Social Wildlife Network Model for Analysing Animal Communication and Group Interaction Patterns

Abstract

The understanding of animal signalling and coordinating behaviour in social groups is one of the keys aims of behavioural ecology. In this paper, the Social Wildlife Network Model is introduced as an analytical framework that considers individuals as nodes and their communicative and behavioural interactions as connecting links, thus, allowing the analysis of group communication and interaction dynamics. Based on the existing principles of animal social network analysis, the model combines the behavioural observations of the individuals, the use of ethograms to code interactions, and the analysis of relational structures to quantify the intensity of associations between individuals, the frequency of their communication, and the positions they have within a group. This framework is proposed for conceptual application to three areas of animal social life: vocal and visual communication exchange, affiliative and aggressive interactions, and the structuring of group movement. Literature review showed that the use of network approaches allows discovering the non-random structuring of communication channels, the identification of individuals who have a disproportionately great influence on information exchange, and uncovering the way how the structure of the group and environmental factors affect interaction dynamics. Social Wildlife Network Model provides animal researchers with a standardized biologically founded method for quantifying sociality.