Evolutionary correlates and consequences of sociality in feliform carnivorans

Abstract Living in social groups has a range of evolutionary and ecological implications for animals. On the one hand, increased local density of conspecifics could intensify competition or make the group as a whole more visible to predators. On the other hand, social groups provide opportunities for cooperation, can potentially increase access to mating opportunities, and enable group‐based antipredator mechanisms, such as increased vigilance, group defence, and dilution effects. Here, we set out to investigate the evolutionary predictors and consequences of sociality in feliform carnivorans (cats, mongooses, civets, and relatives) using a phylogenetic comparative approach. We first tested for predictors of sociality and found that sociality was more likely in larger, diurnal species which live in more open habitats, with a less slender body shape and with a more insectivorous diet. This result is consistent with the expectation from previous studies that evolution of social groups entails greater competition and ecologies that facilitate group cohesion, and perhaps are also subject to greater predation pressure. Second, we used ancestral state estimation for sociality and historical biogeographic analyses of habitats to show that sociality evolved eight times in feliforms and typically was associated with ancestral presence in or shift towards more open habitat types. Third, we investigated the consequences of sociality in terms of speciation rates and extinction risks, and found that although social species did not differ in extinction risk compared with solitary species, they did tend to have slightly lower speciation rates. Taken together, our results provide evidence for a series of costs and constraints in the evolution of sociality in mammals (e.g. in terms of competition and higher predation risk) but that these appear to be offset by the benefits provided from group‐living sufficiently to avoid the longer term population consequences of higher extinction risk.