Abstract
AbstractReintroductions, essential to many conservation programmes, disrupt both abiotic and social environments. Despite growing recognition that social connections in animals might alter survival (e.g. social transmission of foraging skills, or transmission of disease), there has thus far been little focus on the consequences of social disruption during reintroductions. Here we investigate if moving familiar social groups may help a threatened species to adjust to its new environment and increase post‐release survival. For a reintroduction of 40 juvenile hihi Notiomystis cincta (a threatened New Zealand passerine), we observed social groups before and after translocation to a new site and used social network analysis to study three levels of social change: overall group structure, network associations and individual sociality. We also tested alternate translocation strategies where birds were kept temporarily in aviaries in either a familiar group, or where their prior association was mixed. Although social structure remained similar among juveniles that remained at the source site, we detected significant changes in translocated birds at both the group‐ and individual‐ level post‐release. However, our holding treatments did not affect these social bonds so we remain unable to maintain or manipulate social groups during translocation. Crucially, there was a small tendency for translocated juveniles that gained more associates during re‐assortment of social groups to be more likely to survive their first year post‐release. We suggest that prior sociality may not be important during translocations, but rather individuals that are most able to adapt and form associations at a new site are most likely to be the surviving founders of reintroduced populations.
Highlights
Reintroduction, returning species to parts of their range where they have become extinct (IUCN/SSC, 2013), is important for many conservation programmes (Armstrong & Seddon, 2008)
Translocated juveniles behaved differently: they were not significantly more likely to form groups with birds from the same pre-translocation community than unfamiliar birds (r = À0.01, Prand = 0.19, Table 2a; Fig. 1). For both translocated and non-translocated hihi, the specific identities of who they associated with changed: association strengths between pairs of juvenile hihi at the source site were not the same before and after the translocation, and birds that associated before translocation were not significantly more likely to associate at the release site (Table 3)
Reflecting this statement, we have provided a detailed investigation of the outcomes of managing group structure and individual sociality during a reintroduction of 40 juvenile hihi, and assessed consequences for survival (Snijders et al, 2017)
Summary
Reintroduction, returning species to parts of their range where they have become extinct (IUCN/SSC, 2013), is important for many conservation programmes (Armstrong & Seddon, 2008). Along with changes in the abiotic environment resulting from being abruptly moved to a new site, such as unknown foraging conditions or altered habitat configuration, reintroductions change the social environment when the founding group of animals represents a subsample of a larger original population (Ewen et al, 2012b). While the social environment is thought to be important (IUCN/SSC, 2013), there has been less emphasis on understanding the consequences of its disruption. By leaving behind previous group members or removing external environmental influences on grouping (e.g. food-rich areas that lead to aggregations)
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