[BERG] Meeting on Wednesday

Dear BERGers On Wednesday 22nd Feb, at 5.30pm in the common room (3A94), we shall have out first BERG meeting for the year. We shall brief introductions to welcome new folk, and welcome back folk returning from field work, and then I thought it would be a nice idea to reflect upon some of our academic achievements in 2011. Put modesty aside for a moment and let us know of an academic high. For example, if Craig was there he might tell us about his edited book Applied Evolutionary Psychology (http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199586073.do) or Jack Griffey and Louise Lock and others might tell us they were doctored! We want to hear about any highs - papers accepted, grants awarded, conference papers given. Let us spend a few moments celebrating our achievements as a group. I’ll them give a slide show of a different sort of high (altitude) in the Himalayas. Hope to see you there. The following week (Wed 29th Feb), Dr Mark Tranmer from the University of Manchester will give a talk about Jackdaw feeding behaviour – please see abstract below. Best, Hannah Investigating Jackdaw feeding behaviour with statistical models. Mark Tranmer, Mitchell Centre for Social Network analysis and CCSR, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. Selvino de Kort, School of Science and The Environment, Manchester Metropolitan University. Manchester, UK. The Jackdaw (Corvus monedula) is a member of the “crow family” (Corvidae), found across Europe, western Asia and North Africa. de Kort et al (2006) collected data on the feeding behaviour of 12 Jackdaws over a 14 day period, with a particular focus on food sharing. Once collected, de kort et al (2006) aggregated the data into two time points (week 1 and week 2), and were interested in the following main research questions about the feeding behaviour of the birds. 1) Is there any evidence of reciprocity in food sharing? 2) What is the general relationship between senders and receivers in terms of food sharing, and this relationship change over time? 3) Is food sharing more similar for jackdaws with similar characteristics (homophily effects)? They applied a largely descriptive analysis to the aggregated data. A statistical modelling approach can also be used with these aggregate data, regarding the 12 Jackdaws as a small network at each of the two time points, and using, separately for each of the two time points, the Generalised Bilinear Mixed Effects (GMBE) model (Hoff, 2005): based on the statistical framework of the Social Relations Model, but not restricted to the assumption of a normally distributed response. More recently, it transpires that de Kort et al have disaggregated behavioural data available for every food item in sequence over time, indicating whether a bird eats a food item itself, shares it with another bird, whether the item is stolen by another bird, or begged for by another bird. Given the substantive research questions about bird behaviour, such as reciprocity in food sharing, and these disaggregated data, we investigate the potential of the relational events model for understanding Jackdaw feeding behaviour, and discuss some interesting features of the Jackdaw data in the context of relational event modelling. de Kort, S., Emery, N., Clayton, N., Aug. 2006. Food sharing in Jackdaws, Corvus monedula: what, why and with whom? Animal Behaviour 72 (2), 297–304. Hoff, P. D., Mar. 2005. Bilinear Mixed-Effects Models for Dyadic Data. Journal of the American Statistical Association
100 (469), 286–295. Just launched: http://marmosetcare.com/ Hannah M. Buchanan-Smith Professor, Behaviour and Evolution Research Group Psychology, School of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling, FK9 4LA Scotland Tel: 01786 467674 Fax: 01786 467641 E-mail: h.m.buchanan-smith@stir.ac.uk<mailto:h.m.buchanan-smith@stir.ac.uk> http://www.psychology.stir.ac.uk/staff/staff-profiles/academic-staff/hannah… -- The Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year 2009/2010 The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159.