Wild, S and Hoppitt, W orcid.org/0000-0003-0815-5720 (2019) Choosing a sensible cut-off point: assessing the impact of uncertainty in a social network on the performance of NBDA. Primates, 60 (3). pp. 307-315. ISSN 0032-8332
Abstract
Network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) has become a widely used tool to detect and quantify social learning in animal populations. NBDA infers social learning if the spread of a novel behavior follows the social network and hence relies on appropriate information on individuals’ network connections. Most studies on animal populations, however, lack a complete record of all associations, which creates uncertainty in the social network. To reduce this uncertainty, researchers often use a certain threshold of sightings for the inclusion of animals (which is often arbitrarily chosen), as observational error decreases with increasing numbers of observations. Dropping individuals with only few sightings, however, can lead to information loss in the network if connecting individuals are removed. Hence, there is a trade-off between including as many individuals as possible and having reliable data. We here provide a tool in R that assesses the sensitivity of NBDA to error in the social network given a certain threshold for the inclusion of individuals. It simulates a social learning process through a population and then tests the power of NBDA to reliably detect social learning after introducing observational error into the social network, which is repeated for different thresholds. Our tool can help researchers using NBDA to select a threshold, specific to their data set, that maximizes power to reliably quantify social learning in their study population.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018, The Author(s). This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
Keywords: | Network-based diffusion analysis; NBDA; Social network; Uncertainty; Social learning |
Dates: |
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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: | 09 Nov 2018 11:36 |
Last Modified: | 07 May 2019 08:32 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10329-018-0693-4 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:138376 |
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