Dimensions of the social environment consistently emerge as some of the strongest predictors of fitness across a broad range of social mammals. This includes taxa spanning hundreds of millions of years of independent evolution and encompassing a highly diverse set of social relationship types. How can we understand the selective pressures that shape this diversity? Comparing social structures across species with different ecologies and kinship structures offers a promising route. However, the complexity of social behavioural data and variations in data collection methods pose significant challenges to such comparative analyses, mainly due to a lack of comparable social relationship data and the statistical methods to analyse them. In this talk, I will present MacaqueNet, a collaborative cross-species database of standardized macaque social behaviour data. I will discuss the challenges encountered in building and analysing this dataset and share insights gained from addressing them. Additionally, I will discuss my research combining comparative approaches and detailed longitudinal data to further our understanding of how kinship and environmental pressures shape social structure.
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