Using the relational event model (REM) to investigate the temporal dynamics of animal social networks
Tranmer, M; Marcum, CS; Morton, FB; et al.Croft, Darren P; de Kort, SR
Date: 1 March 2015
Journal
Animal Behaviour
Publisher
Elsevier Masson
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Social dynamics are of fundamental importance in animal societies. Studies on nonhuman animal social
systems often aggregate social interaction event data into a single network within a particular time
frame. Analysis of the resulting network can provide a useful insight into the overall extent of interaction.
However, through ...
Social dynamics are of fundamental importance in animal societies. Studies on nonhuman animal social
systems often aggregate social interaction event data into a single network within a particular time
frame. Analysis of the resulting network can provide a useful insight into the overall extent of interaction.
However, through aggregation, information is lost about the order in which interactions occurred, and
hence the sequences of actions over time. Many research hypotheses relate directly to the sequence of
actions, such as the recency or rate of action, rather than to their overall volume or presence. Here, we
demonstrate how the temporal structure of social interaction sequences can be quantified from disaggregated
event data using the relational event model (REM). We first outline the REM, explaining why
it is different from other models for longitudinal data, and how it can be used to model sequences of
events unfolding in a network. We then discuss a case study on the European jackdaw, Corvus monedula,
in which temporal patterns of persistence and reciprocity of action are of interest, and present and
discuss the results of a REM analysis of these data. One of the strengths of a REM analysis is its ability to
take into account different ways in which data are collected. Having explained how to take into account
the way in which the data were collected for the jackdaw study, we briefly discuss the application of the
model to other studies. We provide details of how the models may be fitted in the R statistical software
environment and outline some recent extensions to the REM framework.
Psychology - old structure
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