Primate social networks
Primate social networks
The order of primates shows a remarkable variety in social organization, making it appear almost predestined for social network analysis. It may also be one of the reasons why primatologists were the first to apply social network analysis to animal social behaviour. Yet, despite being ripe with opportunities, social network analysis of primates has developed relatively slowly, remaining for most of the part the speciality of a small subset of researchers. As a consequence the goal of this chapter is twofold. First, it gives a brief summary of the history of social network analysis in primatology and to discuss in general what can be learned from primatologists’ experience with social network analysis so far. Second, it highlights some outstanding questions and problems and by doing so suggest some potentially fruitful applications of social network analysis in primatology. The chapter is broken down into five sections. The first gives a brief introduction to why social network analysis is potentially useful for primatologists. The second reviews the history of social network analysis in primatology from the first sociograms of grooming interactions to the latest applications. The third section discusses how the various levels of social network analysis can, and have been, applied to primates, while the fourth section takes a look at some of the potential pitfalls and limitations of a network perspective in primatology. The chapter finishes with a tentative sketch of how social network analysis in primatology may look in the future.
Keywords: primates, grooming, network analysis, sociogram, animal social behaviour, primatology
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