Differentiated Social Relationships and the Pace-of-Life-History

When selection is imposed by both social and ecological environments, the costs and benefits of social relationships can depend on life-history strategy. We argue that the formation and maintenance of differentiated social relationships will prevail in species and individuals with slow life histories. Social behaviours that benefit survival can promote slower life histories. Meanwhile, longer lifespan promotes the development of strong and stable social bonds by allowing fitness payoffs to be postponed. Differentiated social behaviours should be favoured for fast life histories only when they promote the rate of reproduction. Finally, associations between life-history strategies and other traits (e.g., personality) provide a mechanism to drive inter-individual variation in social relationships, making life-history important for sociality across taxonomic scales. Costs and benefits of social relationships depend on life-history strategies.Social bonds are more likely to evolve in species with slow life histories.Pace-of-life syndromes may mean that slower individuals have stronger social bonds.Life-history can explain variation in social relationships across taxonomic scales.