Claire L. O'Connell

Claire L. O'Connell

PhD candidate investigating affiliative relationship formation and recovery and social resilience

Blog posts

2025

Why I study birds

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Being able to identify and appreciate the wildlife around us fundamentally changes our relationship with nature, deepening our sense of wonder and appreciation. Birds, in particular, have a unique ability to spark curiosity about the natural world, serving as an extraordinary gateway to understanding and valuing the environment. I’m grateful for the opportunity to engage with birds not only in my personal life but also academically and professionally. Through these experiences, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of observing and learning about the weird and wonderful behaviors that make them so remarkable. Read more

2023

The Social Lives of Parrots: Bridging Behavioral Ecology and Conservation

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The Social Lives of Parrots: Bridging Behavioral Ecology and Conservation

Psittaciformes (parrot family) provide an interesting system to study the intersection of behavioral ecology, social cognition, and conservation biology. Parrot species range from critically endangered to highly invasive creating a continuum to explore social relationships and their ecological significance. We have meaningful opportunities to integrate research frameworks with data collection techniques, and analytical tools, and to improve parrot conservation practices. Read more

2022

Custom layout

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If you have been playing around with network aesthetics, you have probably spend some time trying to figure out what layout works best to represent your data. After all, networks can be a great way to represent many complex relationships in a meaningful and digestable way. So, this step should not be underestimated! Thankfully, igraph has several layouts you can use. Read more

Network attributes and aesthetics

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Here I describe some basic aesthetics, and I show you how I incorportate attributes to my networks. Huge shout out to Liz Hobson for showing me most of these tips!! Read more

2021

R packages and functions

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When I first started to learn R, I really struggled to understand the structure of code. To me, it looked like a lot of technical lingo and random placement of terms I’ve never seen before. It wasn’t until I had a break through that I began to understand the general structure and patterns to coding, so I want to share it with you all. Read more

What I learned teaching R

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As a graduate student, I teach undergraduate-level courses offered by my university. In the fall of 2021, I was a teaching assistant (TA) for Analytical Tools for Behavior Information taught by my advisor. For someone, such as myself, just starting to scratch the surface of all that is R, this was an awesome experience. Guiding students through assignments helped me understand how to break down the language and logic behind code. I strengthened my own understanding of coding best practices, troubleshooting, and how to talk about code. Read more

5 step framework for staying organized

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As I learn to navigate R and coding best practices, I realized a crucial first step is getting organized. Staying organized is another challenge in and of itself, but it is much easier to do if you have a solid plan for your code before you get started. Thankfully, there are tons of ways to make sure you start on the right track and stay organized along your coding journey. I want to share how I approach the basics data analysis in five steps:

  1. Import
  2. Clean
  3. Wrangle
  4. Summarize
  5. Plot and test
Read more

SNA Respository

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Here is a collection of some useful websites I have come across as I learn to code! Read more