Data from: Does detection range matter for inferring social networks in a benthic shark using acoustic telemetry?

Accurately estimating contacts between animals can be critical in ecological studies such as examining social structure, predator-prey interactions or transmission of information and disease. While biotelemetry has been used successfully for such studies in terrestrial systems, it is still under development in the aquatic environment. Acoustic telemetry represents an attractive tool to investigate spatio-temporal behaviour of marine fish, and has recently been suggested for monitoring underwater animal interactions. To evaluate the effectiveness of acoustic telemetry in recording inter-individual contacts, we compared co-occurrence matrices deduced from three types of acoustic receivers varying in detection range in a benthic shark species. Our results demonstrate that (1) associations produced by acoustic receivers with large detection range (i.e. Vemco VR2W) were significantly different from those produced by receivers with smaller ranges (i.e. Sonotronics miniSUR receivers and proximity loggers), (2) the position of individuals within their network, or centrality, also differed. These findings suggest that acoustic receivers with large detection range may not be the best option to represent true social networks in the case of a benthic marine animal. While acoustic receivers are increasingly used by marine ecologists, we recommend users first evaluate the influence of detection range to depict accurate individual interactions before using these receivers for social or predator-prey studies. We also advocate for combining multiple receiver types depending on the ecological question being asked and the development of multi-sensor tags or testing of new automated proximity loggers, such as the Encounternet system, to improve the precision and accuracy of social and predator-prey interaction studies.

精准估算动物间的接触联系，对于社会结构探究、捕食者-猎物相互作用、信息与疾病传播等生态学研究而言至关重要。尽管生物遥测（biotelemetry）技术已在陆地生态系统的相关研究中得到成功应用，但在水生环境中仍处于发展阶段。声学遥测（acoustic telemetry）是一种极具应用前景的工具，可用于研究海水鱼类的时空行为，近期也被提议用于监测水下动物间的相互作用。为评估声学遥测在记录个体间接触时的有效性，我们以一种底栖鲨鱼为研究对象，对比了三种探测范围各异的声学接收器所推导得到的共现矩阵（co-occurrence matrices）。我们的研究结果显示：其一，探测范围较大的声学接收器（如Vemco VR2W型接收器）所生成的关联关系，与探测范围较小的接收器（如Sonotronics miniSUR型接收器及邻近度记录器）所生成的关联存在显著差异；其二，个体在其社交网络中的位置，即中心性（centrality），也存在差异。这些研究结果表明，对于底栖海洋动物而言，采用大探测范围的声学接收器或许并非还原真实社交网络的最优选择。尽管海洋生态学家对声学接收器的使用愈发频繁，但我们建议研究者在将此类接收器用于社交或捕食者-猎物相关研究前，首先评估探测范围对研究结果的影响，以精准刻画个体间的相互作用。此外，我们主张根据具体的生态学研究问题，结合使用多种类型的接收器；同时呼吁研发多传感器标记装置，或测试诸如Encounternet系统这类新型自动化邻近度记录器，以提升社交与捕食者-猎物相互作用研究的精度与准确性。