ROLES

Each row represents a participant in an event that occurred during a follow, whether involving the focal or not. Events may have zero or more participants involved; rows on EVENTS may have zero or more related rows on ROLES. Usually, there will be at least one participant. But this is not true of events that are no more than a record of the presence of other species sighted during a follow.

The participant in the event must be under study on the date of the follow. This means that the FOLLOWS.Date related to the event must be between the Participant’s BIOGRAPHY_DATA.EntryDate and their BIOGRAPHY_DATA.DepartDate, inclusive of endpoints.

The system will generate a warning if a participant is not present in the follow at the time of the given event. This means that the ROLES.Participant must have been recorded in the follow as an arriving individual and the EVENTS row related to the arrival has an EVENTS.Start that is the same as or before the starting time[1] of the given event and an EVENTS.Stop that is the same as or after the given event’s ending time[2].

An individual can only be a participant once, in any given event. This means that the combination of Participant and EID must be unique.

The Role values of Actor and Actee are special. They are used in dyadic interactions, where they must be paired. This means that, for any given EID value when there is a row with a Role value of Actor there must be another row on ROLES, with the given EID value, with a Role value of Actee, and vice-versa. This condition is checked on transaction commit.

For further information on the required, and expected, relationship between ROLES, EVENTS, and other tables see the documentation of the EVENTS table.

PID (Participant ID)

The EVENTS.EID that identifies the event in which the Participant played a role. The value of this column cannot be changed. This column may not be NULL.

EID (Event ID)

The EVENTS.EID that identifies the event in which the Participant played a role. The value of this column cannot be changed. This column may not be NULL.

Role

A code indicating the role played by the Participant in the event; a ROLE_CODES.Role value. The role code broadly describes the participants role in a behavioral event. For further detail the EVENTS.Behavior column must be examined. Depending on the behavior, there may be additional information found in other tables related to the event.

This column may not be NULL.

Participant

A AnimID identifying the individual participating in the event. This column may not be NULL.

Footnotes

[1]

The given event’s EVENTS.Start value.

[2]

The given event’s EVENTS.Stop value.

Page last generated: 2026-05-18 16:14:51 UTC