Data from: The effect of keystone individuals on collective outcomes can be mediated through interactions or behavioral persistence

Collective behavior emerges from interactions among group members who often vary in their behavior. The presence of just one or few keystone individuals, such as leaders or tutors, may have a large effect on collective outcomes. These individuals can catalyze behavioral changes in other group members thus altering group composition and collective behavior. The influence of keystone individuals on group function may lead to tradeoffs between ecological situations because the behavioral composition they facilitate may be suitable in one situation but not another. We use computer simulations to examine various mechanisms that allow keystone individuals to exert their influence on group members. We further discuss a tradeoff between two potentially conflicting collective outcomes, cooperative prey attack and disease dynamics. Our simulations match empirical data from a social spider system and produce testable predictions for the causes and consequences of the influence of keystone individuals on group composition and collective outcomes. We find that a group's behavioral composition can be impacted by the keystone individual through changes to interaction patterns and/or behavioral persistence over time. Group behavioral composition and the mechanisms that drive the distribution of phenotypes influence collective outcomes and lead to tradeoffs between disease dynamics and cooperative prey attack.

集体行为源自群体成员间的互动，而这些成员的行为往往存在个体差异。仅存在单个或少量关键个体（keystone individuals），例如群体领袖或指导者，便可能对集体结果产生显著影响。这类个体能够推动其他群体成员发生行为改变，进而改变群体组成与集体行为模式。关键个体对群体功能的影响可能会在不同生态情境间产生权衡效应，因为它们所促成的行为组成在某一场景下适配，在另一场景下却未必适用。本研究通过计算机模拟，探究关键个体对群体成员施加影响的多种潜在机制。此外，我们还探讨了两种潜在冲突的集体结果——协同捕食与疾病动态——之间的权衡关系。我们的模拟结果与社交蜘蛛系统中的实证数据相契合，并为关键个体影响群体组成与集体结果的成因及后果提供了可验证的预测。研究发现，关键个体可通过改变互动模式，或调整群体成员随时间推移的行为持续性，来影响群体的行为组成。群体行为组成以及驱动表型（phenotypes）分布的机制，会对集体结果产生影响，并在疾病动态与协同捕食之间形成权衡效应。