The social brain hypothesis assumes the evolution of social behaviour changes animals' ecological environments, and predicts evolutionary shifts in social structure will be associated with changes in brain investment. Most social brain models to date assume social behaviour imposes additional cognitive challenges to animals, favouring the evolution of increased brain investment. Here, we presen...

Deciphering the mechanisms involved in shaping social structure is key to a deeper understanding of the evolutionary processes leading to sociality. Individual specialization within groups can increase colony efficiency and consequently productivity. Here, we test the hypothesis that within-group variation in individual personalities (i.e. boldness and aggression) can shape task differentiation...

Termites are social Dictyoptera that evolved eusociality independently from social Hymenoptera. They are characterized by unique developmental plasticity that is the basis of caste differentiation and social organization. As developmental plasticity is a result of endocrine regulation, in order to understand the evolution of termite sociality it is helpful to compare the endocrine underpinning ...

This article is the first of two papers that engage critically and productively with the relationship between the socio-economic transformations of cities, the differentiation of vulnerable groups within urban space and the distribution of transport services. This article undertakes a comprehensive review of the major conceptual and methodological approaches by which scholars and policy researc...

In this paper we develop an artificial world model to investigate how environmental conditions affect opportunities for learning. We model grouping entities that learn what to eat in a 2D environment. We study diet development and focus on the social consequences of individual learning in relation to different environmental conditions. We find that homogeneous and patchy environments have oppos...

Two types of models aim to account the origins of rank differentiation and social hierarchy in human societies. Conflict models suggest that the formation of social hierarchies is synonymous with the establishment of relationships of coercive social dominance and exploitation. Voluntary or 'integrative' models, on the other hand, suggest that rank differentiation--the differentiation of leader ...

Emotions are an inseparable part of how people use social media. While a more cognitive view on social media has initially dominated the research looking into areas such as knowledge sharing, the topic of emotions and their role on social media is gaining increasing interest. As is typical to an emerging field, there is no synthesized view on what has been discovered so far and – more important...

This paper explores the different social structures coexisting within a biology laboratory. This work draws upon an empirical study and the results are analysed using the social network analysis toolbox. We evidence that actors form links between them in order to carry out cognitive activities. Depending on the content of this activity, resulting networks can take different shapes. When dealing...