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Potential banana skins in animal social network analysis

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Abstract

Social network analysis is an increasingly popular tool for the study of the fine-scale and global social structure of animals. It has attracted particular attention by those attempting to unravel social structure in fission–fusion populations. It is clear that the social network approach offers some exciting opportunities for gaining new insights into social systems. However, some of the practices which are currently being used in the animal social networks literature are at worst questionable and at best over-enthusiastic. We highlight some of the areas of method, analysis and interpretation in which greater care may be needed in order to ensure that the biology we extract from our networks is robust. In particular, we suggest that more attention should be given to whether relational data are representative, the potential effect of observational errors and the choice and use of statistical tests. The importance of replication and manipulation must not be forgotten, and the interpretation of results requires care.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dan Franks, Stefan Krause, David Lusseau, David McDonald, Graeme Ruxton, Colin Tosh, Hal Whitehead, Jochen Wolf and the participants of the Halifax IEC symposium on social networks for comments and ideas. Funding was provided by the EPSRC and NERC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Centre for Mathematical Biology, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

    Richard James

  2. School of Biological Sciences, College of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2UW, UK

    Darren P. Croft

  3. Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Jens Krause

Authors
  1. Richard James
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  2. Darren P. Croft
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  3. Jens Krause
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Richard James.

Additional information

Communicated by Guest Editor D. Lusseau

This contribution is part of the special issue “Social Networks: new perspectives” (Guest Editors: J. Krause, D. Lusseau and R. James).

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James, R., Croft, D.P. & Krause, J. Potential banana skins in animal social network analysis. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 63, 989–997 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-009-0742-5

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