In this scenario with these two species, we might imagine that in the second species compared with the first species, there is a greater need for individual discrimination based on communicative signals, or for conveying a broader diversity of messages about individual behavioural tendencies and environmental contexts, or for expressing a wider range of emotional and motivational states, or some combination of these three needs. The average individual in the second species spends the majority of its adult life interacting with adults that are more dominant to it, with adults that are more subordinate to it, with younger generations of conspecifics, and with large numbers of individuals of other such groupings at territorial boundaries. In the second species, the typical social unit is a larger grouping of several female–male pairs and one or two generations of the offspring of those different pairs.
The average individual in the first species spends the majority of its adult life interacting with a single individual of the opposite sex, with the occasional interaction with an individual or two at a territorial boundary, and with a part of the year devoted to rearing offspring. In the first species, the typical social unit is a female–male pair. Imagine two congeneric species that face similar physical environmental selection pressures-for example, similar seasons and weather conditions, similar territory and food resource bases and similar parasites and predators. Finally, we discuss some of the key current limitations to the social complexity hypothesis-the lack of tests against alternative hypotheses for communicative complexity and evidence corroborating the hypothesis from modalities other than the vocal signalling channel.
We discuss social complexity as a driver of communication and possible causal factor in human language origins. Here, we describe some of the historical arguments that led to the social complexity hypothesis, and review evidence in support of the hypothesis. Complex communicative systems, compared with simple communicative systems, are those that contain a large number of structurally and functionally distinct elements or possess a high amount of bits of information. Complex social systems, compared with simple social systems, are those in which individuals frequently interact in many different contexts with many different individuals, and often repeatedly interact with many of the same individuals in networks over time. The ‘social complexity hypothesis’ for communication posits that groups with complex social systems require more complex communicative systems to regulate interactions and relations among group members.
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