[Babase] RE: Ositeti groups vs subgroups

Niki Learn nlearn at princeton.edu
Fri Feb 5 12:03:51 EST 2010


On 02/05/2010 08:49:29 AM, Niki Learn wrote:
> A recap and a new approach to the third "group":
> 
>  
> 
> Everyone seems to agree that Jill's group and Latin's are distinct,
> fully
> fissioned groups that we should call 6.1 and 6.2.  I need to pick a
> date for
> these groups to start and 6.0 to end, right?

Yes.  FWIW, neither the start date of 6.1 or 6.2 group needs to
be the same date as the end date of the 6.0 group.

There are 3 dates, start, end, and permanent. The latter is the
date the group stopped being a subgroup.  The only rules are
you can't be in a group before the start or after the end date and
you can only be in one group on any given date.  Note however
that if you're in a subgroup, on a date before the 'permanent
date', you're also automatically considered to be in the
supergroup. (This can be queried using the supergroup() function,
which returns the supergroup if there is one on that date and
the group itself otherwise.)

Niki:
Hmm...  How does this supergroup thing work in members?  I guess if I just
look up the individual it will show me which group we told babase the
individual was in but if I looked up Ositeti as a group it would tell me
everyone who was in that group including those specifically identified as
being in Jill's or Latin's group (6.1 and 6.2) as long as Ositeti (6.0) had
not officially ended as a group?  The advantage to keeping 6.0 open as a
group would be that we wouldn't need the unidentified group code (6.9), we
could just say 6.0 when we don't know which group it is.  That would save
some messiness in the members table as the baboons wouldn't be bouncing
between 6.1 or 6.2 and this fictitious 6.9 (of course some of them, like
Lawyer, will bounce between 6.1 and 6.2 anyway), they'd just always be in 6
and sometimes specifically in 6.1 or 6.2.  On the other hand, it does seem
that they are permanent groups now so in that respect it doesn't make sense
to say that they are still in 6.0 - a clean break would be nice - and that's
what we have done in the past so far (though perhaps that will change when
we fix the census data for the Hook's and Alto's split periods?).  Of course
the data on these "other groups" have a lot of holes so we will never have a
real handle on when exactly they became two groups but 1 Feb seems like a
good clean spot to use as our best guess.  

And since this is an "other group" the baboons don't have lots of other data
associated with them on these dates like study group baboons would so it
should be relatively easy to delete and reload the demog notes for Feb to
June.  Phew!


>  The group was last seen
> all
> together on 24 Jan 2009 and were back in the smaller groups in early
> Feb.  I
> would propose using 1 Feb 2009 as the start date for Jill's and
> Latin's
> groups.  That's when I'll start 6.9, "an unidentified Ositeti group"
> too.
> 
>  
> 
> Karl's objection to using the negative numbers and Lacey's point 
> about
> Kernel's group seeming to be a subgroup of Jill's group kept running
> through
> my head.  As far as we can tell the main part of Jill's group and the
> part
> with Kernel in it are still mingling.  I kept thinking about this as 
> I
> was
> going home yesterday and realized that with the study groups such a
> subgroup
> would just be listed as part of the main group and then it would get 
> a
> subgroup note.  (Which also made me realize that I'll need to remove
> some
> subgroup notes on Jill and Latin from the subgroups file since we are
> calling them real groups now.  I guess someday we have to talk about
> how to
> integrate the subgroup notes into babase.)  When the team finds both
> subgroups of a study group in the field they mark them all present on
> the
> census and just note which baboons are in one of the groups.  So I am
> proposing we mark Kernel and anyone with him as part of Jill's group
> on the
> census (through demog notes), noting that there are two subgroups. 
> This
> would also apply to any subgroup sightings prior to Feb 2009 for
> Jill's and
> Latin's groups when they were still officially part of Ositeti.  And
> we
> could save the negative numbers for those old splits!  

This should also moot the subgroup notes too, right?  The
individuals are put into CENSUS in their subgroup so there's no
longer a need for a note that says who's in what subgroup.
Right?


Niki:  Yes, those particular subgroup notes go away.  Since the Other Group
Notes that make up a lot of our Ositeti sightings aren't in the subgroups
notes file anyway, I only got to delete three subgroup notes, and then I
altered the two with Kernel's group to make it clear that it is part of
Jill's group.  And the subgroup file as it now exists does not tell you who
is in which subgroup anyway.  It just gives information about when and where
there was a subgroup.  The individuals are listed on paper though.



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