Scale remains a foundational concept in ecology. Spatial scale, for instance, has become a central consideration in the way we understand landscape ecology and animal space use. Meanwhile, scale-dependent social processes can range from fine-scale interactions to co-occurrence and overlapping home ranges. Furthermore, sociality can vary within and across seasons. Multilayer networks promise the explicit integration of the social, spatial, and temporal contexts. Given the complex interplay of sociality and animal space use in heterogeneous landscapes, there remains an important gap in our understanding of the influence of scale on animal social networks. Using an empirical case study, we discuss ways of considering social, spatial, and temporal scale in the context of multilayer caribou social networks. Effective integration of social and spatial processes, including biologically meaningful scales, within the context of animal social networks is an emerging area of research. We incorporate perspectives that link the social environment to spatial processes across scales in a multilayer context.

中文翻译：

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多层动物社交网络中规模化的问题和前景

规模仍然是生态学的基本概念。例如，空间尺度已成为我们理解景观生态和动物空间利用方式的核心考虑因素。与此同时，依赖于尺度的社会过程的范围可以从精细尺度的互动到共现和重叠的家庭范围。此外，社交性在季节之内和季节之间可能会有所不同。多层网络承诺社会、空间和时间环境的明确整合。鉴于异质景观中社会性和动物空间利用的复杂相互作用，我们对规模对动物社会网络影响的理解仍然存在重要差距。通过实证案例研究，我们讨论了在多层驯鹿社交网络背景下考虑社会、空间和时间尺度的方法。在动物社会网络的背景下，社会和空间过程的有效整合，包括具有生物学意义的尺度，是一个新兴的研究领域。我们整合了将社会环境与多层背景下跨尺度的空间过程联系起来的观点。