title: Nutritional ecology beyond the individual: a conceptual framework for integrating nutrition and social interactions.
abstract: Over recent years, modelling approaches from nutritional ecology (known as Nutritional Geometry) have been increasingly used to describe how animals and some other organisms select foods and eat them in appropriate amounts in order to maintain a balanced nutritional state maximising fitness. These nutritional strategies profoundly affect the physiology, behaviour and performance of individuals, which in turn impact their social interactions within groups and societies. Here, we present a conceptual framework to study the role of nutrition as a major ecological factor influencing the development and maintenance of social life. We first illustrate some of the mechanisms by which nutritional differences among individuals mediate social interactions in a broad range of species and ecological contexts. We then explain how studying individual- and collective-level nutrition in a common conceptual framework derived from Nutritional Geometry can bring new fundamental insights into the mechanisms and evolution of social interactions, using a combination of simulation models and manipulative experiments.
authors.affiliation: Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia; School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Mathieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lihoreau
authors.forename: Camille
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Buhl
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Charleston
authors.forename: Gregory A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Sword
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Raubenheimer
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Simpson
mesh_terms: D000824:Animal Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003198:Computer Simulation; D055669:Ecological and Environmental Phenomena; D017753:Ecosystem; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D008954:Models, Biological; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: Collective animal behaviour; individual-based models; nutritional ecology; nutritional geometry; social biology; social interactions