Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology

The Evolution of Peace

Luke Glowacki

Published: 2022-06-02
Subjects: Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Social and Cultural Anthropology

While some species have affiliative and even cooperative interactions between individuals of different social groups, humans are alone in having durable, positive-sum, interdependent relationships across unrelated social groups. Our capacity to have harmonious relationships that cross group boundaries is an important aspect of our species’ success, allowing for the exchange of ideas, materials, [...]

Perturbations highlight importance of social history in parakeet rank dynamics

Annemarie van der Marel, Xavier Francis, Claire L. O'Connell, et al.

Published: 2022-06-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Dominance hierarchies can provide many benefits to individuals, such as access to resources or mates, depending on their ranks. In some species, rank can emerge as a product of the history of social interactions within a group. However, it can be difficult to determine whether social history is critical to rank in observation-based studies. Here, we investigated rank dynamics in three captive [...]

The role of climate change and niche shifts in divergent range dynamics of a sister-species pair

Jeremy Thomas Summers, Dieter Lukas, Corina J Logan, et al.

Published: 2022-05-25
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Species ranges are set by limitations in factors including climate tolerances, habitat use, and dispersal abilities. Understanding the factors governing species range dynamics remains a challenge that is ever more important in our rapidly changing world. Species ranges can shift if environmental changes affect available habitat, or if the niche or habitat connectivity of a species changes. We [...]

One hand washes the other: cooperation and conflict in hygiene and immunity

Gregory Albery

Published: 2022-05-25
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

In humans and wild animals, pathogens impose costs on both the individual and the social group as a whole. To minimise these costs, group-living species have evolved many hygienic and immune traits that benefit from cooperation between individuals, thereby subjecting them to the laws of social evolution. Such social contracts include reciprocal grooming, altruistic self-isolation, spiteful [...]

Within-colony segregation of foraging areas: from patterns to processes

Jennifer Morinay, Louise Riotte-Lambert, Geert Aarts, et al.

Published: 2022-05-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Spatial segregation of foraging areas among conspecifics breeding in different colonies has been observed in several colonial vertebrates and is assumed to originate from competition and information use. Segregation between sub-groups of foraging animals from the same colony (hereafter sub-colonies) has comparatively received limited attention, even though it may have strong impacts on colony [...]

A Systematic Map of Research Exploring the Ecological Modifiers and Consequences of Bark Damaging Behaviour in Squirrel Species

Alexandra Ash, Yanjie Zhao, Evelyn P. Covarrubias, et al.

Published: 2022-05-17
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Zoology

Bark-stripping and browsing by mammals in woodlands can cause widespread damage to trees, inhibiting tree growth and leading to whole tree or canopy death. Sciurid species worldwide are known to incorporate inner bark or cambium tissue into their diets, and outer bark can additionally be used as nesting material. The drivers and causes of bark-stripping behaviour have been investigated and [...]

Temporary behavioral responses to playbacks by a pest parrot and implications for management

Cesar Omar Estien, Claire L. O'Connell, Xavier Francis, et al.

Published: 2022-04-21
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Human-wildlife interactions continue to increase due to anthropogenic disturbances, with some interactions resulting in conflict. Leveraging a taxa’s bias for a particular sensory cue is a promising management avenue for reducing the potential and realized negative consequences of human-wildlife conflict. For instance, many avian species heavily depend on acoustic communication, and acoustic cues [...]

The evolution of conspicuousness in frogs: when to signal toxicity?

Sophie M. Roberts, Devi Stuart-Fox, Iliana Medina

Published: 2022-04-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Many organisms use conspicuous color patterns to advertise their toxicity or unpalatability, a strategy known as aposematism. Despite the recognized benefits of this anti-predator tactic, not all chemically defended species exhibit warning coloration. Here, we use a comparative approach to investigate which factors predict the evolution of conspicuousness in frogs, a group in which conspicuous [...]

Machine learning pipeline extracts biologically significant data automatically from avian monitoring videos

Alex Hoi Hang Chan, Liu Jing Qi, Terry Burke, et al.

Published: 2022-03-08
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Measuring parental care behaviour in the wild is central to the study of animal life-history trade-offs, but is often labour and time-intensive. More efficient machine learning-based video processing tools have recently emerged that allow parental nest visit rates to be measured using video cameras and computer processing. Here, we used open-source software to detect movement events from videos [...]

Mountain Gorillas benefit from social distancing too: Close proximity from tourists affects gorillas sociality

Raquel Costa, Valéria Romano, André S. Pereira, et al.

Published: 2022-02-25
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Gorilla tourism supports the protection of the gorilla ecosystem, benefiting humans and wildlife populations living therein. Assessing to what degree the presence and proximity of tourists affect wildlife aids long-term benefits. Because wild animals might see human activities as stressors, we hypothesised that the increased presence and proximity of tourists leads to an immediate increase in [...]

Intergenerational effects of overfeeding on aversive learning in zebrafish (Danio rerio)

Hamza Anwer, Dominic Mason, Susanne Zajitschek, et al.

Published: 2022-02-06
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences

The obesity epidemic is among the most serious and rapidly growing public health challenges of the 21st century. This rapid increase is concerning as obesity appears to negatively impact cognition and behaviour. Furthermore, some studies suggest that this negative effect could be carried across generations from both mothers and fathers although evidence is not consistent. Here, we attempt to [...]

The effects of an obesogenic diet on behaviour and cognition in zebrafish (Danio rerio): traits average, variability, repeatability, and behavioural syndromes

Hamza Anwer, Rose E O'Dea, Dominic Mason, et al.

Published: 2022-02-06
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences

The obesity epidemic, largely driven by the accessibility of ultra-processed high-energy foods, is one of the most pressing public health challenges of the 21st century. Consequently, there is increasing concern about the impacts of diet-induced obesity on behaviour and cognition. While research on this matter continues, to date, no study has explicitly investigated the effect of obesogenic diet [...]

How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored

Ioanna Gavriilidi, Gilles De Meester, Raoul Van Damme, et al.

Published: 2022-01-28
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 [...]

Behavioral flexibility is manipulable and it improves flexibility and innovativeness in a new context

Corina J Logan, Dieter Lukas, Aaron Blaisdell, et al.

Published: 2022-01-05
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 [...]

Ecogeography of group size suggests differences in drivers of sociality among cooperatively breeding fairywrens

Allison E. Johnson, Joseph F. Welklin, Ian R. Hoppe, et al.

Published: 2022-01-05
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 [...]

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