Data from: Kinship and association in a highly social apex predator population, killer whales at Marion Island

• Main Authors: Reisinger, Ryan R., Beukes (Née Janse Van Rensburg), Charlene, Hoelzel, A. Rus, De Bruyn, P. J. Nico
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Life sciences; medicine and health care; network; Social structure; Socioecology; predator; delphinids; relatedness; Orcinus orca; Southern Indian Ocean; Southern Ocean; envir; geo; Indian; Marion Island; Orca
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jg57k

Social structure is a core element of population biology, influenced by intrinsic and environmental factors. Intra-taxon comparisons of social organization are useful in elucidating the role of such ecological determinants of sociality. Killer whales Orcinus orca are widely distributed, social delphinids with diverse morphology, diet, behaviour, and genetics, but few studies have quantitatively examined social structure in this species. We used 7 years of individual identification data on killer whales at Marion Island, Southern Ocean, to calculate the half-weight association index among 39 individuals, creating a weighted association network. There were long-term associations between individuals, though associations were dynamic over time. We defined 8 social modules using a community detection algorithm and these typically contained 3 individuals of various ages and sexes. Pairwise genetic relatedness among 20 individuals was not significantly correlated with association index. Individuals were on average more related within than between social modules, but social modules contained related as well as unrelated individuals. Likely parent pairs of 6 individuals indicated mating between social modules. Individual photographic identification data of killer whales at Marion IslandThe file contains individual photographic identification data for killer whales observed at Marion Island, 2006-2013. Each row in the file represents a sighting of a group of killer whales. "Date" is the date and time (UTC +03:00) of the sighting, "Site" is a code representing the locality of the sighting and "IDs" contains the alphanumeric individual IDs of all animals in the group (IDs are separated by spaces). For further methodological details see Reisinger et al. (2011) http://dx.doi.org/10.3354/ab00340.Reisinger et al - Data - Photo ID.csvGenotype data of killer whales sampled at Marion IslandThis file contains genotype data for 20 killer whales biopsy sampled at Marion Island, 2011-2013. Individuals were genotyped at 12 ...