PID2021-126673NB-I00 - Birdnet: influencia de la posición dentr

Although the social component of animal behaviour and life history was a key aspect of the development of ethology as a science, modern behavioural ecologists have largely focused on the individual, emphasising individual differences and somehow neglecting their social relationships. However, in the last years, a new interest in social aspects of behaviour has flourished. Current research on animal social structure offers a new perspective that goes beyond the traditional ethological emphasis on hierarchies and dominance. It has been shown that it is possible to characterise the relative position and the connectivity of the individual within the network. This perspective establishes a link between sociality and individual fitness that has only started to be explored in detail in a handful of species. Networks have the capacity to quickly spread innovations and information, and this is possibly one of the key factors that explains their adaptive value. A limitation of studies in avian networks is that they are based on a small number of mainly territorial species. Highly social species that remain gregarious over the whole year will very likely produce a different perspective, since social ties will continuously affect their daily lives even during the reproductive season. Starlings (Sturnus sp.) are a group of species characterised by their high sociability, not just during the winter, where flocks of thousands can gather, but also during the spring. The aim of this proposal is to analyse the fitness repercussions of sociality in the spotless starling (Sturnus unicolor), a highly social bird year-round, taking advantage of our long-term studied population. A key requirement to study social networks is the possibility of collecting data on social proximity. We count with a long-term studied population already implanted with RFID tags, and in which birds are attracted to feeders with food. Our main hypothesis is that the position of a spotless starling within the social structure of the population will have strong implications for survival, reproductive success, and the spread of information within the network. To test these predictions, we will build networks based on the proximity of birds to each other during their use of artificial feeders. We will test the stability of the network between years. Further, we will analyse how the individual position of birds within the network