Social data collection and analyses

Abstract

Sampling accurate and quantitative behavioural data requires the description of fine-grained patterns of social relationships and/or spatial associations, which is highly challenging, especially in natural environments. Although behavioural ecologists have tackled systematic studies on animals’ societies since the nineteenth century, new biologging technologies have the potential to revolutionise the sampling of animals’ social relationships. However, the tremendous quantity of data sampled and the diversity of biologgers (such as proximity loggers) currently available that allow the sampling of a large array of biological and physiological data bring new analytical challenges. The high spatiotemporal resolution of data needed when studying social processes, such as disease or information diffusion, requires new analytical tools, such as social network analyses, developed to analyse large data sets. The quantity and quality of the data now available on a large array of social systems bring undiscovered outputs, consistently opening new and exciting research avenues.