The transition to motherhood as the temporal locus of change for social network integration among wild vervet monkeys
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The birth of a first offspring represents a major change in a female mammal’s social circumstances. We hypothesize that the transition to motherhood marks a significant shift in the social network dynamics of female vervet monkeys, Chlorocebus pygerythrus , and represents the crucial boundary between juvenile and adult patterns of engagement. To test this, we compare the grooming network structure of primiparous and multiparous females, using both direct and indirect measures of centrality. We found that, following the birth of their first infant, ego-structure of primiparous females converged with that of multiparous females and that primiparous females became more central in their grooming networks around their first birth event, as measured by eigenvector centrality. Examining shifts in the number of new social ties formed across the birth event, we found a very small increase in the formation of new strong ties, but a larger increase in the number of additional weak ties. A simulated ‘knockout’ analysis showed that both types of ties contributed to the observed increase in eigenvector centrality. Overall, our findings support the idea that motherhood serves as a catalyst for juveniles to transition into adult social configurations. Note, however, that although the juvenile–adult boundary marked the temporal locus of change for social integration, there was, nevertheless, a striking consistency in the stability of ego-network structure across both the juvenile period and through the motherhood transition. This structure may enhance individual flexibility in social engagement and accommodate the specific needs of females as they experience changes in status and broader demographic shifts within their groups. • By the end of the juvenile period, female vervet monkeys groomed less than adults. • Motherhood triggered primiparous females to transition into adult social structures. • Around birth, first-time mothers became more central in grooming networks. • Both strong and weak ties contributed to primiparous females' grooming integration. • Stable ego-network structures allow for flexible social engagement.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".