Spatial–social familiarity complements the spatial–social interface: evidence from Yellowstone bison

Social animals make behavioural decisions based on local habitat and conspecifics, as well as memorized past experience (i.e. ‘familiarity’) with habitat and conspecifics. Here, we develop a conceptual and empirical understanding of how spatial and social familiarity fit within the spatial–social interface—a novel framework integrating the spatial and social components of animal behaviour. We conducted a multi-scale analysis of the movements of GPS-collared plains bison ( Bison bison , n = 66) residing in and around Yellowstone National Park, USA. We found that both spatial and social familiarity mediate how individuals respond to their spatial and social environments. For instance, individuals with high spatial familiarity rely on their own knowledge as opposed to their conspecifics, and individuals with high social familiarity rely more strongly on the movement of conspecifics to guide their own movement. We also found that fine-scale spatial and social phenotypes often scale up to broad-scale phenotypes. For instance, bison that select more strongly to align with their nearest neighbour have larger home ranges. By integrating spatial and social familiarity into the spatial–social interface, we demonstrate the utility of the interface for testing hypotheses, while also highlighting the pervasive importance of cognitive mechanisms in animal behaviour.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘The spatial–social interface: a theoretical and empirical integration’.