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.

社会性的许多方面都依赖于个体之间的相互认识。了解个人如何、何时以及是否认识他人可以深入了解社会关系和行为的基础。通过综合不同感官和社会领域的个体识别研究，并在各种相关的社会环境中这样做，我们提出社会网络视角可以帮助揭示个体识别在不同环境、物种和人群中的差异。具体来说，将个人识别与社交网络相结合在确定个人识别复杂性的水平和相对重要性方面具有未被识别的潜力。这将不仅提供关于个体识别本身的生态和进化的见解，而且还提供关于社会结构、社会传播、