Data from: Knockouts of high-ranking males have limited impact on baboon social networks

Social network structures can crucially impact complex social processes such as collective behaviour or the transmission of information and diseases. However, currently it is poorly understood how social networks change over time. Previous studies on primates suggest that ‘knockouts’ (due to death or dispersal) of high-ranking individuals might be important drivers for structural changes in animal social networks. Here we test this hypothesis using long-term data on a natural population of baboons, examining the effects of 29 natural knockouts of alpha or beta males on adult female social networks. We investigated whether and how knockouts affected (1) changes in grooming and association rates among adult females, and (2) changes in mean degree and global clustering coefficient in these networks. The only significant effect that we found was a decrease in mean degree in grooming networks in the first month after knockouts, but this decrease was rather small, and grooming networks rebounded to baseline levels by the second month after knockouts. Taken together our results indicate that the removal of high-ranking males has only limited or no lasting effects on social networks of adult female baboons. This finding calls into question the hypothesis that the removal of high-ranking individuals has a destabilizing effect on social network structures in social animals.社交网络结构可对群体行为、信息与疾病传播等复杂社会过程产生关键影响。但目前学界对社交网络随时间演变的规律仍缺乏足够认知。此前针对灵长类的研究表明，高顺位个体因死亡或扩散发生的移除事件（knockouts），或为驱动动物社交网络结构变化的重要因素。本研究依托某自然种群狒狒的长期监测数据，检验上述假说：分析29起阿尔法（alpha）或贝塔（beta）雄性的自然移除事件对成年雌性社交网络的影响，具体考察两项内容：(1) 成年雌性间理毛行为与社交关联频次的变化；(2) 对应网络的平均度（mean degree）与全局聚类系数（global clustering coefficient）的变化。本研究仅观测到一项显著效应：移除事件发生后的首月，理毛网络的平均度出现小幅下降，但该降幅有限，且理毛网络在移除事件发生后的第二个月便恢复至基线水平。综合来看，本研究结果表明，高顺位雄性的移除仅对成年雌性狒狒的社交网络产生有限或无持久影响。这一发现对「高顺位个体移除会对群居动物的社交网络结构造成破坏效应」的假说提出了质疑。