Hoppitt, WJE orcid.org/0000-0003-0815-5720 and Farine, DR (2018) Association indices for quantifying social relationships: how to deal with missing observations of individuals or groups. Animal Behaviour, 136. pp. 227-238. ISSN 0003-3472
Abstract
Social network analysis has provided important insight into many population processes in wild animals. Constructing social networks requires quantifying the relationship between each pair of individuals in the population. Researchers often use association indices to convert observations into a measure of propensity for individuals to be seen together. At its simplest, this measure is just the probability of observing both individuals together given that one has been seen (the simple ratio index). However, this probability becomes more challenging to calculate if the detection rate for individuals is imperfect. We first evaluate the performance of existing association indices at estimating true association rates under scenarios where (1) only a proportion of all groups are observed (group location errors), (2) not all individuals are observed despite being present (individual location errors), and (3) a combination of the two. Commonly used methods aimed at dealing with incomplete observations perform poorly because they are based on arbitrary observation probabilities. We therefore derive complete indices that can be calibrated for the different types of incomplete observations to generate accurate estimates of association rates. These are provided in an R package that readily interfaces with existing routines. We conclude that using calibration data is an important step when constructing animal social networks, and that in their absence, researchers should use a simple estimator and explicitly consider the impact of this on their findings.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. This is an author produced version of a paper published in Animal Behaviour. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | affiliation; animal social network; interaction; social network analysis; social structure |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Sep 2017 11:13 |
Last Modified: | 04 Oct 2018 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.08.029 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:120831 |
Download
Filename: Archived postprint Hoppitt and Farine.pdf
Licence: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0