Understanding why individuals carry out behaviours that benefit others, especially genetically unrelated others, has been a major undertaking in many fields and particularly in biology. Here, we focus on the cooperation literature from natural populations and present the benefits of a social network approach in terms of how it can help to identify and understand factors that influence the maintenance and spread of cooperation, but are not easily captured when solely considering independent dyadic interactions. We describe how various routes to cooperation can be tested within the social network framework. Applying the social network approach to data from natural populations can help to uncover the evolutionary and ecological pressures that lead to differences in cooperation and other social processes.

中文翻译：

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使用社交网络方法探索野生动物种群合作行为的原因和后果

了解为什么个人会做出有利于他人的行为，尤其是基因无关的其他人，一直是许多领域，尤其是生物学领域的一项重大任务。在这里，我们专注于来自自然种群的合作文献，并在如何帮助识别和理解影响合作维持和传播的因素方面展示社交网络方法的好处，但在单独考虑独立时不容易捕捉到二元相互作用。我们描述了如何在社交网络框架内测试各种合作途径。将社交网络方法应用于自然种群的数据可以帮助揭示导致合作和其他社会过程差异的进化和生态压力。