Interspecific social networks promote information transmission in wild songbirds

Understanding the functional links between social structure and population processes is a central aim of evolutionary ecology. Multiple types of interactions can be represented by networks drawn for the same population, such as kinship, dominance or affiliative networks, but the relative importance of alternative networks in modulating population processes may not be clear. We illustrate this problem, and a solution, by developing a framework for testing the importance of different types of association in facilitating the transmission of information. We apply this framework to experimental data from wild songbirds that form mixed-species flocks, recording the arrival (patch discovery) of individuals to novel foraging sites. We tested whether intraspecific and interspecific social networks predicted the spread of information about novel food sites, and found that both contributed to transmission. The likelihood of acquiring information per unit of connection to knowledgeable individuals ...

探明社会结构与种群过程间的功能关联，是进化生态学（evolutionary ecology）的核心研究目标之一。同一种群可构建多种类型的互动网络，例如亲缘关系（kinship）网络、支配关系（dominance）网络或亲和关系（affiliative）网络，但各类替代网络在调控种群过程中的相对重要性仍尚不明确。本研究通过构建一套用于检验不同关联类型在促进信息传播中重要性的分析框架，阐明了这一问题及其解决方案。我们将该框架应用于混群野生鸣禽的实验数据，记录了个体抵达新型觅食位点（patch discovery，斑块发现）的情况。我们检验了种内（intraspecific）与种间（interspecific）社交网络是否能预测新型觅食位点的信息传播，并发现二者均对信息传递起到了促进作用。个体与信息知晓个体的每单位连接所对应的信息获取概率……