Supplementary Material: Context-dependent social behaviour: testing the interplay between
season and kinship with raccoons; Karine Robert, Dany Garant, Eric Vander Wal, and Fanie
Pelletier
Appendix A: Supplementary Methods.
Encounter rates and durations
Proximity detecting technology has been shown to improve the quality of social data
(Ryder et al., 2012). Although a recent review by Cross et al., (2012) refers to these data as
“contacts” among individuals, here we use the term encounter. Whitehead (2009) distinguishes
proximity or association as a “dyadic state” rather than “dyadic event”. Dyadic state data does
not provide information on specific behaviours which occur while two individuals are engaged in
an encounter; in exchange proximity collars provide continuous data at times and in locations
where focal observations would not be possible. Therefore, the inferences about sociality made
herein are predicated on a number of assumptions. (1) That proximal animals are associated and
are more likely to be engaged in some social behaviour (Whitehead, 1997; 2009). We submit that
two raccoons cannot be ≤ 2 body lengths from a conspecific without their presence being known
and consequently affecting the state of the other animal. We also (2) assume that duration of
encounters provides some valuable information. For example, we assume encounters that contain
agonistic interactions are not likely to extend for as long as positive or neutral encounters.
Genetic data
Microsatellite loci amplification was obtained by employing primer sets chosen from Siripunkaw
et al., 2008 (PLM 6, PLM 10, PLM 20), Cullingham, Kyle & White, 2006 (PLO2-14, PLO2-117,
PLOM 2, PLOM 3, PLOM 15, PLOM 17, PLOM 20) and Fike et al., 2007 (PLOT-5). See Côté
et al., 2012 for details.
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