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Cooperative group living.
What Is an Animal Society?
Many animals form groups, either ephemerally or permanently, including schools of fish, colonies of seabirds, or herds of ungulates. However, many fewer species form more complex social groups that are often referred to as societies (Fig. 1). Defining a “society” is a difficult task because the term has different meanings to researchers in different fields. For example, the most advanced animal societies – eusocial insect societies – are defined by three criteria: (1) overlapping generations, (2) cooperative care of young, and (3) reproductive division of labor (i.e., many individuals in a group are temporarily or permanently sterile) (Wilson 1971). Yet, many cooperatively breeding vertebrate societies are also described by the same three criteria (Sherman et al. 1995). Despite many structural similarities, there are key differences between insect and vertebrate societies, the most important being...
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References
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Rubenstein, D.R. (2018). Animal Society. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1868-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1868-1
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