Social Network Analysis of a Grassland Rodent Community Using a Lotka-Volterra Modeling Approach

Abstract

Although social network analysis is a promising tool to study the structure and dynamics of wildlife communities, the current methods require costly and detailed network data, which often are not available over long time periods (e.g. decades). The present work aims to resolve this issue by developing a new methodology that requires much less detailed data and it relies on well-established Lotka-Volterra models. Using the long-term abundance data (1973-2003) of northeastern Kansas rodents, the changes in the magnitude and direction of interactions (e.g., changes from cooperative behavior to competitive behavior or changes in the magnitude of competition) are quantified.