Among spotted hyenas, social ties are inherited (IMAGE)
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A massive study of data collected over 27 years, published today in the journal Science, sheds new light on social networks, rank and survival of spotted hyenas.
Dr. Amiyaal Ilany, a biologist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, integrates behavioral ecology, network science, and social science, to study broad aspects of social behavior in the wild. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, he developed, together with Dr. Erol Akçay, a theoretical model suggesting that social inheritance – in which offspring inherit their social bonds from their parents, either passively or by copying them – could explain the social networks of multiple species. To test their model Ilany and Akçay forged a partnership with Dr. Kay Holekamp, of Michigan State University. Holekamp had spent the previous 27 years observing wild spotted hyenas in Kenya.
Poring over Holekamp's data, which included nearly 74,000 social interactions among the spotted creatures, they were able to show, for the first time on such a large scale, that their model correctly hypothesized that a process of social inheritance determines how offspring relationships are formed and maintained. Their study also elucidates the major role that social rank plays in structuring the spotted hyena clan, and how this affects survival.
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Lily Johnson-Ulrich
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