Mireia Plaza, Terry Burke, Tara Cox, Alexander Flynn Carroll, Antje Girndt, Georgina Halford, Dominic A. Martin, Moisès Sánchez-Fortún, Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar, Jasmine Somerville

Behavioural traits are considered animal personality traits when individuals differ consistently in trait expression across time and context. Previous research has primarily focused on the shy-bold continuum, with research on sociability as potential proxy for animal personality traits only recently being considered. Here, we test the hypothesis that three node-based metrics derived from social association networks between individuals (strength, betweenness, closeness) can be considered proxies for animal personality traits in a passerine bird. Using experimental data from house sparrows in captive populations, and observational data from house sparrows in a wild population, we show that all three traits exhibit repeatability. The highest repeatability values were estimated in male-only captive groups, while repeatabilities estimated in single-sex networks subsets from mixed-sex groups showed no sex-specificity. We also show that changes in social group composition led to a decrease in repeatability for up to six months. Concluding, this work provides substantial and generalizable support for the notion that social network node-based traits map animal personalities.