DOI: 10.5061/dryad.20864
title: Data from: Does detection range matter for inferring social networks in a benthic shark using acoustic telemetry?

description: 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 interindividual 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 (i) associations produced by acoustic receivers
 with a 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) and (ii) the position
 of individuals within their network, or centrality, also differed. These
 findings suggest that acoustic receivers with a 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.
description: Port-Jackson shark
 social network dataThe DataZip file
 contains the following objects 1) “Data1_Proxi2012.csv” is the data from
 the proximity logger deployed in 2012 in which the location “outside” and
 within Orion Beach receiver detection’s range “JB4” are indicated; 2)
 “Data2_2012MiniSUR-10m.csv” is the data from the MiniSUR receivers
 deployed in 2012 (the MiniSUR identification number is provided in column
 “MiniSUR”); 3) “Data3_2012-VR2W-Orion.csv” is the data from the VR2W
 acoustic receiver from Orion Beach only in 2012; 4)
 “Data4_2012-AllVR2W.csv” is the data from all VR2W acoustic receivers from
 Jervis Bay in 2012 provided with “Station_name”; 5)
 “Data5_2013MiniSUR-10m.csv” is the data provided by the MiniSUR receivers
 deployed in 2013 restricted to 10m detection range; 6)
 “Data6_2013MiniSUR-60m.csv” is the data provided by the the MiniSUR
 receivers deployed in 2013 recorded with 60m range; 7)
 “Data7_2013-VR2W-Orion.csv” is the data provided by the VR2W deployed at
 Orion Beach in 2013; 8) “Data8_2013-AllVR2W.csv” is the data from all VR2W
 acoustic receivers from Jervis Bay in 2013. In all data files above are
 indicated the shark tag number “TagID”, the group number “Group”, the date
 and time of the sighting “Timestamp” and the hourly sampling period
 “SP”.DataZip.zip