Grevy’s Zebra Communities

Abstract

Our collaborator ecologists at Princeton study Grevy’s zebra, the largest species of zebra, which are currently endangered. We use computational tools to get insights into the social network of Grevy’s zebras. The picture illustrates how twenty-seven zebras interested over time. The circles represent zebras and the rectangles the groups of zebras that were seen together. Given this time-series of observations, we use computer algorithms to assign a color to each zebra over time, to illustrate the most explanatory communities in the observation data. The color of circles and boxes indicate the community that the algorithm assigns. The red lines, squares, and circles highlight the deviating behaviors of zebras from their communities, such as when the zebras change their community, are missing from community, and are visiting other communities.