Being Social – Understanding the Dynamics of Animal Societies

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution is honoured to partner with Behaviour 2025 as an official sponsor. This Research Topic is the first of two collections curated for the 38th International Ethological Congress (Behaviour 2025), that invites contributions that reflect the multidisciplinary and global nature of behavioural science, spotlighting work from India and comparative studies from around the world.

This particular Topic examines the complexity of animal societies, focusing on social structures, cooperation, conflict, and communication. It explores how social dynamics influence individual fitness, group success, and evolutionary outcomes, drawing on comparative studies to uncover the ecological, physiological, and cognitive mechanisms that shape social behavior across diverse animal taxa.

This collection aims to:

- Highlight cutting-edge research on behavioural patterns across a multitude of habitats - from forests and coastlines to human-modified landscapes - leveraging both traditional fieldwork and contemporary methodologies such as artificial intelligence and bioinformatics.
- Showcase how Indian research groups in particular are innovating in study design, data collection, and theory building.
- Examine cross-scale interactions in behaviour and encourage perspectives spanning from molecular and neural mechanisms to ecological and evolutionary dynamics.
- Foster dialogue on diversity: not only in study organisms and research tools, but also in the backgrounds and experiences of scientists, with a special focus on voices from the Global South.
- Encourage integrative studies that link behaviour with conservation, human-wildlife interactions, climate change, and sustainable development.

By bringing together papers from across the ethological spectrum, this collection will act as a catalyst for new collaborations and inspire the next generation of behavioural researchers in India and around the globe.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Behavioral Ecology, Animal Societies, Climate change, Sustainable development, Collaborations, Behavioural researchers, Ethological spectrum, Behaviour 2025, International Ethological Congress, Behavioural science, India, Comparative studies

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.