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opencc-by-4.0Dec 2019View details →

Mild-to-moderate, but not high, schizotypy relates to physiological arousal from social stress

This dataset contains raw data of heart rate during speech (e.g. HR_speech_0_30), heart rate during a discussion (e.g. HR_discussion_0_30), skin conductance/galvanic skin response during speech (e.g. Speech_GSR0_30_Pra), skin conductance/galvanic skin response during a discussion (e.g. Discussion_GSR0_30_Pra), participant scores on the Oxford-Liverpool inventory of feelings and experiences (O-LIFE), schizotypal personality question (SPQ), Positive and Negative Affect scale (PANAS), and Leibowitz social anxiety scale (LSAS). The LSAS has the following sub scales: fear (e.g. LSAS_F_1) and avoidance (e.g. LSAS_Av_1).

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2020View details →

Citizen Science in the Social Sciences and Humanities

The aim of the study was to develop a more integrated understanding of the extent and ways the social sciences and humanities (SSH) are represented and dealt with in current citizen science (CS) practice. To achieve this, a meta-synthesis methodology was adopted to identify and examine all related cases reported in the research literature.  Five research questions were formulated as follows: 1) What methodological approaches and roles of citizens are used by CS projects and activities claiming to pertain to SSH? 2) What disciplinary fields within SSH do these CS projects encompass and what do diverse interdisciplinary synergies piece together? 3) What are the SSH topics that have engrossed or attracted most of the interest in CS practice so far? 4) What purposes are defined to incorporate SSH in CS projects? and 5) What are the benefits of citizen-generated data?  To select relevant papers two of the largest databases were opted: a) Clarivate Analytics Core Collection (Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Science Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Conference Proceeding Citation Index - Science Edition & Social Science & Humanities Edition), and b) EBSCOhost research databases. A combination of two keywords only was used as subject terms/topics (e.g. citizen science AND social sciences > TS=(citizen AND science) AND TS=(natural AND sciences)). Search results were retrieved twice, in October 2018 and in January 2019. At the pre-identification stage, 2763 records were retrieved. At the identification stage, 1244 full-text papers were included in the sample. At the screening stage, 344 full-text papers in English, Spanish and French were identified and submitted to a preliminary meta-synthesis. In total, 62 papers were selected for being relevant and providing most of the data needed.

opencc-by-4.0May 2020View details →

Dataset of the study "Think globally, act locally": A glocal approach to old and new literacies for social media skills

This Zenodo item contains the dataset of the study: Manca, S., Bocconi, S., & Gleason, B. (2020). “Think globally, act locally”. A glocal approach to old and new literacies for social media skills. Computers & Education. Abstract Despite the documented number of studies that investigate social media in teaching and learning settings, the topic of social media literacy is still an under-researched area. This study adopts the theoretical lens of New Literacy studies to suggest a combined perspective for investigating social media literacies. This perspective considers both social media skills that are transversal across different social media (global skills) or that pertain to a specific social media platform (local skills). It examines practices that are decontextualized (literacy as something to be acquired) or situated and context-dependent (literacy through participation). To map current research on social media skills, a systematic literature review was conducted. Analysis of 54 publications was carried out following the UNESCO DLGF framework for digital literacy competencies, and also using a critical lens based on four metaphors whereby, for learning purposes, social media are seen as a tool, as a process, as collaboration, and as participation. The results show that most of the studies consider global social media skills, while only a few examine skills sets specific to a particular social media platform. Besides, most of the identified skills concern decontextualized practices, with very few studies emphasizing the importance of fostering situated social media practices. We conclude that there is a need for more expansive theoretical elaboration in the field, and provide a number of recommendations for investigating, understanding, and designing educational curricula and activities that support the development of social media literacy.

opencc-by-nc-nd-4.0Jun 2020View details →

Social contact data for Zimbabwe

Social contact data for Zimbabwe. In this study, participants reported all the contacts that they had and where they spent their time during two consecutive, randomly assigned, days.

opencc-zeroJun 2020View details →

Data from: Dunnock social status correlates with sperm speed, but fast sperm does not always equal high fitness

Sperm competition theory predicts that males should modulate sperm investment according to their social status. Sperm speed, one proxy of sperm quality, also influences the outcome of sperm competition because fast sperm cells may fertilize eggs before slow sperm cells. We evaluated whether the social status of males predicted their sperm speed in a wild population of dunnocks (Prunella modularis). In addition to the traditional analysis of the average speed of sperm cells per sample, we also analyzed subsamples of the fastest sperm cells per sample. In other words, we systematically evaluated the effects of including different numbers of the fastest sperm in our analyses, ranging from the 5-fastest sperm cells to the 100-fastest sperm cells in a sample. We further evaluated whether fitness, defined here as the number of chicks sired per male per breeding season, relates to the sperm speed in the same population. We found that males in monogamous pairings (i.e. low levels of sperm competition), produced the slowest sperm cells whereas subordinate males in polyandrous male-male coalitions, (i.e. high levels of sperm competition), produced the fastest sperm cells. This result was consistent regardless of the number of fastest sperm included in our analyses, but statistical support was conditional on the number of sperm cells included in the analysis. Interestingly, we found no significant relationship between fitness and sperm speed, which suggests that it is possible that the differential mating opportunities across social status leveled out any possible difference. Our study also suggests that it is important to identify biologically meaningful subsets of fastest sperm and cutoffs for inclusions for assessing sperm competition via sperm speed

opencc-by-4.0Jul 2020View details →

SemEval-2020 Task 12: Multilingual Offensive Language Identification in Social Media (OffensEval 2020)

The task involves three subtasks corresponding to the hierarchical taxonomy of the OLID schema (Zampieri et al., 2019) from OffensEval 2019. The task featured five languages and this upload is for the English language. In addition, English also featured Subtasks B and C. OffensEval 2020 was one of the most popular tasks at SemEval-2020 attracting a large number of participants across all subtasks and also across all languages. A total of 528 teams signed up to participate in the task, 145 teams submitted systems during the evaluation period, and 70 submitted system description papers. This upload includes a test set used in the paper describing the dataset used in the shared task as well as the official test set used in the shared task. The evaluation phase for English is available on Codalab: <a href="https://competitions.codalab.org/competitions/23285">https://competitions.codalab.org/competitions/23285</a> The Website for the shared task is <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/offensevalsharedtask/home">https://sites.google.com/site/offensevalsharedtask/home</a>

opencc-zeroJul 2020View details →

Data from: Understanding the social dynamics of breeding phenology: indirect genetic effects and assortative mating in a long distance migrant

Phenological traits, such as the timing of reproduction, are often influenced by social interactions between paired individuals. Such partner effects may occur when pair members affect each other's pre-breeding environment. Partner effects can be environmentally and/or genetically determined, and quantifying direct and indirect genetic effects is important for understanding the evolutionary dynamics of phenological traits. Here, using 26 years of data from a pedigreed population of a migratory seabird, the common tern ( Sterna hirundo ), we investigate male and female effects on female laying date. We find that female laying date harbors both genetic and environmental variation, and is additionally influenced by the environmental, and, to a lower extent, genetic, component of her mate. We demonstrate this partner effect to be largely explained by male arrival date. Interestingly, analyses of mating patterns with respect to arrival date show mating to be strongly assortative and, using simulations, we show that this assortative mating for arrival date leads to overestimation of partner effects. Our study provides evidence for partner effects on breeding phenology in a long distance migrant, while uncovering the potential causal pathways underlying the observed effects and raising awareness for confounding effects due to assortative mating or other common environmental effects.

opencc-zeroJun 2020View details →

Data from: Social context and noise affect within and between-male song adjustments in a common passerine

Across populations, animals that inhabit areas with high anthropogenic noise produce vocalizations that differ from those inhabiting less noisy environments. Such patterns may be due to individuals rapidly adjusting their songs in response to changing noise, but individual variation is seldom explored. We tested the hypothesis that male house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) immediately adjust their songs according to changing noise, and that social context further modifies responses. We recorded songs, quantified noise, and defined social context within pairs as female fertile status and between males as number of conspecific neighbors. We used a reaction norm approach to compare song trait intercepts (between-male effects) and slopes (within-male effects) as a function of noise. Individuals immediately adjusted song duration in response to changing noise. How they achieved adjustments varied: some sang shorter and others longer songs with greater noise, and individuals varied in the extent to which they adjusted song duration. Variation in song duration could be affected by competition, as between-male noise levels interacted with number of neighbors to affect syllable duration. Neither within- nor between-male noise effects were detected for frequency traits. Rather males with fertile mates sang lower frequency songs and increased peak frequency with more neighbors. Among males, social context but not noise affected song frequency, whereas temporal structure varied between and within individuals depending on noise and social factors. Not all males adjusted signals the same way in response to noise and selection could favor different levels of variation according to noise.

opencc-zeroMar 2020View details →

Data from: Adaptive reshaping of the hormonal phenotype after social niche transition in adulthood

Phenotypic plasticity allows individuals to adjust traits to the environment. Whether long-term adjustments of the phenotype occur during later life stages is largely unknown. To address this question, we examined whether hormonal phenotypes that are shaped by the environment during adolescence can still be reshaped in full adulthood. For this, guinea pig males were either housed in mixed-sex colonies or in heterosexual pairs. In adulthood, males were individually transferred to pair housing with a female. This way, a social niche transition was induced in colony-housed males, but not in pair-housed males. Before transfer, corresponding to findings in adolescence, adult colony-housed males showed significantly higher baseline testosterone levels and lower cortisol responsiveness than pair-housed males. One month after transfer, the hormonal phenotype of colony-housed males was changed towards that of pair-housed males: animals showed comparable baseline testosterone levels and cortisol responsiveness was significantly increased in colony-housed males. This endocrine readjustment builds the basis for an adaptive behavioural tactic in the new social situation. Thus, an adaptive change of the behavioural phenotype may still occur in adulthood via modification of underlying mechanisms. This suggests a greater role for developmental plasticity in later life stages than commonly is presumed.

opencc-zeroMay 2020View details →

Data from: The evolutionary origins of natural pedagogy: Rhesus monkeys show sustained attention following nonsocial cues versus social communicative signals

The natural pedagogy hypothesis proposes that human infants preferentially attend to communicative signals from others, facilitating rapid cultural learning. In this view, sensitivity to such signals are a uniquely human adaptation and as such nonhuman animals should not produce or utilize these communicative signals. We test these evolutionary predictions by examining sensitivity to communicative cues in 206 rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) using an expectancy looking time task modeled on prior work with infants. Monkeys observed a human actor who either made eye contact and vocalized to the monkey (social cue), or waved a fruit in front of her face and produced a tapping sound (nonsocial cue). The actor then either looked at an object (referential look) or looked towards empty space (look away). We found that, unlike human infants in analogous situations, rhesus monkeys looked longer at events following nonsocial cues, regardless of the demonstrator's subsequent looking behavior. Moreover, younger and older monkeys showed similar patterns of responses across development. These results provide support for the natural pedagogy hypothesis, while also highlighting evolutionary changes in human sensitivity to communicative signals.

opencc-zeroDec 2019View details →

Data from: Quantitative genetics of the use of conspecific and heterospecific social cues for breeding site choice

Social information use for decision-making is common and affects ecological and evolutionary processes, including social aggregation, species coexistence and cultural evolution. Despite increasing ecological knowledge on social information use, very little is known about its genetic basis and therefore its evolutionary potential. Genetic variation in a trait affecting an individual's social and non-social environment may have important implications for population dynamics, interspecific interactions and for expression of other, environmentally plastic traits. We estimated repeatability, additive genetic variance and heritability of the use of conspecific and heterospecific social cues (abundance and breeding success) for breeding site choice in a population of wild collared flycatchers Ficedula albicollis. Repeatability was found for two social cues: previous year conspecific breeding success and previous year heterospecific abundance. Yet, additive genetic variances for these two social cues, and thus heritabilities, were low. This suggests that most of the phenotypic variation in the use of social cues and resulting conspecific and heterospecific social environment experienced by individuals in this population stems from phenotypic plasticity. Given the important role of social information use on ecological and evolutionary processes, more studies on genetic versus environmental determinism of social information use are needed.

opencc-zeroApr 2020View details →

Data from: Gene expression correlates of social evolution in coral reef butterflyfishes

Animals display remarkable variation in social behavior. However, outside of rodents, little is known about the neural mechanisms of social variation, and whether they are shared across species and sexes, limiting our understanding of how sociality evolves. Using coral reef butterflyfishes, we examined gene expression correlates of social variation (i.e., pair bonding vs. solitary living) within and between species and sexes. In several brain regions, we quantified gene expression of receptors important for social variation in mammals: oxytocin (OTR), arginine vasopressin (V1aR), dopamine (D1R, D2R), and mu-opioid (MOR). We found that social variation across individuals of the oval butterflyfish, Chaetodon lunulatus, is linked to differences in OTR,V1aR, D1R, D2R, and MOR gene expression within several forebrain regions in a sexually dimorphic manner. However, this contrasted with social variation among six species representing a single evolutionary transition from pair bonded to solitary living. Here, OTR expression within the supracommissural part of the ventral telencephalon was higher in pair bonded than solitary species, specifically in males. These results contribute to the emerging idea that nonapeptide, dopamine, and opioid signaling is a central theme to the evolution of sociality across individuals, although the precise mechanism may be flexible across sexes and species.

opencc-zeroJul 2020View details →

Data from: Exogenous testosterone increases the audience effect in healthy males: evidence for the social status hypothesis

Several studies have implicated testosterone in the modulation of altruistic behaviours instrumental to advancing social status. Independent studies have also shown that people tend to behave more altruistically when being watched (i.e., audience effect). To date, little is known about whether testosterone could modulate the audience effect. In the current study, we tested the effect of testosterone on altruistic behaviour using a donation task, wherein participants were asked to either accept or reject a monetary transfer to a charity organization accompanying a personal cost either in the presence or absence of an observer. We administered testosterone gel or placebo to healthy young men (n = 140) in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, mixed design. Our results showed that participants were more likely to accept the monetary transfer to the charity when being observed compared to when they completed the task alone. More importantly, this audience effect was amplified among people receiving testosterone vs. placebo. Our findings suggest that testosterone administration increases the audience effect and further buttress the social status hypothesis, according to which testosterone promotes status-seeking behaviour in a context-dependent manner.

Data from: Juvenile social dynamics reflect adult reproductive strategies in bottlenose dolphins

The juvenile period is a challenging life history stage, especially in species with a high degree of fission-fusion dynamics, such as bottlenose dolphins, where maternal protection is virtually absent. Here, we examined how juvenile male and female bottlenose dolphins navigate this vulnerable period. Specifically, we examined their grouping patterns, activity budget, network dynamics, and social associations in the absence of adults. We found that juveniles live in highly dynamic groups, with group composition changing every 10 minutes on average. Groups were generally segregated by sex, and segregation was driven by same-sex preference rather than opposite-sex avoidance. Juveniles formed strong associations with select individuals, especially kin and same-sex partners, and both sexes formed cliques with their preferred partners. Sex-specific strategies in the juvenile period reflected adult reproductive strategies, in which the exploration of potential social partners may be more important for males (which form long-term alliances in adulthood) than females (which preferentially associate with kin in adulthood). Females spent more time alone and were more focused on foraging than males, but still formed close same-sex associations, especially with kin. Males cast a wider social net than females, with strong same-sex associations and many male associates. Males engaged in more affiliative behavior than females. These results are consistent with the social bonds and skills hypothesis and suggest that delayed sexual maturity in species with relational social complexity may allow individuals to assess potential associates and explore a complex social landscape without the risks associated with sexual maturity (e.g. adult reproductive competition; inbreeding).

No, you go first: phenotype and social context affect house sparrow neophobia

Novel object trials are commonly used to assess aversion to novelty (neophobia), and previous work has shown neophobia can be influenced by the social environment, but whether the altered behaviour persists afterwards (social learning) is largely unknown in wild animals. We assessed house sparrow (Passer domesticus) novel object responses before, during, and after being paired with a conspecific of either similar or different behavioral phenotype. During paired trials, animals housed with a similar or more neophobic partner demonstrated an increased aversion to novel objects. This change did not persist a week after unpairing, but neophobia decreased after unpairing in birds previously housed with a less neophobic partner. We also compared novel object responses to non-object control trials to validate our experimental procedure. Our results provide evidence of social learning in a highly successful invasive species, and an interesting asymmetry in the effects of social environment on neophobia behavior depending on the animal's initial behavioral phenotype.

Bonds of bros and brothers: Kinship and social bonding in post-dispersal male macaques

Group-living animals often maintain a few very close affiliative relationships – social bonds – that can buffer them against many of the inevitable costs of gregariousness. Kinship plays a central role in the development of such social bonds. The bulk of research on kin biases in sociality has focused on philopatric females, who typically live in deeply kin-structured systems, with matrilineal dominance rank inheritance and life-long familiarity between kin. Closely related males, in contrast, are usually not close in rank or familiar, which offers the opportunity to test the importance of kinship per se in the formation of social bonds. So far, however, kin biases in male social bonding have only been tested in philopatric males, where familiarity remains a confounding factor. Here, we studied bonds between male Assamese macaques, a species in which males disperse from their natal groups, and in which male bonds are known to affect fitness. Combining extensive behavioural data on 43 adult males over a 10-year period with DNA microsatellite relatedness analyses, we find that post-dispersal males form stronger relationships with the few close kin available in the group than with the average non-kin. However, males form the majority of their bonds with non-kin, and may choose non-kin over available close kin to bond with. Our results show that kinship facilitates bond formation, but is not a prerequisite for it, which suggests that strong bonds are not restricted to kin in male mammals and that animals cooperate for both direct and indirect fitness benefits.

Dynamic shifts in social network structure and composition within a breeding hybrid population

1. Mating behavior and the timing of reproduction can inhibit genetic exchange between closely related species; however, these reproductive barriers are challenging to measure within natural populations. Social network analysis provides promising tools for studying the social context of hybridization, and the exchange of genetic variation, more generally. 2. We test how social networks within a hybrid population of California (Callipepla californica) and Gambel's quail (Callipepla gambelii) change over discrete periods of a breeding season. We assess patterns of phenotypic and genotypic assortment, and ask whether altered associations between individuals (association rewiring), or changes to the composition of the population (individual turnover) drive network dynamics. We use genetic data to test whether social associations and relatedness between individuals correlate with patterns of parentage within the hybrid population. 3. To achieve these aims, we combine RFID association data, phenotypic data, and genomic measures with social network analyses. We adopt methods from the ecological network literature to quantify shifts in network structure and to partition changes into those due to individual turnover and association rewiring. We integrate genomic data into networks as node-level attributes (ancestry) and edges (relatedness, parentage) to test links between social and parentage networks. 4. We show that rewiring of associations between individuals that persist across network periods, rather than individual turnover, drives the majority of the changes in network structure throughout the breeding season, and that the traits involved in phenotypic/genotypic assortment were highly dynamic over time. Social networks were randomly assorted based upon genetic ancestry, suggesting weak behavioral reproductive isolation within this hybrid population. Finally, we show that the strength of associations within the social network, but not levels of genetic relatedness, predict patterns of parentage. 5. Social networks play an important role in population processes such as the transmission of disease and information, yet there has been less focus on how networks influence the exchange of genetic variation. By integrating analyses of social structure, phenotypic assortment, and reproductive outcomes within a hybrid zone, we demonstrate the utility of social networks for analyzing links between social context and gene flow within wild populations. 08-Jul-2020