Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology

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: 2022-02-07
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: 2022-01-29
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 [...]

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

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

Published: 2022-01-06
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 [...]

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: 2022-01-06
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 [...]

Temporal patterns in prey size between sexes in a raptor with extreme size dimorphism: testing the intersexual competition hypothesis using web-sourced photographs

Connor T. Panter, arjun amar

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 [...]

Take only pictures, leave only… Cameras influence marmot vigilance but not perceptions of risk

Kenta Uchida, Albert A. Burkle, Daniel T. Blumstein

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 [...]

The better, the choosier: a meta-analysis on inter-individual variation of male mate choice

Pietro Pollo, Shinichi Nakagawa, Michael M. Kasumovic

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 [...]

Thermal plasticity in behavioural traits mediates mating and reproductive dynamics in an ectotherm

Jeanette Moss, Zachary Borthwick, Erik Wapstra, et al.

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 [...]

Mobbing in animals: a thorough review and proposed future directions

Nora V Carlson, Michael Griesser

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 [...]

The effect of dominance rank on female reproductive success in social mammals

Shivani, Elise Huchard, Dieter Lukas

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 [...]

Supergenes on Steroids

Donna Maney, Clemens Küpper

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, [...]

Contribution of anther color to interaction between plants and flower-visiting arthropods – usefulness of bioresource stocks

Koichi Sugimoto, Tomoyuki Yokoi

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 [...]

A method for low-cost, low-impact insect tracking using retroreflective tags

Michael Smith, Michael Livingstone, Richard Comont

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, [...]

Hybridization may promote variation in cognitive phenotypes in experimental guppy hybrids

Catarina Vila Pouca, Sijmen Vedder, Alexander Kotrschal

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 [...]

Breeding in the pandemic: short-term lockdown restrictions do not alter reproductive decisions and avian life-history traits in a European capital city

Michela Corsini, Zuzanna Jagiello, Michal Walesiak, et al.

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 [...]

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