Social behaviour in an extreme environment and correlations among environmental conditions, individual characteristics, social behaviour, and vital rates

Our general aim is to get an understanding of how social behaviour is shaped by environmental conditions and how individual vital rates vary with individual characteristics, social behaviour and environmental conditions. To this end , we ask the following specific questions: 1) How can the social structure of snowfinch es during winter be characterised, and how is the social structure influenced by environmental conditions? How long do groups of individuals identified to be socially linked stay together along the year? 2) Which phenotypes ar e dominant under different social environment s, and how is this relationship influenced by environmental conditions? 3) Has social behaviour , in particularly consequences in terms of getting access to resources such as food and roosting sites 4) How is social behaviour linked to vital rates under different environmental conditions? Can social behaviour mitigate environmental effects on survival and reproduction?