Schroeder, J. orcid.org/0000-0002-4136-843X, Dunning, J., Chan, A.H.H. et al. (2 more authors) (2024) Not so social in old age: demography as one driver of decreasing sociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 379 (1916). 20220458. ISSN 0962-8436
Abstract
Humans become more selective with whom they spend their time, and as a result, the social networks of older humans are smaller than those of younger ones. In non-human animals, processes such as competition and opportunity can result in patterns of declining sociality with age. While there is support for declining sociality with age in mammals, evidence from wild bird populations is lacking. Here, we test whether sociality declines with age in a wild, insular bird population, where we know the exact ages of individuals. Using 6 years of sociality data, we find that as birds aged, their degree and betweenness decreased. The number of same-age birds still alive also decreased with age. Our results suggest that a longitudinal change in sociality with age may be, in part, an emergent effect of natural changes in demography. This highlights the need to investigate the changing costs and benefits of sociality across a lifetime.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | ageing; house sparrow; senescence; social network measures; sociality; Animals; Social Behavior; Aging; Age Factors |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 04 Nov 2024 12:12 |
Last Modified: | 11 Nov 2024 09:48 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0458 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rstb.2022.0458 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:219179 |