
Minority View ◽  
The Relationship

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...]

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.

Variation in Preferences and Choices: General Considerations

Mate Choice ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gil G. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Mate Choice ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Mating Preferences ◽  
Important Constraint ◽  
Underlying Mechanisms

This chapter provides an overview of variation in mating preferences, focusing on the repeatability of mate choice. Variation in mate choice and mating preferences can arise from differences within and between individuals in any of the mechanisms used to sense, perceive, and evaluate courter signals before, during, and after mating, and in the mechanisms they use to sample and choose among mates. Preferences frequently covary with traits not directly involved with mate choice. These patterns of covariation, among preferences and between preferences and other traits, may arise either from properties internal to choosers, like shared underlying mechanisms or statistically associated genetic underpinnings, or from correlations among environmental and social variables that shape preferences. These correlations represent an important constraint on the directions in which preferences can evolve.

Resonance, Bach, and Noisy Congregations

2020 ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
Mark Porter
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Set Up

This chapter takes, as its starting provocation, Tanya Kevorkian’s suggestion that performances of Bach’s cantata compositions would originally have taken place within a somewhat noisy social environment. Drawing from the wider field of literature on listening and noise in other historical and contemporary contexts, it examines the potential for sonic interactions between different actors to set up patterns of social resonance. It draws out the consequences of taking these sonic and social interactions seriously in understandings of musical performance and experience. Many analyses consider noise primarily as a distraction to attentive listening. This chapter, however, highlights its role in processes of meaning making and in establishing different sets of relationships between performers, congregation, and the divine.

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