Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Emergent Properties of Animal Social Networks: Five Stories in Five Systems

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/hd76s7034

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  • Animals aggregate and interact in nonuniform and nonrandom patterns, which lead to group level characteristics that have important evolutionary and ecological consequences. Network analysis provides a useful conceptual framework for linking animal interactions at all scales from dyads to communities, to populations and ecosystems. Despite exciting theoretical and applied advances in the study of animal social networks in the past decade, however, this field is still in its relative infancy. A host of unanswered questions remain about the processes that generate and maintain animal social networks, as well as their consequences and applications in real-world problems. In this dissertation, I examine four aspects of animal social networks and their emergent properties in four different systems. In Chapter 2, I utilize an eastern spadefoot spatial proximity network to ask how landscape configuration is related to spatial patterns of these frogs in the upland (i.e., non-wetland) environment. I found that despite their solitary lifestyle outside of explosive breeding bouts, eastern spadefoots assort by both sex and size, as well as by size within demographic category. I determined that the spatial configuration of extremely ephemeral wetlands, which last ~2 weeks a year, may drive life history stage assortativity, as well as size assortativity for males up to 150 m away from wetlands. Despite their small size and extreme ephemerality, these breeding wetlands may have significant impact on the conspecific associations of eastern spadefoots and their spatial arrangement on the landscape. In Chapter 3, I use a longitudinal dataset of African buffalo contact networks obtained from proximity collar data, to quantify the nuanced relationships between contact heterogeneity (exposure) and infection risk (incidence) across a suite of pathogens. Co-infection was the most consistent predictor of infection risk, although the strength of some pathogen interactions was modulated by contact heterogeneity. Frequency-defined networks were a better predictor of infection risk than duration-defined networks. Relationships between contact heterogeneity and infection risk are understood only in the light of coinfection within multi-pathogen hosts, and indirect connections between individuals. In Chapter 4, I draw from information theoretic and statistical learning tools to examine a multi-decade public dataset of global wildlife trade to identify fundamental drivers of wildlife trade topology. Using network portrait divergence as a metric for comparing networks, I determined that taxonomic characteristics of a species (especially genus) overwhelmingly drove network structure similarity between species, followed by economic metrics of income inequality among trading countries. The effects of geographic distribution on trade structure were modest, while the effects of conservation listings were almost negligible. Taxa identified as ‘beacon species’ (species with trade structure most representative of the overall trade) spanned many taxonomic classifications, conservation statuses, and geographic ranges, although reptiles were under-represented. In Chapter 5, I pose a ten-year challenge to the field of herpetology (the study of amphibians and reptiles) to match academic DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) efforts with measurable change using an inclusive definition of authorship networks and influence. I detail an analysis I will conduct on authorship support networks in ten years from the publication of this chapter, using data from an online public repository of self-reported herpetologists around the globe who identify as women. In Chapter 6, I draw from complex adaptive systems theories to understanding equity, social justice, and inclusion as emergent properties, not components, of institutions. Using concepts such as poverty traps and resilience thinking, I describe how institutions will continue to be trapped in ‘inequity wells’ without changing fundamentals of how diversity, equity and inclusion work is approached and conducted, and pathways for escaping these traps. In chapter 7, the general conclusion, I review the results and conclusions of Chapters 2-6 within the context of key knowledge gaps in various fields.
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  • Pending Publication
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  • 2021-12-31 to 2024-02-01

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