Inferring social network structure in ecological systems from spatio-temporal data streams

Psorakis, Ioannis; Roberts, Stephen; Rezek, Iead; Sheldon, Ben C.

doi:10.1098/rsif.2012.0223

Cited by 160 publications

(187 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…It is difficult to determine the cause of this difference with our data. Great Tits in this system are socially monogamous and there is evidence that pair bonds are, to a degree, maintained across the NBS (Psorakis et al 2012). Thus, social tendencies during the NBS may then be responsible for this difference.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reproductive consequences of the timing of seasonal movements in a nonmigratory wild bird population

Matechou

Cheng

Kidd

et al. 2015

Ecology

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. (2015) Reproductive consequences of the timing of seasonal movements in a non-migratory wild bird population. Ecology, 96 (6 Abstract. Animal movement patterns, whether related to dispersal, migration, or ranging behaviors, vary in time. Individual movements reflect the outcomes of interactions between an individual's condition and a multitude of underlying ecological processes. Theory predicts that when competition for breeding territories is high, individuals should arrive at breeding sites earlier than what would otherwise be optimal for breeding in the absence of competition. This is because priority at a site can confer significant competitive advantages leading to better breeding outcomes. Empirical data from long-distance migrants support this theory. However, it has not been tested within the context of fine-scale movements in nonmigratory populations. We assessed the effect of arrival time at a breeding site on reproductive outcomes in an intensively monitored resident population of Great Tits (Parus major). The population was monitored passively, via passive integrated transponder (PIT) tag loggers, and actively, via catching, during breeding and nonbreeding seasons. We developed new capture-recaptureresight models that use both data types to model breeding outcome conditional on the unknown individual arrival times. In accordance with theory, individuals arrived at the woods synchronously in waves that were large at the beginning of the nonbreeding season and small toward the end, with very few arrivals in the intervening period. There was a strong effect of arrival time on the probability of breeding; the earlier an individual arrived, the more likely it was to successfully establish a nest that reached the incubation period. However, once nests were established, they had equal probabilities of failing early, regardless of arrival time. Finally, there was moderate evidence of a negative effect of arrival time on the probability of successfully fledging nestlings. These empirical findings are consistent with theoretical models that suggest an important role for competition in shaping fine-scale seasonal movements. Our capture-recapture-resight models are extensible and suitable for a variety of applications, particularly when the goal is to estimate the effects of unobservable arrival times on subsequent ecological outcomes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reproductive consequences of the timing of seasonal movements in a nonmigratory wild bird population

Matechou

Cheng

Kidd

et al. 2015

Ecology

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“…However, studies of natural or semi-natural populations have become sufficiently sophisticated to generate this type of data. The application of recent technological advancement, such as complex visual recording systems [55,56], as well as proximity loggers that allow the recording of interactions between individuals remotely [57][58][59] and, importantly, also allow the inference of specific behavioural interactions [60], may facilitate obtaining such detailed interaction patterns in species where such observations may have before been unfeasible in experimental and natural populations. Furthermore, experimental studies using semi-natural populations combined with network data will provide an opportunity to measure with exceptional accuracy the pattern of interactions, and help develop an understanding of how fine-scale assortment patterns may affect our measurement of selection using standard techniques.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual networks: measuring sexual selection in structured, polyandrous populations

McDonald

James

Krause

et al. 2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Sexual selection is traditionally measured at the population level, assuming that populations lack structure. However, increasing evidence undermines this approach, indicating that intrasexual competition in natural populations often displays complex patterns of spatial and temporal structure. This complexity is due in part to the degree and mechanisms of polyandry within a population, which can influence the intensity and scale of both pre- and post-copulatory sexual competition. Attempts to measure selection at the local and global scale have been made through multi-level selection approaches. However, definitions of local scale are often based on physical proximity, providing a rather coarse measure of local competition, particularly in polyandrous populations where the local scale of pre- and post-copulatory competition may differ drastically from each other. These limitations can be solved by social network analysis, which allows us to define a unique sexual environment for each member of a population: ‘local scale’ competition, therefore, becomes an emergent property of a sexual network. Here, we first propose a novel quantitative approach to measure pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection, which integrates multi-level selection with information on local scale competition derived as an emergent property of networks of sexual interactions. We then use simple simulations to illustrate the ways in which polyandry can impact estimates of sexual selection. We show that for intermediate levels of polyandry, the proposed network-based approach provides substantially more accurate measures of sexual selection than the more traditional population-level approach. We argue that the increasing availability of fine-grained behavioural datasets provides exciting new opportunities to develop network approaches to study sexual selection in complex societies.

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“…gambit of the group approach [33]). We used networks constructed using the Gaussian mixture model for event streams (GMMEvent) method [34] to identify gathering events (representing feeding flocks) from the data collected on loggers. The method has been shown to be a robust way to derive social networks from spatio-temporal data streams of co-occurrences of individuals [35].…”

Section: (C) Methods To Describe the Winter Social Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Carry-over effects of the social environment on future divorce probability in a wild bird population

2015

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ResearchCite this article: Culina A, Hinde CA, Sheldon BC. 2015 Carry-over effects of the social environment on future divorce probability in a wild bird population. Proc. R. Soc. Initial mate choice and re-mating strategies (infidelity and divorce) influence individual fitness. Both of these should be influenced by the social environment, which determines the number and availability of potential partners. While most studies looking at this relationship take a population-level approach, individual-level responses to variation in the social environment remain largely unstudied. Here, we explore carry-over effects on future mating decisions of the social environment in which the initial mating decision occurred. Using detailed data on the winter social networks of great tits, we tested whether the probability of subsequent divorce, a year later, could be predicted by measures of the social environment at the time of pairing. We found that males that had a lower proportion of female associates, and whose partner ranked lower among these, as well as inexperienced breeders, were more likely to divorce after breeding. We found no evidence that a female's social environment influenced the probability of divorce. Our findings highlight the importance of the social environment that individuals experience during initial pair formation on later pairing outcomes, and demonstrate that such effects can be delayed. Exploring these extended effects of the social environment can yield valuable insights into processes and selective pressures acting upon the mating strategies that individuals adopt.

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Inferring social network structure in ecological systems from spatio-temporal data streams

Cited by 160 publications

References 19 publications

Reproductive consequences of the timing of seasonal movements in a nonmigratory wild bird population

Reproductive consequences of the timing of seasonal movements in a nonmigratory wild bird population

Sexual networks: measuring sexual selection in structured, polyandrous populations

Carry-over effects of the social environment on future divorce probability in a wild bird population

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