Contagious by Nature: Understanding Optimisation of Social Networks in Wild Populations

In any society, the invisible web of diverse forms of social interactions that link individuals together can be conceptualised as their 'social network'. This network provides the pathways for socially-contagious elements to spread, which hold essential benefits (e.g. disseminating information) as well as great costs (e.g. infectious diseases). As such, 'social trade-offs' exist, whereby social connections deliver fundamentals that are essential to individuals lives and to societal functioning (e.g. new innovations, cooperative actions) but also provide transmission routes for harmful contagions (e.g. viruses).

Many questions surround these trade-offs in contagions: Where can individuals position themselves within the network to reap the benefits most important to them while avoiding the risks? Which type of social bonds and relationships shape the different contagions at play? How should a society be structured to promote positive contagions while simultaneously controlling harmful transmission? Notably, the recent COVID19 pandemic clearly exampled this, with countries struggling to maintain societal functioning while controlling the contagion. Yet, the considerations here are actually general to any social system exposed to contagions, and this proposed research aims to provide new empirically-based insights into each of the aforementioned questions, as understanding currently remains critically limited.

Here, I propose that wild animal systems are expected to be well-versed in coping with relevant social trade-offs, as social connections in these societies simultaneously act as pathways for infectious disease while also being relied upon for beneficial social transmission processes Therefore, I will capitalize on the unrecognized potential of natural animal populations for addressing these fundamental knowledge gaps, through (i) synthesising hundreds of studies quantifying wild animal social networks in great detail, and (ii) carrying out unique experiments (social manipulations) within these real-world systems. In this way, I will use the unique opportunities that natural populations offer to provide much-needed empirical insights into how social networks can be harnessed for optimising a broad range of contagion processes in real-world settings.

Through continuing my interdisciplinary collaborations with applied practitioners across fields, this fellowship will also explore three areas of wider impact, specifically focusing on (i) identifying which social interventions within human social networks can best control diseases (particularly COVID19) while causing minimal disruption, (ii) how new initiatives can be optimally spread within conservation-relevant systems to promote sustainable behaviours and (iii) how social behaviour can contribute to mental health particularly when social systems suffer disruption.

Finally, through building foundational comprehension of social behaviour and contagions, this fellowship will also develop of future lines of investigation, and construct a conceptual frameworks for examining (a) how multiple types of contagions feedback onto one another (e.g. does disease spread alter the opportunities for behavioural contagions through changing individuals' behaviours?) and (b) how contagion processes operate on longer-timeframes (e.g. how do contagions shape individuals' survival or reproduction? does the spread of behaviours shape the evolution of culture over generations?).

As such, this research will provide new scientific understanding into how real-world social networks can be optimized for varied contagions, particularly in regards to how individuals position themselves, the quantity and extent of different social bonding types, and the overall architecture of the population's social network. This will produce new fundamental scientific understanding, be used for generating broad applied impact across a range of fields, and open up new areas of advancement.