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Measuring Pair Relationships in Jackdaws
Author(s) -
Wechsler Beat
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
ethology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.739
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1439-0310
pISSN - 0179-1613
DOI - 10.1111/j.1439-0310.1989.tb00749.x
Subject(s) - social grooming , psychology , communication , flock , social psychology , consistency (knowledge bases) , quality (philosophy) , social relationship , ecology , biology , computer science , artificial intelligence , physics , quantum mechanics
The pair relationships of 8 pairs of jackdaws ( Corvus monedula ), living in a captive flock of 28 jackdaws, were characterized by 12 quantitative measures in three observation periods. The 12 measures represent different aspects of jackdaw social relationships like spatial proximity, exclusiveness, interactional frequencies, asymmetry and behavioural meshing. They were analysed with respect to their consistency in measuring the quality of jackdaw pair‐bonds. The amount of time the pair mates spent in mutual proximity was significantly correlated with the behavioural meshing of the mates and the exclusiveness of the pair relationship. The frequencies of feeding and preening the mate as well as the asymmetry in each partner's contribution to the maintenance of mutual proximity were not significantly correlated with any other pair‐relationship measure. A factor analysis distributed the 12 measures on five orthogonal factors.