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Precisely how ecological factors influence animal social structure is farfrom clear. We explore this question using an agent-based model inspired by thefission-fusion society of Spider monkeys (Ateles spp). Our model introduces arealistic, complex foraging environment composed of many resource patches withsize varying according to an inverse power-law frequency distribution withexponent $\beta$. Foragers do not interact among them and start from randominitial locations. They have either a complete or partial knowledge of theenvironment and maximize the ratio between the size of the next visited patchand the distance traveled to it, ignoring previously visited patches. Atintermediate values of $\beta$, when large patches are neither too scarce nortoo abundant, foragers form groups (coincide at the same patch) with a similarsize frequency distribution as the spider monkey's subgroups. Fission-fusionevents create a network of associations that contains weak bonds among foragersthat meet only rarely and strong bonds among those that repeat associationsmore frequently than would be expected by chance. The latter form sub-networkswith the highest number of bonds and a high clustering coefficient atintermediate values of $\beta$. The weak bonds enable the whole social networkto percolate. Some of our results are similar to those found in long-term fieldstudies of spider monkeys and other fission-fusion species. We conclude thathypotheses about the ecological causes of fission-fusion and the origin ofcomplex social structures should consider the heterogeneity and complexity ofthe environment in which social animals live.

A complex social structure with fission–fusion properties can emerge from a simple foraging model