Heat stress conditions affect the social network structure of free‐ranging sheep

Extreme weather conditions, like heatwave events, are becoming more frequent with climate change. Animals often modify their behaviour to cope with environmental changes and extremes. During heat stress conditions, individuals change their spatial behaviour and increase the use of shaded areas to assist with thermoregulation. Here, we suggest that for social species, these behavioural changes and ambient conditions have the potential to influence an individual's position in its social network, and the social network structure as a whole. We investigated whether heat stress conditions (quantified through the temperature humidity index) and the resulting use of shaded areas, influence the social network structure and an individual's connectivity in it. We studied this in free‐ranging sheep in the arid zone of Australia, GPS‐tracking all 48 individuals in a flock. When heat stress conditions worsened, individuals spent more time in the shade and the network was more connected (higher densi..., , , # Data from: Heat stress conditions affect the social network structure of free‐ranging sheep

article by Borthwick, Z., Quiring, K., Griffith, S. C., & Leu, S. T.
published in Ecology and Evolution

For questions, contact Zachary Borthwick () or Stephan Leu ().

(A) global_net.csv contains the data to investigate the network on the global level.
Variables in the file:

study.day --- number of each study day, which were numbered consecutively
mean.THI --- mean Temperature Humidity Index
network.density --- network density
modularity --- network modularity
CV.edgeweight --- coefficient of variation of edge weights

(B) node_net.csv contains the data to investigate the network on the individual level.
Variables in the file:

study.day --- number of each study day, which were numbered consecutively
ID --- ID number of each individual sheep
degree --- node degree
strength --- node strength
betweenness --- betweenness centrality
shade.use --- describes how long the individual sheep spe...