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)
