The ultimate payoff of behaviours depends not only on their direct impact on an individual,
but also on the impact on their relatives. Local relatedness—the average relatedness of an …

Age-related changes in the patterns of local relatedness (kinship dynamics) can be a
significant selective force shaping the evolution of life history and social behaviour. In …

Animal social networks are often constructed from point estimates of edge weights. In many
contexts, edge weights are inferred from observational data, and the uncertainty around …

Inequality between the sexes is pervasive both outside and inside the home. One
contributing factor could be the dispersal of one sex at marriage that sets up sex-specific …

Social systems vary enormously across the animal kingdom, with important implications for
ecological and evolutionary processes such as infectious disease dynamics, anti‐predator …

Understanding the evolution of menopause presents a long-standing scientific challenge 1,
2, 3—why should females cease ovulation prior to the end of their natural lifespan? In …

Affiliative social bonds are linked to fitness components in many social mammals. However,
despite their importance, little is known about how the tendency to form social bonds …

We present a user-friendly R package for fitting BISoN models and conducting a wide variety
of social network analyses. The package uses a formula-based syntax that will be familiar to …

While cooperative interactions among kin are a key building block in the societies of group-
living species, their importance for species with more variable social environments is …

Animal social systems are remarkably diverse. Linking this diversity to its ecological and
evolutionary drivers and consequences has been a major focus of biological research. Initial …