Conducting social network analysis with animal telemetry data: applications and methods using spatsoc

Abstract

SummaryWe present spatsoc: an R package for conducting social network analysis with animal telemetry data.Animal social network analysis is a method for measuring relationships between individuals to describe social structure. Using animal telemetry data for social network analysis requires functions to generate proximity-based social networks that have flexible temporal and spatial grouping. Data can be complex and relocation frequency can vary so the ability to provide specific temporal and spatial thresholds based on the characteristics of the species and system is required.spatsoc fills a gap in R packages by providing flexible functions, explicitly for animal telemetry data, to generate gambit-of-the-group data, perform data-stream randomization and generate group by individual matrices.The implications of spatsoc are that current users of large animal telemetry or otherwise georeferenced data for movement or spatial analyses will have access to efficient and intuitive functions to generate social networks.