Lauren Brent: Friends, networks, and fitness in group-living animals

Lauren Brent from the University of Exeter. In humans, a lack of inter-personal relationships is associated with poorer health, and reduced survival. These findings are important because they suggest that social relationships are adaptive. Yet the depth of the association between sociality and fitness in group-living animals remains unclear, including whether it occurs in members of the dispersing sex,whether it is consistent across an individual’s life course, and whether it extends to the polyadic connections that make up most social networks. I describe what is currently known (and not known) about the relationship between social networks and fitness in a range of taxa. These results suggest the association between sociality and fitness runs deep in mammalian systems, further confirming the adaptive function of social relationships. Hosted by Alex Thornton.