DOI: 10.5061/dryad.sj3tx96c2
title: Social network connections are positively related to temperature in winter flocks of black-capped chickadees

description: Social species often share with conspecifics the responsibilities of
 finding food, defending against predators or caring for young. Within a
 social group, individuals’ roles can be influenced by age, sex, and
 personality. Black-capped chickadees, Poecile atricapillus, are
 nonmigratory passerine birds that spend their winters living in social
 flocks. Due to the intense metabolic stress placed on chickadees by low
 winter temperatures, the role of flocking in resource localization and
 allocation among flockmates is an important aspect of individual fitness,
 especially during winter. Understanding changes in flock structure in
 response to the environment may provide insight into the consequences of
 social behaviour variability on overwinter survival. Here, we used social
 network analysis to quantify the effects of ambient temperature on social
 foraging behaviour in winter flocks of black-capped chickadees over two
 winters in Massachusetts, USA. Contrary to our expectations, we found that
 two measures of social connection were higher on warm days than on cold
 days. We found no evidence that sex or dominance rank influenced birds’
 behavioural responses to temperature. Furthermore, contrary to previous
 research, we found male-biased sex ratios in most of our flocks. Our
 findings that birds had more and stronger social connections on warm days
 and that an individual’s response to temperature was not related to their
 status in a flock beg further investigation as to the specific costs and
 benefits of flocking in chickadees and other birds.
description: # Social network connections are positively related to temperature in
 winter flocks of black-capped chickadees ## Samantha E. Rothberg, Sarah E.
 Wolf, and Ethan D. Clotfelter These data tabulate instances of bird feeder
 use for radiofrequency identification (RFID) banded black-capped
 chickadees. They also provide information about individuals'
 attributes. Data was collected in Amherst, Massachussetts from November to
 the end of February in both 2020-2021 and 2021-2022. The study conducted
 with this data observational and attempted to correlate flocking patterns
 with outside temperature. The two files (**RFID_data_Yr1.csv** and
 **RFID_data_Yr1.csv**) contain each field season's RFID feeder data
 (2020-2021 and 2021-2022 respectively). A total of ten different
 RFID-enabled feeders were filled regularly throughout the 2020-2021
 season. In 2021-2022, eight of the ten feeders were deployed at any one
 time over a slightly smaller area, and the other two were used as backups
 in case of damage. The feeders are named as follows: * blackcapped *
 boreal * carolina * chestnutbacked * fin * greyheaded * humpback * minke *
 mountain * sei Both files are formatted in the same way. The first column
 is named "Event" to indicate each time a bird was recorded at a
 feeder. The second column is named "ID" and contains the
 alphanumeric sequence associated with each bird's RFID band. The
 third column is named "Date," and is the date of the associated
 feeder event (MM/DDYY). The next column is called "Time," and
 contains the time (HH:MM:SS) since midnight of that calendar date.
 Finally, the last column is called "Feeder," and contains the
 string name of the bird feeder at which that data point was collected. The
 second pair of files (**Birds_Yr1.csv** and **Birds_Yr2.csv**) contains
 information about individual birds. The first column "Bird" is
 simply an ordinal list of birds caught that year. The second column,
 "ID," contains the alphanumeric sequence associated with each
 bird's RFID band, just as in the files above. The third column,
 "Flock," contains numbers corresponding to the flock that
 individuals were assigned by the fastgreedy flocking algorithm.
 Individuals with the same integer (within a year/file) were assigned by
 the algorithm to the same flock. The fourth column, "Sex," has
 an M for individuals who were determined to be male (homogametic) in a
 PCR, an F for individuals who were determined to be females
 (heterogametic), and empty for individuals who did not have a blood sample
 available for PCR analysis. Finally, the last column, "Wing,"
 contains the measured wing chord length of individuals as measured during
 the banding process. All wingspans are in millimeters. Missing values for
 "Sex" and "Wing" are indicated by the word
 "null." ## Code is available via the manuscript in Animal
 Behaviour
 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.02.007](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.02.007).