Data from: Family network size and survival across the lifespan of female macaques

Two decades of research suggest social relationships have a common evolutionary basis in humans and other gregarious mammals. Critical to the support of this idea is growing evidence that mortality is influenced by social integration, but when these effects emerge and how long they last is mostly unknown. Here, we report in adult female macaques that the impact of number of close adult female relatives, a proxy for social integration, on survival is not experienced uniformly across the life course; prime-aged females with a greater number of relatives had better survival outcomes compared with prime-aged females with fewer relatives, whereas no such effect was found in older females. Group size and dominance rank did not influence this result. Older females were less frequent targets of aggression, suggesting enhanced experience navigating the social landscape may obviate the need for social relationships in old age. Only one study of humans has found age-based dependency in the association between social integration and survival. Using the largest dataset for any non-human animal to date, our study extends support for the idea that sociality promotes survival and suggests strategies employed across the life course change along with experience of the social world.

二十余年的研究表明，人类与其他群居哺乳动物的社会关系拥有共同的进化起源。支撑这一观点的关键证据日益增多，表明社会整合（social integration）会影响死亡率，但这类影响何时显现、持续多久，目前尚不明确。本研究以成年雌性猕猴（macaques）为对象，发现作为社会整合替代指标的成年雌性近亲数量对生存的影响，并非在整个生命历程中均匀存在：相较于近亲数量较少的壮年雌性猕猴，近亲数量更多的壮年雌性猕猴生存结局更佳，而老年雌性猕猴未观察到此类效应。群体规模与支配等级并未对该结果产生影响。老年雌性猕猴遭受攻击的频率更低，这提示随着社交经验的积累，它们或可无需在老年阶段维持社会关系。目前仅有一项针对人类的研究发现，社会整合与生存之间的关联存在年龄依赖性。本研究依托迄今规模最大的非人类动物数据集，进一步佐证了社交行为有助于生存这一观点，并表明个体在生命历程中采用的社交策略，会随着社交体验的积累而发生变化。