DOI: 10.5061/dryad.q8987
title: Data from: Wild birds respond to flockmate loss by increasing their social network associations to others

description: Understanding the consequences of losing individuals from wild populations
 is a current and pressing issue, yet how such loss influences the social
 behaviour of the remaining animals is largely unexplored. Through
 combining the automated tracking of winter flocks of over 500 wild great
 tits (Parus major) with removal experiments, we assessed how
 individuals' social network positions responded to the loss of their
 social associates. We found that the extent of flockmate loss that
 individuals experienced correlated positively with subsequent increases in
 the number of their social associations, the average strength of their
 bonds and their overall connectedness within the social network (defined
 as summed edge weights). Increased social connectivity was not driven by
 general disturbance or changes in foraging behaviour, but by modifications
 to fine-scale social network connections in response to losing their
 associates. Therefore, the reduction in social connectedness expected by
 individual loss may be mitigated by increases in social associations
 between remaining individuals. Given that these findings demonstrate rapid
 adjustment of social network associations in response to the loss of
 previous social ties, future research should examine the generality of the
 compensatory adjustment of social relations in ways that maintain the
 structure of social organization.
description: Raw Data For Firth et
 alRaw
 data and individual summary information for "Wild birds respond to
 flockmate loss by increasing their social network associations to
 others" (submitted). Authors: Firth*, Josh, Voelkl, Bernhard, Crates,
 Ross, Aplin, Lucy, Biro, Dora, Croft, Darren, Sheldon, Ben.
 *joshua.firth@zoo.ox.ac.uk. The Data.RData file contains four primary
 objects: 1) ‘records’ contains the raw primary data for the manuscript.
 This is the RFID detections of visiting great tits during the study and
 experiment period. Each row denotes a single second RFID detection of an
 individual. The columns show information on (i) ’ring’ - the unique ring
 number of the visiting great tit, (ii) ‘time’ - the timestamp of the
 detection, (iii) ‘location’ - the unique feeder it was detected on and
 (iv) ‘week’ - a number denoting the weekend of the detection relevant to
 the experiment (first removals (i.e. trial 1) performed between weekends 4
 and 5). 2) ‘focals’ contains summary information about which treatment
 category each individual fell into on each experimental weekend. Each row
 consists of an individual per trial. The columns show information on (i)
 ‘ring’ - the unique ring number of the visiting great tit, (ii) ‘trial’ -
 the trial number of that week’s experiment and (iii) ‘category’ which is
 one of 3 options: ‘fmr’ (for those who had their flockmate removed), ‘fmc’
 (for those who had their flock mate captured and then released) and ‘ao’
 for all other focal birds (i.e. those who appeared the weekend before and
 after the replica, but did not have their flock mates removed or
 captured). 3) ‘info.on.caught.birds’ contains summary information
 regarding which birds were removed and which were caught then re-released
 that replica. Each row contains an individual per trial. The columns show
 information on (i) ‘ring’ - the unique ring number of the visiting great
 tit, (ii) ‘trial’ - the trial number of that week’s experiment and (iii)
 ‘treatment’ which is one of 2 options: ‘removed’ (for those individuals
 which were temporarily removed over the following weekend) and
 ‘re-released’ (for those individuals which were immediately re-released
 within 30mins of capture). 4) ‘details’ contains the ReadMe file text
 instructions