Find research datasets worth reusing

The signal detection problem of aposematic prey revisited: integrating prior social and personal experience

Data collected during three separate experiments using the "novel world" (Alatalo & Mappes, Nature 1996) approach to test how social information changes predator discrimination of novel aposematic prey from a cryptic palatable alternative. Experiments were conducted with great tits (Parus major), captured from the wild and released afterwards, at the University of Jyväskylä Research Station, Konnevesi, Finland (62.6° N, 26.3° E) during three winters (2013-2014, 2016-2017, 2017-2018). Social information was provided by video playback of a demonstrator (adult male) showing an aversive behavioural response to a novel prey signal before observers (juveniles, adults, males, females) searched for prey signals against a background in either an aviary or in a "miniature novel world" in an experimental holding box.

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

Data from: Evidence for personality conformity, not social niche specialization in social jays

Animal personality traits are defined as consistent individual differences in behavior over time and across contexts. Occasionally this inflexibility results in maladaptive behavioral responses to external stimuli. However, in social groups inflexible behavioral phenotypes might be favored as this could lead to more predictable social interactions. Two hypotheses seek to describe the optimal distribution of personality types within groups. The social niche specialization hypothesis states that individuals within groups should partition social roles, like personality types, to avoid conflict. Whereas the conformity hypothesis states that individuals should assort with conspecifics of similar personality. However no research so far has compared these hypotheses using data from wild animal systems. We tested boldness in the wild on two species with different social systems, the Mexican Jay and California Scrub-Jay. We found support for the conformity hypothesis over the social niche specialization hypothesis because individuals within groups of the social species had more similar personalities, and consequently there was a statistically significant group effect. The most likely mechanism for this conformity is social learning of behaviors through development, but more explicit research on this is needed.

opencc-zeroDec 2018View details →

Data from: Achromatic plumage brightness predicts stress resilience and social interactions in tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor)

Theory suggests that signal honesty may be maintained by differential costs for high and low quality individuals. For signals that mediate social interactions, costs can arise from the way that a signal changes the subsequent social environment via receiver responses. These receiver-dependent costs may be linked with individual quality through variation in resilience to environmental and social stress. Here, we imposed stressful conditions on female tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) by attaching groups of feathers during incubation to decrease flight efficiency and maneuverability. We simultaneously monitored social interactions using an RFID network that allowed us to track the identity of every individual that visited each nest for the entire season. Prior to treatments, plumage coloration was correlated with baseline and stress-induced corticosterone. Relative to controls, experimentally challenged females were more likely to abandon their nest during incubation. Overall, females with brighter white breasts were less likely to abandon, but this pattern was only significant under stressful conditions. In addition to being more resilient, brighter females received more unique visitors at their nest box and tended to make more visits to other active nests. In contrast, dorsal coloration did not reliably predict abandonment or social interactions. Taken together, our results suggest that females differ in their resilience to stress and that these differences are signaled by plumage brightness, which is in turn correlated with the frequency of social interactions. While we do not document direct costs of social interaction, our results are consistent with models of signal honesty based on receiver-dependent costs.

Sociality and tattoo skin disease among bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia

Social behavior is an important driver of infection dynamics, though identifying the social interactions that foster infectious disease transmission is challenging. Here we examine how social behavior impacts disease transmission in Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) using an easily identifiable skin disease and social network data. We analyzed tattoo skin disease (TSD) lesions based on photographs collected as part of a 34-year longitudinal study in relation to the sociality of T. aduncus using three metrics (degree, time spent socializing, and time in groups) and network structure, using the k-test. We show that calves with TSD in the second year of life associated more with TSD-positive individuals in the first year of life compared with calves that did not have TSD. Additionally, the network k-test showed that the social network links are epidemiologically relevant for transmission. However, degree, time spent in groups, and time spent socializing were not significantly different between infected and uninfected groups. Our findings indicate that association with infected individuals is predictive of an individual's risk for TSD and that the social association network can serve as a proxy for studying the epidemiology of skin diseases in bottlenose dolphins.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Seasonal food scarcity prompts long-distance foraging by a wild social bee

Foraging is an essential process for mobile animals and its optimization serves as a foundational theory in ecology and evolution; however, drivers of foraging are rarely investigated across landscapes and seasons. Using a common bumble bee species from the Western US (Bombus vosnesenskii), we ask if seasonal decreases in food resources prompt changes in foraging behavior and space use. We employ a unique integration of population genetic tools and spatially-explicit foraging models to estimate foraging distances and rates of patch visitation for wild bumble bee colonies across three study regions and two seasons. By mapping the locations of 669 wild-caught individual foragers, we find substantial variation in colony-level foraging distances, often exhibiting a 60-fold difference within a study region. Our analysis of visitation rates indicates that foragers display a preference for high-cover destination patches and forage significantly further for these patches, but only in the summer, when landscape-level resources are low. Overall, these results indicate that an increasing proportion of long-distance foraging bouts take place in the summer. As pollinators, the foraging dynamics of wild bees are of urgent concern given the potential impacts of global change on their movement and services. The behavioral shift towards long-distance foraging with seasonal declines in food resources suggests a novel phenologically-directed approach to landscape-level pollinator conservation and increased evaluation of late-season floral resources.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Complex selection on a regulator of social cognition: evidence of balancing selection, regulatory interactions and population differentiation in the prairie vole Avpr1a locus

Adaptive variation in social behavior depends upon standing genetic variation, but we know little about how evolutionary forces shape genetic diversity relevant to brain and behavior. In prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster), variants at the Avpr1a locus predict expression of the vasopressin 1a receptor in the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), a brain region that mediates spatial and contextual memory; cortical V1aR abundance in turn predicts diversity in space-use and sexual fidelity in the field. To examine the potential contributions of adaptive and neutral forces to variation at the Avpr1a locus, we explore sequence diversity at the Avpr1a locus and throughout the genome in two populations of wild prairie voles. First, we refine results demonstrating balancing selection at the locus by comparing the frequency spectrum of variants at the locus to a random sample of the genome. Next, we find that the four SNPs that predict high V1aR expression in the RSC are in stronger linkage disequilibrium than expected by chance despite high recombination among intervening variants, suggesting that epistatic selection maintains their association despite recombination. Analysis of population structure and a haplotype network for two populations revealed that this excessive LD was unlikely to be due to admixture alone. Furthermore, the two populations differed considerably in the region shown to be a regulator of V1aR expression despite the extremely low levels of genome-wide genetic differentiation. Together, our data suggest that complex selection on Avpr1a locus favors specific combinations of regulatory polymorphisms, maintains the resulting alleles at populations-specific frequencies, and may contribute to unique patterns of spatial cognition and sexual fidelity among populations.

opencc-zeroApr 2020View details →

Data from: Singing behaviour of Ruby-crowned Kinglets (Regulus calendula) in relation to time-of-day, time-of-year, and social context

Observational field studies provide insight on the multifunctional nature of birdsong. For example, if song production were limited to pre-fertilization, then that would suggest a mate attraction function. If it were used throughout the breeding season and in response to intruding males, then that would suggest a territorial defence function. In the present study, we determined the daily and seasonal singing patterns of male Ruby-crowned Kinglets (Regulus calendula) in Labrador, Canada, using microphone arrays in two breeding seasons. Using a playback experiment, we simulated a territorial intrusion to compare the structure of songs produced while defending a territory to the structure of songs produced during solo and contest singing. Singing peaked in the early part of the breeding season and then declined continuously for the remainder of the season, which suggests that the songs function in mate attraction. Singing peaked 2-3 h after dawn, and then declined steadily until it stopped at 2200 h. Some nocturnal singing was observed, but no dawn singing was observed. A high probability of signal overlap by heterospecific songs at dawn would hinder signal recognition and explain the observed delay in peak singing activity. Vocal responses to playback suggested a function in territory defence. However, there were no significant differences in the duty cycle, frequency modulation, and bandwidth of songs in relation to the context of song production, though songs were shorter in the intrusion context than during solo singing. Overall, the study provides the first quantitative description of the effects of time of day, time of year, and social context on singing behaviour in this understudied species.

Data from: The fire ant social supergene is characterized by extensive gene and transposable element copy number variation

In the fire ant Solenopsis invicta, a supergene composed of ~600 genes and having two variants, SB and Sb, regulates colony social form. In single queen colonies all individuals carry only the SB allele, while in multiple queen colonies, some individuals carry the Sb allele. In this study we characterized genes with copy number variation between SB and Sb-carrying individuals. We showed extensive acquisition of gene duplicates in Sb genome, with some likely involved in polygyne-related phenotypes. We found 260 genes with differences in copy number between SB and Sb, of which 239 are in greater copy number in Sb. We observed TE accumulation on Sb, likely due to the accumulation of repetitive elements on the non-recombining chromosome. We found a weak correlation between TE copy number and differential expression, suggesting some TEs may still be proliferating in Sb, however many of the duplicated TEs were already silenced. Among the 115 non-TE genes with higher copy in Sb, enzymes responsible for cuticular hydrocarbon synthesis were highly represented. These include a desaturase and an elongase; both potentially responsible for differential queen odor and likely beneficial for polygyne ants. These genes seem to have translocated into the supergene from other chromosomes and proliferated by multiple duplication events. While the presence of transposable elements (TEs) in supergenes is well documented, little is known about duplication of non-TE genes and their possible adaptive role. Overall, our results suggest that gene duplications may be an important factor leading to monogyne and polygyne ant societies.

Competition for resources can promote the divergence of social learning phenotypes

Social learning occurs when animals acquire knowledge or skills by observing or interacting with others, and is the fundamental building block of culture. Within populations, some individuals use social learning more frequently than others, but why social learning phenotypes differ among individuals is poorly understood. We modelled the evolution of social learning frequency in a system where foragers compete for resources and there are many different foraging options to learn about. Social learning phenotypes diverged when some options offered much better rewards than others and expected rewards changed moderately quickly over time. When options offered similar rewards or when rewards changed slowly, a single social learning phenotype evolved. This held for fixed and simple conditional social learning rules. Sufficiently complex conditional social learning rules prevented the divergence of social learning phenotypes under all conditions. Our results explain how competition can promote the divergence of social learning phenotypes.

opencc-zeroDec 2014View details →

Data from: Saami reindeer herders cooperate with social group members and genetic kin

Cooperative behaviors evolve by ultimately increasing the inclusive fitness of performers as well as recipients of those behaviors. Such increases can occur via direct or indirect fitness benefits, theoretically explained by reciprocal altruism and kin selection, respectively. However, humans are known for cooperating with individuals who are not necessarily genetic relatives, which seemingly precludes kin selection as an explanation. Here, we aim to quantify the relative importance of kinship and social group membership as mediators of cooperative behavior. Using an experimental gift game, we test whether indigenous Saami reindeer herders in Norway give gifts to genetic relatives or to members of their cooperative herding group (the "siida") or both. Membership of the same siida strongly increased the odds of gift giving. Kinship had a smaller, albeit positive, effect. Gifts were not preferentially given to younger family members, contrary to predictions relating to intergenerational resource transfers as a form of parental investment. These patterns suggest that social grouping can be at least as important as genetic factors in mediating cooperative behavior in this population. This is likely to reflect the importance of herding groups in day-to-day subsistence.

opencc-by-4.0Jun 2021View details →

Social media images from Peneda-Gerês National Park, Northern Portugal

This dataset contains images from the Peneda-Gerês National Park, Northern Portugal. The images were collected from the Flickr and Wikiloc platforms considering a time period from 2003 to 2017. In respect to the General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, social media data protected by users’ rights was not downloaded nor analysed. Public data that would potentially contain personal information from social media users was kept anonymous through the study. Data was retrieved through the use of the freely available Flickr’s Application Programming Interface (API), indicating a time window and a bounding box with a pair of coordinates (in our case: minimum latitude: 41.653104; maximum lat.: 42.083595; min. longitude: -8.426270; max. lon.: -7.754076) around Peneda-Gerês. This information was then saved as an excel file with the following attributes: user-id, date taken, latitude, longitude, picture uniform resource locator (url). A first annotation, in the context of cultural ecosystem services (CES), was performed by dividing the photographs of the dataset into “Indoor” and “Outdoor” classes. Only the “Outdoor” pictures were included in this study, since CES are directly connected to nature and environment, which in turn are related to the outside/outdoor. The “Outdoor” images were further divided into two main classes, “Natural” and “Human”, depending on whether the image was dominated by natural or man-made elements. Lastly, a finer annotation for outdoor images was also provided, which encompasses the following six classes: “Species”, “Landscape”, “Nature”, “Human activities”, “Human structures” and “Posing”. “Species” pictures respectively pertained to close-up shots of animals or plants in the wild, translating CES pertaining to biodiversity appreciation. “Landscape” pictures show wide-open shots of nature in the wild, often with a visible horizon most often representing people’s enjoyment of landscape aesthetics. “Human activities” include pictures where people engage in by recreational activities, for instance related to sports such as ski or cycling. “Human structures” include those pictures where man-made structures dominate in the wild, e.g., historical monuments and churches, capturing situations of cultural heritage and spiritual enrichment. “Posing” refers to pictures with people looking at the camera, with recognizable faces, testifying social enjoyment and sense of identity. Finally, “Nature” pictures capture natural elements with no particular feature (such as species) but with an intermediate shot (differing from wide-open shots attributed to landscapes), expressing the appreciation of nature by people.

opencc-by-nc-4.0Feb 2021View details →

Figure 1 in Conservation Units as a protection tool for social wasps in Minas Gerais state, Brazil

Figure 1. Geographic location of the sampled Conservation Units in the Minas Gerais state, southeastern Brazil, where social wasp inventories were carried out so far (maps at the top, Conservation Units are represented by the red points numbered from 1 to 14). The table on the right shows data of species richness and exclusive occurrence in each Conservation Unit. Aerial view of the Conservation Unit areas (satellite images 1-14). The numbers of map, table, and satellite images are corresponding.

opencc-zeroOct 2019View details →

Embryo survival in the oviduct not significantly influenced by major histocompatibility complex social signaling in the horse

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) influences sexual selection in various vertebrates. Recently, MHC-linked social signaling was also shown to influence female fertility in horses (Equus caballus) diagnosed 17 days after fertilization. However, it remained unclear at which stage the pregnancy was terminated. Here we test if MHC-linked cryptic female choice in horses happens during the first days of pregnancy, i.e., until shortly after embryonic entrance into the uterus and before fixation in the endometrium. We exposed estrous mares to one of several unrelated stallions, instrumentally inseminated them with semen of another stallion, and flushed the uterus 8 days later to test for the presence of embryos. In total 68 embryos could be collected from 97 experimental trials. This success rate of 70.1% was significantly different from the mean pregnancy rate of 45.7% observed 17 days after fertilization using the same experimental protocol but without embryo flushing. Embryo recovery rate was not significantly dependent on whether the mares had been socially exposed to an MHC-dissimilar or an MHC-similar stallion. These observations suggest that MHC-linked maternal strategies affect embryo survival mainly (or only) during the time of fixation in the uterus.

opencc-zeroMar 2020View details →

Investigating social and environmental predictors of natal dispersal in a cooperative breeding bird

Natal dispersal is a crucial life history trait that affects both individual fitness and population structure, yet drivers of variation in dispersal probability and distance are difficult to study in wild populations. In cooperatively breeding species, individuals typically delay dispersal beyond their first breeding season and remain on the natal territory as nonbreeders, which prolongs social dynamics that can affect dispersal decisions. Using a 35-year data set covering almost 600 dispersal events in the cooperatively breeding Florida scrub-jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens), we examined the environmental and social parameters that predict dispersal probability over time and distance. In both sexes, dispersal probability increased with age, which in turn was negatively correlated with dispersal distance. In males, individuals occupying low quality natal territories and living with a stepfather had an increased probability of dispersal. Older and more dominant males were more likely to inherit their natal territory. In females, which generally disperse earlier and farther than males, socially subordinate jays dispersed farther than dominant ones. Overall, jays that delayed dispersal the longest were more likely to attain breeding status near their natal territory, which was previously found to be associated with increased survival and lifetime fitness. Our results suggest that social dynamics and environmental factors on the natal territory affect delayed dispersal patterns differently for the two sexes in this cooperative breeder.

opencc-zeroFeb 2020View details →

Data From: Analysing social media forums to discover potential causes of phasic shifts in cryptocurrency price series

The recent extreme volatility in cryptocurrency prices occurred in the setting of popular social media forums devoted to the discussion of cryptocurrencies. We develop a framework that discovers potential causes of phasic shifts in the price movement captured by social media discussions. This draws on principles developed in healthcare epidemiology where, similarly, only observational data are available. Such causes may have a major, one-off effect or recurring effects on the trend in the price series. We find a one-off effect of regulatory bans on bitcoin, the repeated effects of rival innovations on ether and the influence of technical traders, captured through discussion of market price, on both cryptocurrencies. The results for Bitcoin differ from Ethereum, which is consistent with the observed differences in the timing of the highest price and the price phases. This framework could be applied to a wide range of cryptocurrency price series where there exists a relevant social media text source. Identified causes with a recurring effect may have value in predictive modelling, whilst one-off causes may provide insight into unpredictable black swan events that can have a major impact on a system.

opencc-zeroDec 2015View details →

Data from: Correlational selection on personality and social plasticity: morphology and social context determine behavioural effects on mating success

Despite a central line of research aimed at quantifying relationships between mating success and sexually dimorphic traits (e.g., ornaments), individual variation in sexually selected traits often explains only a modest portion of the variation in mating success. Another line of research suggests that a significant portion of the variation in mating success observed in animal populations could be explained by correlational selection, where the fitness advantage of a given trait depends on other components of an individual's phenotype and/or its environment. We tested the hypothesis that interactions between multiple traits within an individual (phenotype dependence) or between an individual's phenotype and its social environment (context dependence) can select for individual differences in behaviour (i.e., personality) and social plasticity. To quantify the importance of phenotype- and context-dependent selection on mating success, we repeatedly measured the behaviour, social environment and mating success of about 300 male stream water striders, Aquarius remigis. Rather than explaining individual differences in long-term mating success, we instead quantified how the combination of a male's phenotype interacted with the immediate social context to explain variation in hour-by-hour mating decisions. We suggest that this analysis captures more of the mechanisms leading to differences in mating success. Males differed consistently in activity, aggressiveness and social plasticity. The mating advantage of these behavioural traits depended on male morphology and varied with the number of rival males in the pool, suggesting mechanisms selecting for consistent differences in behaviour and social plasticity. Accounting for phenotype and context dependence improved the amount of variation in male mating success we explained statistically by 30–274%. Our analysis of the determinants of male mating success provides important insights into the evolutionary forces that shape phenotypic variation. In particular, our results suggest that sexual selection is likely to favour individual differences in behaviour, social plasticity (i.e., individuals adjusting their behaviour), niche preference (i.e., individuals dispersing to particular social conditions) or social niche construction (i.e., individuals modifying the social environment). The true effect of sexual traits can only be understood in interaction with the individual's phenotype and environment.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Direct fitness benefits and kinship of social foraging groups in an Old World tropical babbler

Molecular studies have revealed that social groups composed mainly of non-relatives may be widespread in group-living vertebrates, but the benefits favoring such sociality are not well understood. In the Old World, birds often form conspecific foraging groups that are maintained year-round and offspring usually disperse to other social groups. We tested the hypothesis that non-breeding group members are largely unrelated and gain direct fitness benefits through breeding opportunities (males) and brood parasitism (females) in the tropical grey-throated babbler, Stachyris nigriceps, in Malaysian Borneo. Babblers foraged in social groups containing one or more breeding pairs (median = 8 group members of equal sex ratio), but group members rarely assisted with breeding (9% of 67 breeding pairs had a third helper; exhibiting facultative cooperative breeding). Although 20% of 266 group member dyads were first-order relatives of one or both members of the breeding pairs, 80% were unrelated. Male group members gained direct fitness benefits through extra-pair and extra-group paternity (25% of 73 offspring), which was independent of their relatedness to the breeding pair and increased with decreasing group size. In contrast, females did not gain direct fitness benefits through brood parasitism. The low levels of relatedness and helping in social groups suggest that most group members do not gain indirect fitness benefits by helping to raise unrelated offspring. These findings highlight the importance of examining benefits of sociality for unrelated individuals that largely do not help and broaden the direct fitness benefits of group foraging beyond assumed survival benefits.

opencc-by-4.0Aug 2014View details →

Social media data from online discourse on Nigeria's budget

The social media data was obtained by extracting online discourse on Nigeria's 2013 budget. This was done as a component of the media analysis on the case study investigating the use of the online national budget of Nigeria which is part of the 'Exploring  the  Emerging  Impacts  of  Open  Data  in  Developing  Countries'  (ODDC) research  project.

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2015View details →

Detecting social interactions via mobile sensing - Dataset

The goal of Markus' master thesis was to establish whether real-life social interactions could be detected using smartphone internal sensors. The present dataset is a labelled set of sensor data. It contains sensing data of six persons, who each used the sensing application for three days in a row. During these days, the test persons in addition created labels for their real-life sensing data. Participants in the first group in addition worked in the same office, and used the sensing at the same time. Their social interactions therefore overlap.