Guppies occupy consistent positions in social networks: mechanisms and consequences

The social network approach has focused increasing attention on the complex web of relationships found in animal groups and populations. As such, network analysis has been used frequently to identify the role that particular individuals play in their social interactions and this approach has led to the question of whether, and in what context, individuals consistently occupy certain positions within their network. Here we investigated the social networks of guppies, Poecilia reticulata, in the wild and tested whether 1) individual fish occupy consistent positions in their network and 2) whether these positions are robust to experimental manipulations to their habitat. Our habitat manipulations involved increasing and decreasing the surface area of their pools as well as translocating an entire pool population between different pools in situ. We found that guppies did indeed consistently occupy positions within their social networks, irrespective of the type of manipulation and that indi...

社会网络方法（social network approach）已日益关注动物群体与种群中复杂的关系网络。因此，网络分析（network analysis）常被用于识别特定个体在其社会互动中所扮演的角色，这种方法引发了一个问题：个体是否以及在何种情境下会在其网络中持续占据特定位置。本研究调查了野外孔雀鱼（Poecilia reticulata）的社会网络，并检验了两个问题：1）个体鱼是否在其网络中占据稳定位置；2）这些位置是否对栖息地的实验操纵（habitat manipulations）具有鲁棒性。我们的栖息地操纵包括增加和减少其池塘的表面积，以及在原位将整个池塘种群迁移到不同池塘之间。我们发现，无论操纵类型如何，孔雀鱼确实在其社会网络中持续占据位置，并且个体...