Recognising the key role of individual recognition in social networks
Abstract
Many aspects of sociality rely on individuals recognising one another. Understanding how, when, and if individuals recognise others can yield insights into the foundations of social relationships and behaviours. Through synthesising individual recognition research in different sensory and social domains, and doing so across various related social contexts, we propose that a social network perspective can help to uncover how individual recognition may vary across different settings, species, and populations. Specifically, combining individual recognition with social networks has unrecognised potential for determining the level and relative importance of individual recognition complexity. This will provide insights not only on the ecology and evolution of individual recognition itself, but also on social structure, social transmission, and social interactions such as cooperation.
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It is likely necessary for elephants to be able to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar individuals and remember previous social interactions, so that they can account for them in future interactions with the same individual.
“This means that it is likely necessary for elephants to be able to discriminate between familiar and unfamiliar individuals and remember previous social interactions, so that they can account for them in future interactions with the same individual (Gokcekus et al., 2021; Wiley, 2013).”
From Do elephants really never forget? What we know about elephant memory and a call for further investigation (2025) · cites this paper as Gokcekus et al., 2021
The ‘Recent advances and general approaches in individual recognition’ section (p. 7) says that recalling information about individuals from previous interactions is important to many social behaviours. The social-network discussion (p. 15) also describes using another individual’s identity to adjust later behaviour. These passages support the general mechanism, but do not establish that it is necessary for elephants specifically. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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Hope, S. F., Willgohs, K. R., Dittakul, S., & Plotnik, J. M. (2025) · Learning & Behavior · doi:10.3758/s13420-024-00655-y · Cited by 8 · see citing works
- Authors
- Gokcekus, S., Firth, J. A., Regan, C., & Sheldon, B. C.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Gokcekus, Samin
- Venue
- Trends in Ecology & Evolution
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-11
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1024-1035
- ISSN
- 0169-5347 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3178355056
- Cited by
- 53
- References
- 85
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 0.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Trends in Ecology & Evolution (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/S009752/1)
- Natural Environment Research Council (NE/S010335/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Developmental Biology › Animal Vocal Communication and Behavior
- Keywords
- individual recognition, social networks, social recognition, sociality, social structure, social transmission, cooperation, sensory cues, animal social behavior
- MeSH terms
- Ecology, Humans, Social Behavior, Social Networking
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