Social fluidity mobilizes contagion in human and animal populations.

ABSTRACT: Humans and other group-living animals tend to distribute their social effort disproportionately. Individuals predominantly interact with a small number of close companions while maintaining weaker social bonds with less familiar group members. By incorporating this behavior into a mathematical model, we find that a single parameter, which we refer to as social fluidity, controls the rate of social mixing within the group. Large values of social fluidity correspond to gregarious behavior, whereas small values signify the existence of persistent bonds between individuals. We compare the social fluidity of 13 species by applying the model to empirical human and animal social interaction data. To investigate how social behavior influences the likelihood of an epidemic outbreak, we deriv

SUBMITTER: Colman E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8324292 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature