Animal social networks: Towards an integrative framework embedding social interactions, space and time

Social groups take a myriad of forms, reflecting the countless different ways in which animals can interact and associate (Wilson, 2000). This diversity calls for a broad and dynamic toolkit that is both robust in allowing rigorous quantification of different societies but also flexible in its ability to account for and control the nuances associated with each ecological system. Since Sade (1972) first used social network analysis to study heterogeneity in the affiliative social interactions of primates and their relationship with dominance rank, this approach has been considerably developed for the exploration and hypothesis testing of different aspects of animal social interactions (Brent, Lehmann, & Ramos-Fernández, 2011; Hasenjager et al., 2020; Hinde, 1976). Over the last 50 years, social network analysis has grown into a diverse toolkit that transcends animal behaviour and ecology allowing biologists to understand the many facets of sociality, from mechanistic processes to ecological and evolutionary functions (Cantor et al., 2020; Hasenjager et al., 2020; Sosa et al., 2020). For example, Bejder, Fletcher, and Bräger (1998) proposed advanced permutation techniques to examine spatial associations between individuals, and Croft, James, and Krause (2008) together with Whitehead (2008) aggregated most of our knowledge on the study of animal sociality in their seminal books. The growth in the popularity of social network analysis in animal behaviour and ecology has been favoured by methodological advances (Whitehead, 2008), and automated monitoring techniques (Smith & Pinter-Wollman, 2020) have also played a significant role by scaling up research questions to new and previously intractable species and systems. Using these tools for data collection and analysis has further engaged a lively community of researchers that, together, have contributed a near constant refinement and evolution of social network analysis methods and its application to animals. The Joint Special Feature in Methods in Ecology and Evolution and the Journal of Animal Ecology is a celebration of research by animal social network scientists, introducing novel methods and questions pertaining to Animal Social Network Analysis (ASNA). It brings together research that highlights developments in computational methods, novel considerations about bias in ASNA, advances in the study of the factors shaping individuals and group social structure and how animal networks vary under different social environments. In doing so, we believe this Special Feature offers exciting directions for future research to better cope with the complexity of animal social structures.