Long-term overlap of social and genetic structure in free-ranging house mice reveals dynamic seasonal and group size effects

Evans, Julian C.; Lindholm, Anna K.; König, Barbara

doi:10.1093/cz/zoaa030

Cited by 20 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…2020 ). Evans et al. (2020) observed seasonal differences in how the multilayer social structure of mice ( Mus musculus domesticus ) related to genetic structure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The problem and promise of scale in multilayer animal social networks

et al. 2020

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Scale remains a foundational concept in ecology. Spatial scale, for instance, has become a central consideration in the way we understand landscape ecology and animal space use. Meanwhile, scale-dependent social processes can range from fine-scale interactions to co-occurrence and overlapping home ranges. Furthermore, sociality can vary within and across seasons. Multilayer networks promise the explicit integration of the social, spatial and, temporal contexts. Given the complex interplay of sociality and animal space use in heterogeneous landscapes, there remains an important gap in our understanding of the influence of scale on animal social networks. Using an empirical case study, we discuss ways of considering social, spatial and, temporal scale in the context of multilayer caribou social networks. Effective integration of social and spatial processes, including biologically meaningful scales, within the context of animal social networks is an emerging area of research. We incorporate perspectives that link the social environment to spatial processes across scales in a multilayer context.

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“…2020 ). Evans et al. (2020) observed seasonal differences in how the multilayer social structure of mice ( Mus musculus domesticus ) related to genetic structure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The emergent relationship between habitat and sociality has been explored by the temporal distribution and phenology of resources and use of social information in multilayer networks (e.g., Evans et al. 2020 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The problem and promise of scale in multilayer animal social networks

et al. 2020

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“…The value of v-measure fluctuated between winter and summer. These changes in the importance of space use for interactions may be related to changes in mouse social behaviour during periods of high breeding activity in the summer, or in the need for increased thermoregulation in winter (Evans, Lindholm, & König, 2020; König & Lindholm, 2012). Our results therefore raise interesting questions, such as how the tendency for spatial structure to influence social interactions varies over time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the influence of space on social group structure

Evans

Liechti

Silk

et al. 2020

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When studying social behaviour, it can be important to determine whether the behaviour being recorded is actually driven by the social preferences of individuals. Many studies of animal social networks therefore attempt to disentangle social preferences from spatial preferences or restrictions. As such, there are a large number of techniques with which to test whether results from network analysis can be explained by random interactions, or interactions driven by similarities in space use. Selecting which of these methods to use will require determining to what extent space might influence social structure. Here we present a simple method (Social Spatial Community Assignment Test) to quantify the similarity between social and spatial group structure. We then apply this method to both simulated and empirical data of social interactions to demonstrate that it can successfully tease apart social and spatial explanations for groups. We first show that it can resolve the relative importance of space and social preferences in three simulated datasets in which interaction patterns are driven purely by space use, purely by social preferences or a mixture of the two. We then apply it to empirical data from a long-term study of free-ranging house mice. We find that while social structure is similar to spatial structure, there is still evidence for individuals possessing social preferences, with the importance of these preferences fluctuating between seasons. Our method provides a robust way of assessing the overlap between spatial and social structure, which will be invaluable to researchers when investigating the underlying drivers of social structure in wild populations.

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“…Such pairwise measures can be represented in matrix form and therefore be incorporated into a multilayer network analysis. Equipped with long-term, high-resolution data on genetic relatedness and social associations within a free-ranging population of house mice Mus musculus domesticus , Evans et al. (2021) used multilayer network techniques to investigate the relationship between genetic relatedness and social structure within and across years.…”

Section: The Promise Of Multilayer Network Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors also observed reduced overlap between the genetic and social layers as population density increased, suggesting that as the intensity of resource competition increased individuals modified their interaction patterns to avoid associating with relatives. The approaches used by Evans et al. (2021) are broadly applicable and provide a promising means to investigate the links between social interactions and genetic relatedness.…”

Section: The Promise Of Multilayer Network Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%