Figure 1. Integration of features, rank, and identity at the level of social detection.

(A and B) Schematic of social information detection from (A) unfamiliar individuals and (B) familiar individuals. The first step of a social homeostatic system is detection, which integrates many social variables such as social features, rank, and identity to determine the overall quality of a social interaction. (A) When an individual first interacts with an unfamiliar conspecific, the individual primarily relies on the social features of the unfamiliar individual, such as age, sex, etc. These social features provide a heuristic to assess a social agent and determine an appropriate behavioral response. (B) When interacting with a familiar individual, information from social features and the learned identity of the other individual feed into the detector node as well as provide information on the relative rank of the individual. The detector integrates all of this information in evaluating social interactions, which is then fed forward to subsequent nodes in the social homeostatic system.