Time is of the essence: an application of a relational event model for animal social networks

Abstract

Understanding how animal social relationships are created, maintained and severed has ecological and evolutionary significance. Animal social relationships are inferred from observations of interactions between animals; the pattern of interaction over time indicates the existence (or absence) of a social relationship. Autonomous behavioural recording technologies are increasingly being used to collect continuous interaction data on animal associations. However, continuous data sequences are typically aggregated to represent a relationship as part of one (or several) pictures of the network of relations among animals, in a way that parallels human social networks. This transformation entails ..