Abstract
AbstractIn pretty much any species, an individual's survival and reproduction depends crucially on the outcome of interactions with other individuals. Key interactions may take place between individuals of the same species but also between individuals belonging to different species. However, the most accepted definition of social behavior only considers interactions between conspecifics. Here, we argue that the distinction between intra‐ and interspecific interactions is largely artificial and hinders the integration of the historically separately developed concepts. At the ultimate level, given that the ecological landscape of organisms is composed both by interactions with conspecifics and with heterospecifics, and both types of interactions may have evolutionary consequences. Although intraspecific interactions usually have a higher impact in fitness because in most species interactions relevant for reproduction (mating, parenting) exclusively involve conspecifics, and interactions relevant for survival are more probable between conspecifics because they share the same ecological niche, hence competing for the same resources (e.g., food, shelter), there are notable exceptions in both fitness components (e.g., heterospecific mating in parthenogenic all‐female species; heterospecific brood parasitism; heterospecific aggression in sympatric species that compete for shared resources). At the proximate level, behaviors and cognitive decision‐making rules used to interact with other organisms may be shared between intra‐ and interspecific interactions, and the mechanistic differences between conspecific social behaviors used in distinct functional domains, such as mating, aggression, or parenting, can be more expressive than those found within the same functional domain between conspecific and heterospecific behavior. Therefore, there are neither fundamental conceptual (ultimate) reasons, nor key differences in mechanisms underlying behaviors involved in conspecific vs. heterospecific interactions that support the exclusion of interspecific interactions from the conceptual framework of social behavior.
Highlights
A key question is to what extent the functional categories of behavior observed in intraspecific interactions are homologous to those observed in heterospecific interactions
Administration of AVT causes cleaners to reduce cleaning interactions (Soares et al, 2012) and to be less willing to feed against preference (Cardoso, Teles, et al, 2015), indicating that AVT makes them perceive cleaning interactions as more competitive situations. These results suggest that oxytocin regulation of affiliative behavior in dogs and AVT regulation of social interactions in cleaner fish have been co-opted for heterospecific interactions, which may have led to the coevolution of human–dog bonds and cleaning mutualistic behavior, respectively
The aim of our paper was to highlight studies that show the similarities between intra- and interspecific interactions on both functional and mechanistic levels
Summary
Conspecific and heterospecific interactions impose similar selective pressures on sensory and cognitive mechanisms that regulate social behavior.
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