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Using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in African savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change
The dynamics of wildlife populations often depend heavily on interspecific interactions and understanding the underlying principles can be an important step in designing conservation strategies. Behavioural ecological studies can here provide useful insights into the structure and function of commun...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6710573/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31352889 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0009 |
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author | Meise, Kristine Franks, Daniel W. Bro-Jørgensen, Jakob |
author_facet | Meise, Kristine Franks, Daniel W. Bro-Jørgensen, Jakob |
author_sort | Meise, Kristine |
collection | PubMed |
description | The dynamics of wildlife populations often depend heavily on interspecific interactions and understanding the underlying principles can be an important step in designing conservation strategies. Behavioural ecological studies can here provide useful insights into the structure and function of communities and their likely response to environmental changes. In this study of the Masai Mara herbivore community, we use a social network approach to investigate social affinities between species and how these change over the year in response to seasonal changes in ecological conditions. We find that even though social networks were correlated across different ecological conditions, for half the species dyads in the community, the strength of social affinities responded to changes in rainfall and/or the presence of migratory wildebeest. Several species consequentially adopted more or less central positions in the network depending on the ecological conditions. The findings point out interspecific social links that are likely to be attenuated or strengthened as a consequence of human-induced environmental changes and therefore call for particular attention from conservation managers. The eco-evolutionary ramifications of the perturbations of social affinities still require further study. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Linking behaviour to dynamics of populations and communities: application of novel approaches in behavioural ecology to conservation’. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6710573 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-67105732019-08-28 Using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in African savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change Meise, Kristine Franks, Daniel W. Bro-Jørgensen, Jakob Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles The dynamics of wildlife populations often depend heavily on interspecific interactions and understanding the underlying principles can be an important step in designing conservation strategies. Behavioural ecological studies can here provide useful insights into the structure and function of communities and their likely response to environmental changes. In this study of the Masai Mara herbivore community, we use a social network approach to investigate social affinities between species and how these change over the year in response to seasonal changes in ecological conditions. We find that even though social networks were correlated across different ecological conditions, for half the species dyads in the community, the strength of social affinities responded to changes in rainfall and/or the presence of migratory wildebeest. Several species consequentially adopted more or less central positions in the network depending on the ecological conditions. The findings point out interspecific social links that are likely to be attenuated or strengthened as a consequence of human-induced environmental changes and therefore call for particular attention from conservation managers. The eco-evolutionary ramifications of the perturbations of social affinities still require further study. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Linking behaviour to dynamics of populations and communities: application of novel approaches in behavioural ecology to conservation’. The Royal Society 2019-09-16 2019-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC6710573/ /pubmed/31352889 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0009 Text en © 2019 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Articles Meise, Kristine Franks, Daniel W. Bro-Jørgensen, Jakob Using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in African savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change |
title | Using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in African savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change |
title_full | Using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in African savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change |
title_fullStr | Using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in African savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change |
title_full_unstemmed | Using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in African savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change |
title_short | Using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in African savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change |
title_sort | using social network analysis of mixed-species groups in african savannah herbivores to assess how community structure responds to environmental change |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6710573/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31352889 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0009 |
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