Repeatable social network node-based metrics across populations and contexts in a passerine.

Area of Science:

• Ethology
• Behavioral Ecology
• Network Science

Background:

• Animal personality is defined by consistent behavioral differences across time and context.
• Social network analysis offers novel metrics to quantify individual social behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if social network metrics (strength, betweenness, closeness) represent repeatable animal personality traits.
• To assess the consistency of these metrics across different populations and data collection methods.

Main Methods:

• Utilized experimental data from captive house sparrows and observational data from wild house sparrows.
• Analyzed social interaction networks using three node-based metrics: strength, betweenness, and closeness.
• Examined repeatability of these metrics across populations, sexes, and varying social group compositions.

Main Results:

• All three social network metrics demonstrated consistent repeatability in house sparrows across both captive and wild populations.
• Repeatability was highest in male-only captive groups and showed no sex specificity in single-sex subsets of mixed-sex groups.
• Changes in social group composition significantly decreased metric repeatability for up to six months.

Conclusions:

• Social network node-based metrics can be reliably considered indicators of animal personality.
• The heritability of social network traits is suggested, implying potential for selection.
• This study provides generalizable support for using network metrics in personality research.