Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme

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SYSO: Collective Social Dynamics from Animals to Humans

SYSO 1: Collective social dynamics from animals to humans

SYSO 1.5: Invited Talk

Thursday, September 8, 2022, 11:45–12:15, H1

Collective dynamics and physiological interactions in bird colonies — •Hanja Brandl — University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany — Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Konstanz, Germany — University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Social behaviours can help animals survive in harsh and unpredictable environments by giving them access to information about where resources are or the presence of predators. To reap these benefits requires individuals to form and maintain social bonds with others, then enabling them to coordinate key activities such as foraging together or to synchronise reproduction. However, the social networks that form among individuals promote not only benefits. Social connectivity can also have negative consequences, such as the transmission of physiological stress from one individual to another. As humans, we have all experienced situations where interacting with stressed friends or family members has made us feel stressed ourselves. As the stress response is highly conserved across vertebrates, it is highly likely that stress transmission is common in other animal societies and could amplify the effects of stress exposure in animal collectives; yet, its consequences remain almost completely unexplored.

In this talk, I present findings from my research on avian societies in the wild and the laboratory, using behavioural experiments and fine-scale tracking to unravel the mechanisms, functions, and consequences of birds' social bonds. I discuss methods, frameworks, and limitations in studying animal social networks using examples from my work on zebra finches, but will also give an outlook into other study systems.