The emergent properties of a dolphin social network

TLDR

Complex networks such as human societies, the Internet, and power grids exhibit surprising properties that facilitate rapid contact and information transfer, yet the emergent properties of animal social networks remain largely unknown. The 64‑individual bottlenose dolphin community in Doubtful Sound displays a scale‑free power‑law connectivity, remains cohesive under random removal, and retains network unity even when highly connected individuals are removed, preventing fragmentation despite increased path lengths.

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.