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There is a well-established link between sociality and longevity. However, in a paper recommended by the F1000Prime Faculty and published in Functional Ecology, the authors discuss the idea that social interaction may not just increase the length of an individual’s life, but also impact the evolutionary success of an entire species.

It is well documented that as humans, we require a wide range of different social interactions to support and ensure a healthy life. However, what if we were to apply this rationale to other species, would it still hold true? In their work, the authors discuss this concept from two angles; firstly, are socially connected individuals destined to live longer? Secondly, do species which support high social interaction live longer than species which live a more solitary existence?

The authors of this paper address the first question by conducting a literature review. They found that generally, socially connected individuals tend to live longer, but this was only the case in species living in larger groups (at least 8 individuals per group). In regards to the second question, the authors found that solitary animals don’t appear to have shorter lifespans than animals which operate within social groups. The only time this proves to be the case, is in species which rely on non-breeding ‘helper’ individuals who support the survival of members of the species which do breed.

If you’re interested in finding out more about this paper, be sure to read the full discussion and check out Daniel Blumstein’s recommendation on F1000Prime. 

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If you like our recommendations, why not consider checking out F1000Prime? F1000Prime is our literature recommendation service, which has a peer-nominated global Faculty of more than 8,000 of the world’s leading biomedical scientists and clinicians. The Faculty select those articles which they think are particularly interesting and important and write recommendations explaining their selection. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles.

“These study findings hint towards the idea that anesthesiologists tend to overdose older patients: BIS readings might be falsely high in older patients, thereby encouraging anesthesiologists to administer excessive dosages of volatile anesthetic agents. Anesthesiologists should question high BIS readings in older patients.”Klaus Ulrich Klein, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

“The study presents convincing evidence of the importance of autophagy in regulating cognitive fitness in the hippocampus, and that autophagy induction is necessary for shaping synaptic plasticity in response to novel stimulations. Importantly, they provide proof-of-concept findings that restoring youthful levels of specific circulating factors is an efficient intervention to restore hippocampal autophagy activity and reverse age-associated memory loss. These findings open the door for future potential interventions of stimulating autophagy in the hippocampus for preventing ageing cognitive deficits.”Ana Maria Cuervo and Susmita Kaushik, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, USA

“To date, there is no solid evidence that ageing can be reversed. The same applies to the reversion of senescence of organs or systems, for example, the immune system. This paper reports the first human trial designed to measure a possible reversion of human ageing.”Enrico Avvedimento, Universita’ “Federico II”, Naples, Italy

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Current Top 3 recommendations

Rankings are generated using the article recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“This remarkable study reveals that the cyclic GMP-AMP signalling molecule produced by bacteria is, as in eukaryotes, involved in an anti-bacteriophage defence system. The authors have identified a locus of four genes, one of them encoding a cyclic GMP-AMP synthase located in a region of the Vibrio cholerae genome close to defence genes. This study is a nice illustration demonstrating that it is important to study viral-host interactions across kingdoms.”    Pascale Romby, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

“Are social rewards effective in curtailing addictive behaviors? This is a timely and fascinating question that Venniro and colleagues explore using a new operant model of choice between drugs and social interaction.”Mauricio Delgado, Rutgers University, Newark, USA

“The rheumatoid synovium is populated by fibroblast-like cells and cells with markers and the phenotype of macrophage-like cells. This manuscript describes epithelial-like resident tissue macrophages that bear the CX3CR1+ marker. These cells are not replenished by the bone marrow but a resident CX3CR1- population in the synovium. In addition, the cells play a regulatory role in limiting inflammation by contributing to a functional exclusion barrier for articular structures.”Maripat Corr, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, USA

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Hidden Jewels

Hidden Jewels rankings only include articles published in specialist journals, recommended in F1000Prime during the preceding 30 days.

“It is increasingly clear that scientific publishing is at the edge of a new age. In this essay, the authors provide a clear, robust and comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of the functioning of for-profit science publishing. It convincingly emphasizes the limits (and craziness) of this system and calls for fundamental changes in our ways of publishing, evaluating and disseminating research to the entire community. This is a must-read for all researchers!”Joël Meunier,University of Tours, Tours, France

“In this study, using the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology, they investigate a set of cancer drugs and drug targets to learn how these drugs interact with their protein targets. The authors found that the proteins presumably targeted by these drugs are nonessential for cancer cell proliferation, which is contrary to previous reports, obtained mainly with RNA interference and small-molecule inhibitors. The efficacy of each drug they tested was unaffected by the loss of its putative target, indicating that these compounds kill cells via off-target effects. The authors suggest that the adoption of more stringent genetic targets and activity validation studies may alleviate this problem and decrease the failure rate of new cancer drugs.”Paul B Fisher and Luni Emdad, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

“Reading this article, I recalled one of my favorite papers on writing papers that I enthusiastically reviewed for F1000Prime, and this one is a good complement to it. I like the storytelling approach against the hard results approach ensuing from giving more relevance to the figures showing the results than to the overall message of the paper: the story it tells.”Ferdinando Boero, Universita’ di Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy