Social structure creates heterogeneity of interactions between individuals, thus influencing infectious disease spread. The objective of this study was to describe and characterise the social structure of free-roaming dog populations in three communities in the Torres Strait, Australia. Dogs in Kubin, Saibai, and Warraber communities were collared with GPS units that recorded locations at 15 s intervals for up to 1 week, and datasets were obtained from 24 (62% of the dog population), 23 (53%) and 21 (51%) dogs in each community, respectively. An association (potential contact) between dogs was defined as proximity within a spatio-temporal window of 5 m for 30 s. Networks were constructed for each dog population: 1. nodes were individual dogs, and 2. edges were weighted according to the duration of spatio-temporal association between pairs of dogs as a proportion of their simultaneous time monitored. Network statistics were calculated for each population and the robustness of networks to the duration of association between pairs of dogs was assessed in terms of efficiency, degree distribution and fragmentation (number of components). Dog social networks had 'small-world' structures, with characteristic clustering and low average shortest-path length between individuals. Overall, all three networks were highly connected in terms of degree distribution and global and local efficiency, but the median tie strength (2-13.5 min) was low. Centrality and the duration of association (tie-strength) between dogs were significantly different between communities. The Kubin network was least robust to fragmentation when ties of short duration were successively removed (14 components with minimum tie strength of 2 h). In contrast, the Warraber dog network was relatively robust with 7 components at minimum tie strength of 2 h as well as high local efficiency within components. We conclude that whilst infectious disease that requires a short duration of contact for transmission is likely to spread rapidly between and within clusters in all three networks in this study, fragmentation of networks - once ties of short duration are removed - is likely to limit spread of disease that requires a longer duration of direct contact. The network information in this study is useful as a foundation for disease spread modelling and to investigate control strategies such as movement restrictions in dog populations.

中文翻译：

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澳大利亚托雷斯海峡岛上社区的自由漫游的家犬的社交网络。

社会结构造成个体之间相互作用的异质性，从而影响传染病的传播。这项研究的目的是描述和表征澳大利亚托雷斯海峡三个社区的自由漫游狗种群的社会结构。Kubin，Saibai和Warraber社区的狗被GPS项圈锁住，它们以15秒的间隔记录位置，长达1周，并从24个（占狗总数的62％），23个（占53％）和21个（每个社区中分别有51％的狗）。狗之间的关联（潜在接触）定义为在5 m的时空窗口内持续30 s。为每个狗群构建了网络：1.节点是单个狗，而2。根据成对的狗之间的时空关联的持续时间，对它们的边缘进行加权，作为它们同时监测时间的一部分。计算每个种群的网络统计数据，并根据效率，程度分布和碎片化（组件数）评估网络对成对狗之间关联持续时间的鲁棒性。狗的社交网络具有“小世界”结构，具有特征性的聚类，并且个体之间的平均最短路径长度较低。总体而言，这三个网络在程度分布以及全局和本地效率方面都高度关联，但是中值联系强度（2-13.5分钟）很低。狗之间的集中度和关联持续时间（联系强度）在社区之间存在显着差异。当短时的扎带被连续移除时（至少14个扎带强度为2 h的扎带），Kubin网络对碎裂的抵抗力最小。相比之下，Warraber狗网相对强大，具有7个组件，最小连接强度为2 h，并且组件内部具有较高的局部效率。我们得出的结论是，尽管在本研究中，需要短时间接触才能传播的传染病可能会在所有三个网络的集群之间和集群内迅速传播，但网络的碎片化（一旦消除了短时间的联系）很可能会限制传播。需要较长时间直接接触的疾病。这项研究中的网络信息为疾病传播建模和研究控制策略（如狗群中的活动限制）提供了有用的基础。