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Animal social interactions could speed up evolution

Scientists typically predict how species evolve by looking at their genes and the environment they live in, but new research from the University of Aberdeen has highlighted a key factor that's often overlooked: social interactions, where the genes of others play a major role in shaping the environment in animal experiences. The work is published in the journal Evolution Letters.

Researchers from the University, in collaboration with teams from the University of Exeter and Bielefeld University, analyzed 47 studies covering a wide range of animal species and found that while these "social genetic effects" are small on their own, when many interactions occur it can greatly increase the potential speed of evolution.

The most noticeable impact was on behaviors and reproductive traits, suggesting these characteristics could evolve much more rapidly compared to physical traits like body shape, or physiological traits like metabolic functions. This discovery could change the way scientists think about how certain traits evolve, especially in social species who regularly interact with each other.

Dr. David Fisher from the University of Aberdeen's School of Biological Sciences, said, "Evolution is the fundamental process underpinning the biodiversity of Earth, and so we need to understand how it works. While nearly all animals—whether they live in groups or alone—engage in social interactions at some point in their lives, the importance of these interactions for evolution has not been systematically measured before.

"For this study, we covered social interactions of all kinds—we were ultimately interested in the quantification of how much one individual is influenced by others. For instance, we looked at past work studying fighting in cattle and field crickets, pecking in captive chickens, interactions in breeding pairs of birds, mating interactions in fruit flies, and cooperative breeding in cichlid fish.