Behavioural traits are considered animal personality traits when individuals differ consistently in their expression across time and across context. Here, we test this idea on three metrics derived from social interaction networks (strength, betweenness and closeness). Using experimental data from house sparrows in captive populations, and observational data from house sparrows in a wild population, we show that all three metrics consistently exhibit repeatability across both study populations and two methods of recording interactions. The highest repeatability values were estimated in male‐only captive groups, whereas repeatabilities estimated in single‐sex networks subsetted from mixed‐sex groups showed no sex specificity. We also show that changes in social group composition led to a decrease in repeatability for up to six months. This work provides substantial and generalizable support for the notion that social network node‐based metrics can be considered animal personalities. Our work suggests that social network traits may be heritable and thus could be selected for.

中文翻译：

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跨种群和环境的可重复的基于社交网络节点的指标

当个体在不同时间和不同背景下的表达始终不同时，行为特征被认为是动物人格特征。在这里，我们在源自社交互动网络的三个指标（强度、介数和紧密度）上测试了这个想法。使用圈养种群中家麻雀的实验数据和野生种群中家麻雀的观察数据，我们表明所有三个指标在研究种群和两种记录相互作用的方法中始终表现出可重复性。最高的可重复性值是在仅限男性的圈养组中估计的，而在从混合性别组中划分出的单性别网络中估计的可重复性值没有显示出性别特异性。我们还表明，社会群体构成的变化导致可重复性下降长达六个月。这项工作为基于社交网络节点的指标可以被视为动物个性的观点提供了实质性和可推广的支持。我们的工作表明，社交网络特征可能是可遗传的，因此可以被选中。