NSF-BSF: Uncovering how links between social and spatial interactions affect ecological processes

要了解社会是如何形成和运作的，就需要揭示塑造社会互动的过程。互动发生在许多不同的情况下，例如，个人可以在物理上接近，有消极的或积极的互动等。这些情况中的每一种都对社会结构做出了不同的贡献，但这些情况往往是单独研究的。此外，地理障碍和人为结构等物质限制可能会影响谁与谁互动。在考察社交互动时，很少考虑这样的身体特征。这项工作将开发工具，将不同的社会情况和物理限制整合到一个单一的框架中，使我们能够揭示社会互动的原因和后果。研究人员将使用这些新工具来研究社会和身体特征如何影响狮鹫的疾病动力学。在研究人群中，几乎每个人都可以被监测，以获得关于他们的行动和社会互动的信息。调查人员将向公众和科学界广泛提供新的工具。这一研究体系具有保护重要性，因为秃鹫是提供生态系统服务(例如，卫生设施)的保护伞物种，因此具有财务和公共卫生影响。将开发一款野生动物跟踪应用程序，当被标记的动物表现出意想不到的行为时，提醒野生动物管理员。这样的工具可以在任何可以远程跟踪野生动物的系统中使用。因此，这项工作将具有保护意义，并将开发分析工具，定义科学家如何进行社会互动，包括人类的社会互动。动物以影响其健康的方式与其物理和社会环境互动。群居动物可以受益于与同种生物的联系，以获得关于资源的位置、可用性和质量的知识。此外，自然环境会影响动物的运动，从而影响它们的社会互动。为了整合社会和空间过程并揭示其反馈和后果，这项工作将基于多层网络分析的最新发展开发一个新的概念框架。研究人员将实施新的方法来研究以色列狮鹫(Gyps Fulvus)的种群，该种群受到严格管理，在这里可以对种群中的大多数个体进行标记和跟踪。利用结合GPS和加速计的远程跟踪、实验操作和行为观察，这项研究将研究狮鹫的社会和空间网络之间的联系及其对种群疾病动态的联合影响。首先，研究将揭示不同社会状况在全球社会结构中的作用。接下来，研究将考察社会互动和空间特征连通性之间的关系，以确定互动是否是邻近和/或社会偏好的空间限制的结果。最后，研究将确定社会和空间相互作用之间的关系对疾病动态的影响--这是一个人口层面的过程。这项工作将结合高分辨率的动物跟踪与大规模的基于现场的实验操作和网络科学中的新的分析发展。这里的研究人员将为整合新的分析工具来调查社会和生态过程如何相互作用来塑造社会奠定基础。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Understanding how societies form and operate requires the processes that shape social interactions to be uncovered. Interactions occur in many different situations, for example, individuals can be in physical proximity, have negative, or positive interactions, etc. Each of these situations provides a different contribution to the structure of a society, yet often such situations are studied separately. Furthermore, physical constraints, such as geographical barriers and man-made structures can impact who interacts with whom. Such physical features are seldom considered when examining social interactions. This work will develop tools to integrate different social situations and physical constraints into a single framework, allowing us to uncover the causes and consequences of social interactions. The researchers will implement these new tools to study how social and physical features impact disease dynamics in griffon vultures. In the study population nearly every individual can be monitored to obtain information on their movements and social interactions. The investigators will make new tools widely available to the general public and the scientific community. This study system has conservation importance because vultures are an umbrella species that provide ecosystem services (e.g., sanitation), and thus have financial and public health implications. A wildlife tracking app will be developed to alert wildlife managers when tagged animals perform unexpected behavior. Such a tool can be used in any system in which wildlife can be tracked remotely. Thus, this work will have both conservation implications and will develop analysis tools that will define how scientists social interactions, including those of humans.Animals interact with their physical and social environments in ways that impact their fitness. Social animals can benefit from associating with conspecifics to gain knowledge about the location, availability, and quality of resources. Furthermore, the physical environment influences animal movements and therefore their social interactions. To integrate social and spatial processes and uncover their feedbacks and consequences, this work will develop a novel conceptual framework based on recent developments in multilayer network analysis. Researchers will implement new methods to study the Israeli population of griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) which is heavily managed, here most individuals in the population can be tagged and tracked. Using remote tracking that combines GPS and accelerometers, experimental manipulations, and behavioral observations, this research will study the links between the social and spatial networks of griffons and their joint impacts on disease dynamics in the population. First, research will uncover the role of different social situations in the global social structure. Next, research will examine the relationship between social interactions and the connectivity of spatial features to determine if interactions are the result of spatial constraints on proximity and/or social preferences. Finally, research will determine the effect of the relationship between social and spatial interactions on disease dynamics – a population level process. This work will combine high resolution animal tracking with large scale field based experimental manipulations and novel analytic developments in network science. Researcher here will create the foundations for integrating new analytic tools to investigate how social and ecological processes interact to shape sociality.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.