Sociality

Sociality is the tendency of animals to live and interact in organized groups. It ranges from temporary aggregations to stable societies with cooperation, communication, and differentiated roles.

Kin selection: Kin selection is natural selection favoring traits that increase the reproductive success of genetic relatives. Helping relatives can make group cooperation advantageous even when it carries costs to the helper.
Animal aggregation: An animal aggregation is a temporary or persistent gathering of animals, often without stable social relationships. A gathering may look social while lacking the repeated interactions that define many animal societies.
Eusociality: Eusociality is a social system with cooperative brood care, overlapping generations, and reproductive division of labor. It is an especially integrated form of animal sociality, seen in ants, termites, and some other animals.
Solitary behavior: Solitary behavior is a pattern in which animals generally forage or live alone outside mating or parental interactions. It provides the clearest alternative to persistent group living.
Reciprocal altruism: Reciprocal altruism is cooperation in which an individual helps another and may receive help in return later. Repeated interactions can sustain cooperation between nonrelatives in stable groups.
Social behavior: Social behavior is any behavior involving interactions between members of the same species. Sociality describes a broader tendency built from repeated forms of social behavior.
Fission–fusion society: A fission–fusion society is a social system in which group membership and size change as subgroups split and merge. This flexible organization occurs in species such as chimpanzees and dolphins.
Lek mating: Lek mating is a reproductive system in which males gather at display sites while females visit to choose mates. Animals can congregate for mating without forming cooperative or enduring social groups.
Group selection: Group selection is evolutionary change caused by differences in survival or reproduction among groups. It offers one account of how traits benefiting a group can spread despite costs to individuals.
Dominance hierarchy: A dominance hierarchy is an ordering of individuals by their relative access to resources or control over others. Rank can organize conflict and access within groups without requiring formal leadership.

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