The lizards and the bees: implementing bee tracking technology to unravel the social structure of lizard populations

Our understanding of when, where, and why animals live together is often hampered by our ability to generate good data on the structure of social groups (e.g., who is interacting with who, the strength of social associations, the length of social associations). This is because quantification of social structure is usually dependent on observational data which is both challenging to collect and has the potential to impact on the organisms social behaviour. Recent advances in tracking devices coupled with advances in social network theory/analysis has shed considerable light on this problem and led to huge advances in our understanding of social systems. For example, many species which have previously assumed to be asocial have been demonstrated to have quite complex, yet cryptic, social structures. However, much of this work has been restricted to relatively large organisms which are amenable to the implementation of suitable tracking devices. Here we will exploit remote tracking devices that have been developed for generating data on bee behaviour for the honey industry and work with world leading experts to apply this technology to our lizard system. This will allow us access to very fine scale data on the social structure of our lizard populations, opening up a suite of yet unanswered questions about the causes and consequences of variation in that social structure.