The emergent properties of a dolphin social network

TL;DR

This study reveals that a dolphin social network exhibits complex, scale-free properties similar to human and technological networks, maintaining cohesion despite random or targeted removals of individuals.

Contribution

It is the first to analyze the emergent properties of an animal social network, showing its resilience and scale-free structure akin to other complex networks.

Findings

Dolphin social network follows a scale-free power-law distribution.

Network remains connected despite random removal of individuals.

Targeted removal affects information pathways but not overall cohesion.

Abstract

Many complex networks, including human societies, the Internet, the World Wide Web and power grids, have surprising properties that allow vertices (individuals, nodes, Web pages, etc.) to be in close contact and information to be transferred quickly between them. Nothing is known of the emerging properties of animal societies, but it would be expected that similar trends would emerge from the topology of animal social networks. Despite its small size (64 individuals), the Doubtful Sound community of bottlenose dolphins has the same characteristics. The connectivity of individuals follows a complex distribution that has a scale-free power-law distribution for large k. In addition, the ability for two individuals to be in contact is unaffected by the random removal of individuals. The removal of individuals with many links to others does affect the length of the information path between two individuals, but, unlike other scale-free networks, it does not fragment the cohesion of the social network. These self-organizing phenomena allow the network to remain united, even in the case of catastrophic death events.