Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology

Temporal stability in songs across the breeding range of the Mourning Warbler may be due to learning fidelity and transmission biases

Jay Pitocchelli, Adam Albina, R. Alexander Bentley, et al.

Published: 2024-09-30
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology

We found a stable pattern of geographic variation in songs across the breeding range of the Mourning Warbler over a 36 yr period. The Western, Eastern, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland regiolects found in 2005-2009 also existed from 1983-1988 and 2017-2019. Each regiolect contained a pool of syllables that were unique and different from the other regiolects. The primary syllable types that defined [...]

An introduction to generative network models and how they may be used to study animal sociality

Josefine Bohr Brask, Matthew Silk, Michael N. Weiss

Published: 2024-09-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Social networks constitute an important approach in the study of animal social behaviour. So far, focus has been on statistical analysis of animal social network structures. However, social networks can also be studied by generative network models - procedures that create simulated network structures. These models play a key role in wider network science, but despite occasional use, have not yet [...]

A top predator does not provoke stronger defense than a mesopredator in an intraguild prey

Kai-Philipp Gladow, Marla Jablonski, Nayden Chakarov, et al.

Published: 2024-08-26
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Ornithology

The loss of top predators has been shown to lead to drastic changes in community structure. An important part of this is the shift in behavior of other species. The understanding of such changes is scarce because recordings of behavioral reactions towards lost species are rarely done. This is important for predators experiencing predation pressure themselves, known as intraguild predation. [...]

No support for honest signalling of male quality in zebra finch song

Martin Bulla, Wolfgang Forstmeier

Published: 2024-08-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology

Alam et al.1 claim to have discovered a song feature, called “path length”, that honestly signals male fitness and is therefore preferred by all females. We see no statistical support for this claim in the original data. (1) The main finding about path length being an honest signal of quality (Fig. 4c) results from a statistical artefact, the regression of y minus x over x, which creates an [...]

Sunlight and diel behaviors promote coexistence of frogs through temporal acoustic partitioning

Bryan Hernandez Juarez, Yuren Sun, Trevor Hebert, et al.

Published: 2024-08-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology

Understanding how species coexist is one of the main goals in ecology. While many have documented how species coexist in nature, there is much interspecific and spatial heterogeneity in which resources are partitioned and in the contributing environmental factors. Overall, we lack a general understanding of how stable coexistence is maintained for particular groups of organisms. Thus, we studied [...]

Three Paths Through the Levels of Selection

Daniel Brian Krupp

Published: 2024-08-08
Subjects: Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Statistical Models, Zoology

Age, sex, and temperature shape within- and among-individual space use in black-capped chickadees

Megan Grace LaRocque, Jan Wijmenga, Kimberley Jean Mathot

Published: 2024-07-27
Subjects: Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Historically, spatial ecology studies have focused on average movement patterns within animal groups; however, recent studies highlight the value of considering movement decisions both within- and among-individuals. Using a marked population of black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), we used the number of unique feeders an individual visits within our study area as a proxy for space use [...]

Match or mismatch: Tokay geckos adjust their behaviour to familiar and unfamiliar handlers but according to the context

Isabel Damas-Moreira, Lauriane Bégué, Eva Ringler, et al.

Published: 2024-07-25
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Animals need to distinguish among different con- and heterospecific individuals to be able to adjust behaviour appropriately. Behavioural responses towards familiar individuals might vary based on context in which they are encountered. However, such context dependent responses, while beneficial in the wild, can impact experimental results, increase error, decrease reproducibility and threaten [...]

Repeatability and intra-class correlations from time-to-event data: towards a standardized approach

Kelsey McCune, Coralie Williams, Ned A Dochtermann, et al.

Published: 2024-07-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences

Many biological features are expressed as “time-to-event” traits, such as time to first reproduction or response to some stimulus. The analysis of these traits frequently produces right-censored data in cases where no event has occurred within a certain timeframe. The Cox proportional hazards (CPH) model, a type of survival analysis, accounts for censored data by estimating the hazard of an event [...]

Scanning the skies for migrants: Conservation-focused opportunities for a pan-European automated telemetry network

Lucy Mitchell, Vera Brust, Thiemo Karwinkel, et al.

Published: 2024-07-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology

Accelerated biodiversity loss during the Anthropocene has destabilised functional links within and between ecosystems. Migratory species that cross different ecosystems on their repeated journeys between breeding and non-breeding sites are particularly sensitive to global change because they are exposed to various, often ecosystem-specific threats. As these bring both lethal and non-lethal [...]

Social ageing varies within a population of bottlenose whales

Sam Froman Walmsley, Laura J Feyrer, Claire Girard, et al.

Published: 2024-07-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

How social behaviour changes as individuals age has important consequences for the health and function of both human and non-human societies. However, the extent of inter-individual variation in social ageing has been underappreciated, especially in natural populations of animals. Here, we leverage a photo-identification dataset spanning 35 years to examine social ageing in an Endangered [...]

Behavioral flexibility is similar in two closely related species where only one is rapidly expanding its geographic range

Corina J Logan, Kelsey McCune, Carol Rowney, et al.

Published: 2024-06-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Comparative Psychology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Population Biology

Human modified environments are rapidly increasing, which puts other species in the precarious position of either adapting to a new area or, if they are not able to adapt, shifting their range to a more suitable environment. It is generally thought that behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior when circumstances change, plays an important role in the ability of a species to rapidly [...]

Familiarity with social partners influences affiliative interactions but not spatial associations

Claire L. O'Connell, Annemarie van der Marel, Elizabeth A Hobson

Published: 2024-06-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology

To successfully navigate complex social environments, animals must manage their relationships with familiar group members and strangers introduced via fission-fusion or demographic processes by deciding who, how often, and when to interact. However, it is not clear how animals balance the risks and benefits of interacting with familiar and stranger conspecifics. We studied whether familiarity [...]

Uncovering multiple influences on space use by deer mice using NEON data

Sean O'Fallon, Noa Pinter-Wollman, Karen Mabry

Published: 2024-05-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Life Sciences

Space use by animals is affected by multiple factors; previous researchers have examined the effects of influences such as sex, body condition, and population density on home range area. However, evaluating the simultaneous influences of multiple factors on animal space use has been relatively intractable due to sample size limitations. We capitalize on National Ecological Observatory Network [...]

Global review of shorebird tracking publications: Gaps and priorities for research and conservation

Grégoire Michel, Josh Nightingale, Martin Beal, et al.

Published: 2024-05-07
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences

Electronic tracking has enabled rapid advances in knowledge of the movement behaviour and habitat use of shorebirds (Charadriiformes), and is thus making a growing contribution to their conservation. However, developing a useful coherent global strategy for tracking these taxa requires an overview of the current availability of data and how it varies along regional and ecological lines. To this [...]

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