ORCID Profile
0000-0001-7183-4115
Current Organisation
University of Oxford
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Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 06-2016
Abstract: Animals regularly use information from others to shape their decisions. Yet, determining how changes in social structure affect information flow and social learning strategies has remained challenging. We manipulated the social structure of a large community of wild songbirds by controlling which in iduals could feed together at automated feeding stations (selective feeders). We then provided novel ephemeral food patches freely accessible to all birds and recorded the spread of this new information. We demonstrate that the discovery of new food patches followed the experimentally imposed social structure and that birds disproportionately learnt from those whom they could forage with at the selective feeders. The selective feeders reduced the number of conspecific information sources available and birds subsequently increased their use of information provided by heterospecifics. Our study demonstrates that changes to social systems carry over into pathways of information transfer and that in iduals learn from tutors that provide relevant information in other contexts.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 19-04-2018
Publisher: American Medical Association (AMA)
Date: 07-2018
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 04-2015
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.150057
Abstract: Both social and ecological factors influence population process and structure, with resultant consequences for phenotypic selection on in iduals. Understanding the scale and relative contribution of these two factors is thus a central aim in evolutionary ecology. In this study, we develop a framework using null models to identify the social and spatial patterns that contribute to phenotypic structure in a wild population of songbirds. We used automated technologies to track 1053 in iduals that formed 73 737 groups from which we inferred a social network. Our framework identified that both social and spatial drivers contributed to assortment in the network. In particular, groups had a more even sex ratio than expected and exhibited a consistent age structure that suggested local association preferences, such as preferential attachment or avoidance. By contrast, recent immigrants were spatially partitioned from locally born in iduals, suggesting differential dispersal strategies by phenotype. Our results highlight how different scales of social decision-making, ranging from post-natal dispersal settlement to fission–fusion dynamics, can interact to drive phenotypic structure in animal populations.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-05-2019
DOI: 10.1002/WPS.20617
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-2018
DOI: 10.1111/JAV.01740
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 22-09-2015
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 17-05-2017
Abstract: Understanding the consequences of losing in iduals from wild populations is a current and pressing issue, yet how such loss influences the social behaviour of the remaining animals is largely unexplored. Through combining the automated tracking of winter flocks of over 500 wild great tits ( Parus major ) with removal experiments, we assessed how in iduals' social network positions responded to the loss of their social associates. We found that the extent of flockmate loss that in iduals experienced correlated positively with subsequent increases in the number of their social associations, the average strength of their bonds and their overall connectedness within the social network (defined as summed edge weights). Increased social connectivity was not driven by general disturbance or changes in foraging behaviour, but by modifications to fine-scale social network connections in response to losing their associates. Therefore, the reduction in social connectedness expected by in idual loss may be mitigated by increases in social associations between remaining in iduals. Given that these findings demonstrate rapid adjustment of social network associations in response to the loss of previous social ties, future research should examine the generality of the compensatory adjustment of social relations in ways that maintain the structure of social organization.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-10-2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 24-10-2017
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 04-2015
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 20-12-2018
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2015
DOI: 10.1016/J.CUB.2015.09.075
Abstract: Social relationships are fundamental to animals living in complex societies. The extent to which in iduals base their decisions around their key social relationships, and the consequences this has on their behavior and broader population level processes, remains unknown. Using a novel experiment that controlled where in idual wild birds (great tits, Parus major) could access food, we restricted mated pairs from being allowed to forage at the same locations. This introduced a conflict for pair members between maintaining social relationships and accessing resources. We show that in iduals reduce their own access to food in order to sustain their relationships and that in idual foraging activity was strongly influenced by their key social counterparts. By affecting where in iduals go, social relationships determined which conspecifics they encountered and consequently shaped their other social associations. Hence, while resource distribution can determine in iduals' spatial and social environment, we illustrate how key social relationships themselves can govern broader social structure. Finally, social relationships also influenced the development of social foraging strategies. In response to forgoing access to resources, maintaining pair bonds led in iduals to develop a flexible "scrounging" strategy, particularly by scrounging from their pair mate. This suggests that behavioral plasticity can develop to ameliorate conflicts between social relationships and other demands. Together, these results illustrate the importance of considering social relationships for explaining behavioral variation due to their significant impact on in idual behavior and demonstrate the consequences of key relationships for wider processes.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Josh Firth.