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Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis
1. Animal social networks are descriptions of social structure which, aside from their intrinsic interest for understanding sociality, can have significant bearing across many fields of biology. 2. Network analysis provides a flexible toolbox for testing a broad range of hypotheses, and for describi...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4973823/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26172345 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12418 |
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author | Farine, Damien R. Whitehead, Hal |
author_facet | Farine, Damien R. Whitehead, Hal |
author_sort | Farine, Damien R. |
collection | PubMed |
description | 1. Animal social networks are descriptions of social structure which, aside from their intrinsic interest for understanding sociality, can have significant bearing across many fields of biology. 2. Network analysis provides a flexible toolbox for testing a broad range of hypotheses, and for describing the social system of species or populations in a quantitative and comparable manner. However, it requires careful consideration of underlying assumptions, in particular differentiating real from observed networks and controlling for inherent biases that are common in social data. 3. We provide a practical guide for using this framework to analyse animal social systems and test hypotheses. First, we discuss key considerations when defining nodes and edges, and when designing methods for collecting data. We discuss different approaches for inferring social networks from these data and displaying them. We then provide an overview of methods for quantifying properties of nodes and networks, as well as for testing hypotheses concerning network structure and network processes. Finally, we provide information about assessing the power and accuracy of an observed network. 4. Alongside this manuscript, we provide appendices containing background information on common programming routines and worked examples of how to perform network analysis using the r programming language. 5. We conclude by discussing some of the major current challenges in social network analysis and interesting future directions. In particular, we highlight the under‐exploited potential of experimental manipulations on social networks to address research questions. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4973823 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49738232016-08-17 Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis Farine, Damien R. Whitehead, Hal J Anim Ecol How To… 1. Animal social networks are descriptions of social structure which, aside from their intrinsic interest for understanding sociality, can have significant bearing across many fields of biology. 2. Network analysis provides a flexible toolbox for testing a broad range of hypotheses, and for describing the social system of species or populations in a quantitative and comparable manner. However, it requires careful consideration of underlying assumptions, in particular differentiating real from observed networks and controlling for inherent biases that are common in social data. 3. We provide a practical guide for using this framework to analyse animal social systems and test hypotheses. First, we discuss key considerations when defining nodes and edges, and when designing methods for collecting data. We discuss different approaches for inferring social networks from these data and displaying them. We then provide an overview of methods for quantifying properties of nodes and networks, as well as for testing hypotheses concerning network structure and network processes. Finally, we provide information about assessing the power and accuracy of an observed network. 4. Alongside this manuscript, we provide appendices containing background information on common programming routines and worked examples of how to perform network analysis using the r programming language. 5. We conclude by discussing some of the major current challenges in social network analysis and interesting future directions. In particular, we highlight the under‐exploited potential of experimental manipulations on social networks to address research questions. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015-09 2015-08-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4973823/ /pubmed/26172345 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12418 Text en © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of the British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | How To… Farine, Damien R. Whitehead, Hal Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis |
title | Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis |
title_full | Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis |
title_fullStr | Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis |
title_full_unstemmed | Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis |
title_short | Constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis |
title_sort | constructing, conducting and interpreting animal social network analysis |
topic | How To… |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4973823/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26172345 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12418 |
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