A flexible theory for the dynamics of social populations: Within-group density dependence and between-group processes

Despite the importance of population structures throughout ecology, relatively little theoretical attention has been paid to understanding the implications of social groups for population dynamics. The dynamics of socially structured populations differ substantially from those of unstructured or metapopulation-structured populations, because social groups themselves may split, fuse, and compete. These “between-group processes” remain understudied as drivers of the dynamics of socially structured populations. Here, we explore the role of various between-group processes in the dynamics of socially structured populations. To do so, we analyze a model that includes births, deaths, migration, fissions, fusions, and between-group competition and flexibly allows for density dependence in each process. Both logistic growth and an Allee effect are considered for within-group density dependence. We show that the effect of various between-group processes is mediated by their influence on the stable distribution of group sizes, with the ultimate impact on the population determined by the interaction between within-group density dependence and the process's effect on the group size distribution. Between-group interactions that change the number of groups can lead to both negative and positive density dependence at the global population level (even if birth and death rates depend only on group size and not population size). We conclude with a series of case studies that illustrates different ways that age, sex, and class structure impact the dynamics of social populations. These case studies demonstrate the importance of group-formation mechanisms, the cost of having excess males in a group, and the potential drawbacks of generating too many reproductive individuals. In sum, our results make clear the importance of within-group density dependence, between-group dynamics, and the interactions between them for the population dynamics of social species and provide a flexible framework for modeling social populations.