Social Complex Systems as Multiscale Phenomena: From the Genome to Animal Societies

Ilvanna Salas, Sebastián Abades

2021

Abstract

For decades, researchers have studied animal social phenomena and aimed to answer: What is social complexity? Are some animals more socially complex than others? However, social complexity concepts are far from agreed and the field is still open to new research approaches. In this position paper, we propose to frame social complexity as a problem of organized complexity (whereby multiple scales and interactions across components produce patterns and organization). To improve our understanding of sociality, we encourage building a “social complexity theory” at the intersection of complex systems, behavioral ecology, and social systems concepts. This manuscript highlights the importance of considering social complexity as a multiscale phenomenon and raise the presence of trade-offs between scales. We illustrate the relationship between complexity and scales with examples from genomic to population scale in animal societies. Moreover, we suggest giving special attention to genome-scale studies to provide a common ground for comparing complexity among animal species and put forward comparative genomics as an approximation to drive the understanding of the evolution of social complexity.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Salas I. and Abades S. (2021). Social Complex Systems as Multiscale Phenomena: From the Genome to Animal Societies. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Complexity, Future Information Systems and Risk - Volume 1: COMPLEXIS, ISBN 978-989-758-505-0, pages 100-106. DOI: 10.5220/0010492801000106

in Bibtex Style

@conference{complexis21,
author={Ilvanna Salas and Sebastián Abades},
title={Social Complex Systems as Multiscale Phenomena: From the Genome to Animal Societies},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Complexity, Future Information Systems and Risk - Volume 1: COMPLEXIS,},
year={2021},
pages={100-106},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010492801000106},
isbn={978-989-758-505-0},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Complexity, Future Information Systems and Risk - Volume 1: COMPLEXIS,
TI - Social Complex Systems as Multiscale Phenomena: From the Genome to Animal Societies
SN - 978-989-758-505-0
AU - Salas I.
AU - Abades S.
PY - 2021
SP - 100
EP - 106
DO - 10.5220/0010492801000106