socialh

socialh analyzes social hierarchy among gregarious animals in R by extracting and quantifying agonistic replacement events recorded by electronic bins at feeders or drinkers.

Key Features:

• Data Integration: Integrates electronic bin records that track animal displacements at feeders and drinkers for downstream analysis.
• Replacement-event extraction: Identifies and compiles agonistic replacement events indicative of competitive interactions between individuals.
• Sequential/modular workflow: Implements a structured workflow of multiple steps that can be executed sequentially or independently for flexible analysis.
• Hierarchy quantification: Synthesizes replacement-event data to compute metrics that characterize social hierarchy and dominance relationships.

Scientific Applications:

• Livestock social structure analysis: Elucidates social dynamics within gregarious livestock populations such as cattle by analyzing agonistic interactions.
• Resource-access studies: Assesses how replacement events and dominance relationships influence access to feeders, drinkers, and other environmental resources.
• Animal welfare and management research: Provides quantitative evidence on competitive behavior to inform welfare assessments and farm management practices.

Methodology:

Synthesizes electronic-bin records of agonistic interactions with a focus on replacement events to quantify and interpret social hierarchy within groups.