Dominance network structure across reproductive contexts in the cooperatively breeding cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher

作     者：Cody J. DEY Q.Y. Joanne TAN Constance M. O'CONNOR Adam R. REDDON J. Ryan CALDWELL Sigal BALSHINE 

作者机构：Department of Biology McMaster University Hamilton Ontario ON L8S 4K1 Canada Department of Psychology Neuroscience and Behaviour McMaster University Hamilton Ontario L8S 4L8 Canada 

出 版 物：《Current Zoology》 (动物学报（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2015年第61卷第1期

页      面：45-54页

核心收录：

学科分类：0710[理学-生物学] 080904[工学-电磁场与微波技术] 0810[工学-信息与通信工程] 07[理学] 0809[工学-电子科学与技术（可授工学、理学学位）] 08[工学] 080402[工学-测试计量技术及仪器] 0804[工学-仪器科学与技术] 081001[工学-通信与信息系统] 071002[理学-动物学] 

基　　金：Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada 

主　　题：Social network Aggression Submissive Hierarchy Parental care P* model 

摘      要：While a large number of studies have described animal social networks, we have a poor understanding of how these networks vary with ecological and social conditions. For example, reproductive periods are an important life-history stage that may involve changes in dominance relationships among individuals, yet no study to date has compared social networks of do- minance interactions （i.e. dominance networks） across reproductive contexts. We first analyzed a long-term dataset on captive so- cial groups of the cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologuspulcher, and found that eviction events were significantly more common around reproduction than expected by chance. Next, we compared the structure of dominance networks during early pa- rental care and non-reproductive periods, using one of the first applications of exponential random graph models in behavioral biology. Contrary to our predictions, we found that dominance networks showed few changes between early parental care and non-reproductive periods. We found no evidence that dominance interactions became more skewed towards larger individuals, became more frequent between similar-sized individuals, or became more biased towards a particular sex during parental care. However, we did find that there were relatively more dominance interactions between opposite-sex dyads in the early parental care period, which may be a by-product of increased sexual interactions during this time. This is the first study in behavioral ecology to compare social networks using exponential random graph modeling, and demonstrates a powerful analytical framework for future studies in the field [Current Zoology 61 （1）： 45-54, 2015].