Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NETDEM (Linking social network dynamics and demographic change in wild populations)
Reporting period: 2022-01-03 to 2024-01-02
Social networks and how we connect with each other and form social relationships are linked to population dynamics. Changes in population size can change these networks, impacting ecological or evolutionary processes like cooperation, conflict and infectious disease spread. The NETDEM project developed tools to explore the links between social networks and demography. The methods created can help quantify how social relationships might mediate how species respond to environmental change and how the links between social networks and population dynamics shape the long-term maintenance of infectious disease in wildlife populations. In the longer term this can provide valuable tools to conservationists and wildlife managers. However, the NETDEM project also drew together researchers across intersecting research fields (e.g. physics, anthropology, sociology) to ensure that the new approaches could also make an impact more broadly in studying links between population processes and social dynamics.
Objectives 1 and 3 of the project involved developing integrated network models as a new methodological tool to link social behaviour and population dynamics, and applying them to empirical data. The model development proved substantially more challenging than anticipated, nevertheless important progress was made to develop new methods. As part of these objectives we organised an interdisciplinary workshop in Montpellier that led to some major breakthroughs and the formation of a wider NETDEM working group. This includes scientists from across Europe and from a range of research disciplines within network science and ecology (including physics, psychology, anthropology, sociology), which was a key aim of the NETDEM project. Since, the major progress related to Objectives 1 and 3 has been:
1) with the NETDEM working group I have nearly finished a paper outlining key opportunities and challenges integrating social network and demographic models;
2) I have started to develop models that integrate social networks from different data sources within a demographic model (with key collaborators from the wider NETDEM working group);
3) With Olivier Gimenez and members of the wider NETDEM working group I have worked to develop open capture-recapture demographic models that include social network effects in both the observation and process parts of the model;
Objective 4 involved developing an R package to facilitate wider implementation of the statistical models outlined above. During the project I have developed the R package genNetDem for integrated social network-demographic analyses. Once finalised, further code for statistical models developed for the NETDEM project will be included within an additional R package.
[Objective 2 was not worked on due to the truncated duration of the NETDEM project (18 months rather than 24 months).]
Two publications have already resulted from the action:
Silk & Gimenez. 2023. Generation and applications of simulated datasets to integrate social network and demographic analyses. Ecology and Evolution, 13, e9871.
Silk. 2023. Conceptual representations of animal social networks: an overview. Animal Behaviour, 201, 157-166.
Two further publications are under review:
Mourier, Soria, Silk, Demichelis, Dagorn & Hattab. Exponential random graph models reveal the drivers of movements in a marine predator. In Review, Animal Behaviour.
Albery, Bansal & Silk. Comparative approaches in social network ecology. In Revision for Ecology Letters.
With further publications in preparation for submission.
I presented results from the project at 3 international conferences and 1 interdisciplinary workshop:
ISBE 2022
BES annual meeting 2022
EURING 2023
Building Interdisciplinary Solutions to Modern Ecological Challenges (2023)
1) with the NETDEM working group I have nearly finished a paper outlining key opportunities and challenges integrating social network and demographic models;
2) I have started to develop models that integrate social networks from different data sources within a demographic model (with key collaborators from the wider NETDEM working group);
3) With Olivier Gimenez and members of the wider NETDEM working group I have worked to develop open capture-recapture demographic models that include social network effects in both the observation and process parts of the model;
Objective 4 involved developing an R package to facilitate wider implementation of the statistical models outlined above. During the project I have developed the R package genNetDem for integrated social network-demographic analyses. Once finalised, further code for statistical models developed for the NETDEM project will be included within an additional R package.
[Objective 2 was not worked on due to the truncated duration of the NETDEM project (18 months rather than 24 months).]
Two publications have already resulted from the action:
Silk & Gimenez. 2023. Generation and applications of simulated datasets to integrate social network and demographic analyses. Ecology and Evolution, 13, e9871.
Silk. 2023. Conceptual representations of animal social networks: an overview. Animal Behaviour, 201, 157-166.
Two further publications are under review:
Mourier, Soria, Silk, Demichelis, Dagorn & Hattab. Exponential random graph models reveal the drivers of movements in a marine predator. In Review, Animal Behaviour.
Albery, Bansal & Silk. Comparative approaches in social network ecology. In Revision for Ecology Letters.
With further publications in preparation for submission.
I presented results from the project at 3 international conferences and 1 interdisciplinary workshop:
ISBE 2022
BES annual meeting 2022
EURING 2023
Building Interdisciplinary Solutions to Modern Ecological Challenges (2023)
Beyond the lifespan of the project, I have the following goals to push forward with the state-of-the-art:
- Continue to find funding to support the wider NETDEM working group to improve interdisciplinary collaboration between social networks researchers and statistical ecologists.
- With Sarah Cubaynes I have been developing a framework to link social network structure with population dynamics to better understand the eco-evolutionary dynamics of animal social networks. We plan to seek additional funding to support development of this work that will incorporate theory alongside the inclusion of social networks within integral projection models.
- Build on developments in statistical models linking social dynamics and demography to incorporate infectious disease dynamics, as per Objective 2 of the original NETDEM proposal. This will be associated with my new position as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh working on behavioural disease ecology.
- Continued development of a factsheet and R Shiny app to make methodological developments from the project more accessible to policy-makers and stakeholders is in its early stages as a HAIR team (former research group) project.
The potential wider and societal impacts of the NETDEM project are by providing new tools and approaches to better understand the links between social behaviour, disease and demography in wild populations. As wildlife is impacted by human-induced rapid environmental change, these tools will be central to helping us quantify how social species may respond to these changes, can contribute to wildlife management decisions and help with efforts to monitor and predict the emergence of zoonotic and agricultural diseases. This is work that I will broadly continue in my new position to build on the work during the NETDEM project.
- Continue to find funding to support the wider NETDEM working group to improve interdisciplinary collaboration between social networks researchers and statistical ecologists.
- With Sarah Cubaynes I have been developing a framework to link social network structure with population dynamics to better understand the eco-evolutionary dynamics of animal social networks. We plan to seek additional funding to support development of this work that will incorporate theory alongside the inclusion of social networks within integral projection models.
- Build on developments in statistical models linking social dynamics and demography to incorporate infectious disease dynamics, as per Objective 2 of the original NETDEM proposal. This will be associated with my new position as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh working on behavioural disease ecology.
- Continued development of a factsheet and R Shiny app to make methodological developments from the project more accessible to policy-makers and stakeholders is in its early stages as a HAIR team (former research group) project.
The potential wider and societal impacts of the NETDEM project are by providing new tools and approaches to better understand the links between social behaviour, disease and demography in wild populations. As wildlife is impacted by human-induced rapid environmental change, these tools will be central to helping us quantify how social species may respond to these changes, can contribute to wildlife management decisions and help with efforts to monitor and predict the emergence of zoonotic and agricultural diseases. This is work that I will broadly continue in my new position to build on the work during the NETDEM project.