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 behavior is shaped by environment conditions and how individual vital rates vary with individual characteristics, social behavior and environmental conditions. To this end, we ask the following specific questions: 1) How can the social structure of snowfinches during winter be characterized, 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 are dominant under different social environments, and how is this relationship influenced by environmental conditions? 3) Has social behavior , in particularly consequences in terms of getting access to resources such as food and roosting sites 4) How is social behavior linked to vital rates under different environmental conditions? Can social behavior mitigate environmental effects on survival and reproduction?