Social organisation in animals takes many forms. It includes assemblages of territorial
animals, dominance hierarchies and social groups, among other things. The basic tenet that …

Highlights•The richness of animal social complexity is inherently challenging to quantify.•We
briefly summarize five approaches to measuring social complexity.•We propose using three …

Studying animal societies needs detailed observation of many individuals, but technological
advances offer new opportunities in this field. Here, we present a state-of-the-art drone …

Simple Summary Multilevel societies are the most complex social structures in animals.
They are social structures with nested levels of social organization, where stable “core units” …

Objectives Although conflicts between groups over valuable resources are common in the
animal kingdom, an individual's strategy toward out‐group individuals may differ according …

Sexual dimorphism in ornamentation in primates may have been sexually selected as
signals of rank and dominance to males or by augmenting attractiveness to females. While …

The study of non-human multilevel societies can give us insights into how group-level
relationships function and are maintained in a social system, but their mechanisms are still …

Social networks are the result of interactions between individuals at different temporal
scales. Thus, sporadic intergroup encounters and individual forays play a central role in …

Non-social factors can influence animal social structure. In killer whales (Orcinus orca), fish-
versus mammal-eating ecological differences are regarded as key ecological drivers of their …

Long-lived animals across a range of taxa display substantial social complexity that often
includes hierarchical modularity of their social structures. A complete understanding of how …