Gaffney K A, Webster M M
School of Biology, Harold Mitchell Building, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9TF, U.K.
J Fish Biol. 2018 May;92(5):1574-1589. doi: 10.1111/jfb.13613. Epub 2018 Apr 6.
We investigated the consistency of association network structure for groups of sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus. Each group was observed twice and we varied the duration between observations and the size of the experimental arena that they were observed in. At the dyad level, we found positive correlations between dyad interaction frequencies across observations. At the group level we found variation in four network metrics between observations, but only in treatments where the duration between observations was short. Specifically, fish formed more and smaller groups in the second observation in this treatment. Fish were also organized into more subunits in the larger arenas. Finally, we saw positive correlations between some group network metrics across observations suggesting relative consistency at the group level. There are several processes that might drive these interaction patterns. Our findings have implications for experimental design and the comparison and integration of findings of experiments from different studies carried out under different conditions.
我们研究了棘鱼（Gasterosteus aculeatus）群体的关联网络结构的一致性。每个群体被观察了两次，我们改变了两次观察之间的持续时间以及观察它们的实验场地的大小。在二元组层面，我们发现不同观察之间的二元组互动频率存在正相关。在群体层面，我们发现在不同观察之间，四个网络指标存在变化，但仅在两次观察之间持续时间较短的处理中出现。具体而言，在该处理的第二次观察中，鱼形成了更多且更小的群体。在较大的场地中，鱼也被组织成更多的亚单位。最后，我们看到不同观察之间一些群体网络指标存在正相关，这表明在群体层面存在相对一致性。有几个过程可能驱动这些互动模式。我们的研究结果对实验设计以及在不同条件下进行的不同研究的实验结果的比较和整合具有启示意义。
