Developmental stress predicts social network position
Date
29/10/2014Funder
Grant ID
Keywords
Metadata
Show full item recordAltmetrics Handle Statistics
Altmetrics DOI Statistics
Abstract
The quantity and quality of social relationships, as captured by social network analysis, can have major fitness consequences. Various studies have shown that individual differences in social behaviour can be due to variation in exposure to developmental stress. However, whether these developmental differences translate to consistent differences in social network position is not known. We experimentally increased levels of the avian stress hormone corticosterone (CORT) in nestling zebra finches in a fully balanced design. Upon reaching nutritional independence, we released chicks and their families into two free-flying rooms, where we measured daily social networks over five weeks using passive integrated transponder tags. Developmental stress had a significant effect on social behaviour: despite having similar foraging patterns, CORT chicks had weaker associations to their parents than control chicks. Instead, CORT chicks foraged with a greater number of flock mates and were less choosy with whom they foraged, resulting in more central network positions. These findings highlight the importance of taking developmental history into account to understand the drivers of social organization in gregarious species.
Citation
Boogert , N J , Farine , D & Spencer , K A 2014 , ' Developmental stress predicts social network position ' , Biology Letters , vol. 10 , no. 10 , 20140561 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2014.0561
Publication
Biology Letters
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1744-9561Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
N.J.B. was funded by a Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research Rubicon grant and D.R.F. was funded by grants from NSF (NSF-IOS1250895) to Margaret Crofoot and BBSRC (BB/L006081/1) to Ben Sheldon. K.A.S. was funded by a BBSRC David Phillips Research Fellowship.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.