Testosterone-mediated behavior shapes the emergent properties of social networks

Abstract

AbstractSocial networks can vary in their organization and dynamics, with implications for ecological and evolutionary processes. Understanding the mechanisms that drive social network dynamics requires integrating individual-level biology with comparisons across multiple social networks.Testosterone is a key mediator of vertebrate social behavior and can influence how individuals interact with social partners. Although the effects of testosterone on individual behavior are well established, no study has examined whether hormone-mediated behavior can scale up to shape the emergent properties of social networks.We investigated the relationship between testosterone and social network dynamics in the wire-tailed manakin, a lekking bird species in which male-male social interactions form complex social networks. We used an automated proximity system to longitudinally monitor several leks and we quantified the social network structure at each lek. Our analysis examines three emergent properties of the networks: social specialization (the extent to which a network is partitioned into exclusive partnerships), network stability (the overall persistence of partnerships through time), and behavioral assortment (the tendency for like to associate with like). All three properties are expected to promote the evolution of cooperation. As the predictor, we analyzed the collective testosterone of males within each social network.Social networks that were composed of high-testosterone dominant males were less specialized, less stable, and had more negative behavioral assortment, after accounting for other factors. These results support our main hypothesis that individual-level hormone physiology can predict group-level network dynamics. We also observed that larger leks with more interacting individuals had more positive behavioral assortment, suggesting that small groups may constrain the processes of homophily and behavior-matching.Overall, these results provide evidence that hormone-mediated behavior can shape the broader architecture of social groups. Groups with high average testosterone exhibit social network properties that are predicted to impede the evolution of cooperation.