Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology
Published: 2022-01-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Animals on islands typically depart from their mainland relatives in assorted aspects of their biology. Because they seem to occur in concert, and to some extent evolve convergently in disparate taxa, these changes are referred to as the “island syndrome”. While morphological, physiological, and life history components of the island syndrome have received considerable attention, much less is [...]
Published: 2022-01-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Behavioral flexibility, the ability to adapt behavior to new circumstances, is thought to play an important role in a species' ability to successfully adapt to new environments and expand its geographic range. However, flexibility is rarely directly tested in a way that would allow us to determine how flexibility works to predict a species' ability to adapt their behavior to new environments. We [...]
Published: 2022-01-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences
Cooperatively breeding species exhibit a range of social behaviors associated with different costs and benefits to group-living, often in association with different environmental conditions. For example, species in which collective-care of offspring reduces the cost of reproduction are more common in harsh environments (true cooperative breeding), while species that collectively defend resources [...]
Published: 2021-11-28
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Zoology
In most vertebrates, males are larger than females. For raptors, sexual size dimorphism is reversed, with females being larger. Reversed sexual dimorphism (RSD) in raptors is strongly linked to diet, with species feeding on the most agile prey, for example bird-eating raptors, showing the greatest size differences between the sexes. Hypotheses for reversed sexual dimorphism (RSD) include the [...]
Published: 2021-11-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Ecotourism promotes conservation efforts while also allowing for low impact observation of wildlife. Many ecotourists photograph wildlife and photography plays an important role in focusing the public’s attention on nature. Although photography is commonly believed to be a low impact activity, how the visual stimulus of a camera influences wildlife remains unknown. Since animals are known to fear [...]
Published: 2021-11-17
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Male mate choice occurs in several animal species, but we know little about the factors that influence the expression of this behaviour. Males vary in their capacity to acquire mates (i.e. male quality), which could be crucial to male mate choice expression but it is often overlooked. Using a meta-analytical approach, we explore inter-individual variation in the expression of male mate choice by [...]
Published: 2021-11-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Global changes in temperature potentially influence sexual selection by restricting opportunities for activity. However, explicit tests of the behavioural mechanisms linking thermal variation to mating and reproductive performance are rare. We address this gap in a temperate lizard by combining social network analysis with molecular pedigree reconstruction in a large-scale thermal manipulation [...]
Published: 2021-10-26
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Animal Studies, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Communication, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Mobbing is an important anti-predator behavior where prey harass and attack a predator to lower the immediate and long-term risk posed by predators, warn others, and communicate about the predator’s threat. While this behavior has been of interest to humans since antiquity, and aspects of it have been well researched for the past 50 years, we still know little about its ecology and the [...]
Published: 2021-10-13
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Life in social groups, while potentially providing social benefits, inevitably leads to conflict among group members. In many social mammals, such conflicts lead to the formation of dominance hierarchies, where high-ranking individuals consistently outcompete other group members. Given that competition is a fundamental tenet of the theory of natural selection, it is generally assumed that [...]
Published: 2021-09-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences
At the birth of supergenes, the genomic landscape is dramatically re-organized leading to pronounced differences in phenotypes and increased intrasexual diversity. Two of the best- studied supergenes in vertebrates are arguably the inversion polymorphisms on chromosomes 2 and 11 in the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) and the ruff (Calidris pugnax), respectively. In both species, [...]
Published: 2021-09-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
It is very difficult to provide strong evidence of how flower characteristic that may serve to attract pollinators, improve plant fitness. We propose to use the natural variation that we have observed within our wild tomato (Solanum pimpinellifolium) plant stocks to investigate the effect of anther color on attracting flower-visiting arthropods which act as pollinators. By looking at [...]
Published: 2021-09-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Current methods for direct tracking of individual bee movement behaviour have several limitations. In particular, the weight and size of some types of electronic tag may limit their use to larger species. Radars and other electronic systems are also often large and very expensive to deploy. A tool is needed that complements these electronic-tag methods. In particular one that is simple to use, [...]
Published: 2021-09-04
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Hybridization is an important mechanism of evolution. While hybrids often express inferior traits and are selected against, hybridization can promote phenotypic variation and produce trait combinations distinct from the parentals, generating novel adaptive potential. Among other traits, hybridization can impact behaviour and cognition and may reinforce species boundaries when hybrids show [...]
Published: 2021-09-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Humans are transforming natural habitats into managed urban green areas and impervious surfaces with unprecedented pace. Yet the effects of human presence per se on animal life-history traits are rarely tested. This is particularly true in cities, where human presence is often indissociable from urbanisation itself. The onset of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, along with the resulting lockdown [...]
Published: 2021-08-28
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Fight outcomes often affect male fitness by determining their access to mates. Thus ‘winner-loser’ effects, where winners often win their next contest, while losers tend to lose, can influence how males allocate resources towards pre- and post-copulatory traits. We experimentally manipulated the winning/losing experiences of pairs of size-matched male Gambusia holbrooki for either a day, a week [...]