Flamingos (Phoenicopteridae) are one of the world’s most socially-complex animals. In highly-gregarious species, accounting for animal personality and healthy social interactions have now been recognised as important for individual welfare1. Social network analysis (SNA) indicates that flamingos maintain a complex social structure in captivity2, actively assorting with preferred social partners3. This evidence (alongside anecdotal reports of differing personality types), provided incentive for a study into the effects of personality on social structure in captive Chilean (Phoenicopterus chilensis) and Caribbean flamingos (P. ruber)(Plate 1) at WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre, Gloucestershire.

Social networks (Fig. 2) were created using frequently observed associations between birds (identified by Darvic rings, Plate 1) within one neck length of each other, but the ‘chain rule’(Fig. 1) was also applied4. Temporal analysis tested for active assortment. The traits ‘aggression’, and ‘boldness’ were measured through behavioural observation; eg aggressive behaviour was indicative of an aggressive personality (Plate 2). Each individual was allocated a personality score (PS) using principle component analysis (PCA). The PSs were visualised by non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS)(Fig. 3). Each bird’s PS was correlated against the mean PS of its closest network neighbours using Spearman’s rank, in order to discover if the birds associated with similar conspecifics5.