Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology
Individual differences in behaviour explain variation in survival: a meta-analysis
Published: 2019-08-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Research focusing on among-individual differences in behaviour (“animal personality”) has been blooming for over a decade. One of the central theories explaining the maintenance of behavioural variation posits a trade-off between behaviour and survival with individuals expressing greater “risky” behaviours suffering higher mortality. Here, for the first time, we synthesize the existing empirical [...]
Does internal egg carrying impair foraging ability as much as external egg carrying in a neotropical spider?
Published: 2019-06-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Females not only produce costly gametes, but also store the eggs until oviposition, a period called pregnancy. The volume that eggs occupy in the female abdomen may decrease female foraging ability by making females slow. Although females of all species are subjected to these potential costs, it remains an unexplored matter in invertebrates. Females of the spider Paratrechalea ornata carry their [...]
Heritability and maternal effects on social attention during an attention bias task in a non-human primate, Macaca mulatta
Published: 2019-05-02
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Psychology, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Social attention is fundamental to a wide range of behaviours in non-human primates. However, we know very little about the heritability of social attention in non-human primates, and the heritability of attention to social threat has not been assessed. Here, we provide data to begin to fill this gap in knowledge. We tested 67 female rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta, on an attention bias [...]
A protocol for using drones to assist monitoring of large breeding bird colonies
Published: 2019-04-29
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Ornithology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Zoology
Drones are rapidly becoming part of environmental monitoring and management applications. They provide an opportunity to improve a number of activities related to monitoring population dynamics of aggregations of wildlife. Bird surveys using drones have attracted particular attention, with a range of potential metrics able to be derived from high resolution drone imagery. Whilst a number of [...]
Does aggression towards rivals contribute to mate guarding in Drosophila melanogaster?
Published: 2019-02-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Mate guarding (MG) mediated by aggression towards rivals can be a significant contributor to male reproductive fitness in many animal species. However, establishing the MG effect of aggression in species without explicit MG can be difficult. While aggression in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is well documented, only recently has it been connected to MG. Interestingly, males of this species [...]
Predation risk and social factors influence vigilance in a social bird species
Published: 2019-02-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Predation is a critical selective force, facilitating the evolution of anti-predatory behaviours, such as vigilance. However, this behaviour can also be used to monitor conspecifics. Here we evaluate the antipredator and social functions of vigilance in Siberian jays. In this bird species, groups can include retained offspring that remain with their parents well beyond independence, as well as [...]
Size-selective harvesting and individual personality in a social fish
Published: 2019-02-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
In fisheries worldwide, larger fish are subjected to substantially greater fishing mortality than smaller fish. Body length and behavioral traits are often correlated, such that fisheries-induced changes in either behaviour or morphology can also alter other traits as result of direct or indirect selection. Consistent behavioral differences among individuals, known as personality traits, provide [...]
Be prudent if it fits you well: male mate choice depends on male size in a golden orb-weaver spider
Published: 2019-02-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Male preference for high-quality females is expected to evolve when male reproductive potential is restricted. However, when there is competition among males, some models predict the evolution of assortative male mate choice, in which good competitors choose high quality females while poor competitors choose lower quality females to avoid competition. In Trichonephila clavipes spiders, males have [...]
Replication alert: behavioural lateralisation in a detour test is not repeatable in fishes
Published: 2019-01-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Behavioural lateralisation, defined as the asymmetric expression of cognitive functions, is reported to enhance key fitness-relevant traits such as predator escape performance, multitasking abilities, and group coordination. Therefore, studies reporting negative effects on lateralisation in fish due to environmental stressors such as ocean acidification, hypoxia, and pollutants are worrisome. [...]
A comparative study of differential selection pressure over the nesting cycle in birds
Published: 2019-01-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Reproductive allocation varies greatly across species and is determined by their life-history and ecology. This variation is usually assessed as the number of eggs or propagules (hereafter: fecundity). However, in species with parental care, individuals face trade-offs that affect the allocation of resources among the stages of reproduction as well as to reproduction as a whole. Thus, it is [...]
Experimentally increased costs of parental care are shunted to offspring in species with extended care
Published: 2019-01-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Biparental care systems are a valuable model to examine conflict, cooperation, and coordination between unrelated individuals, as the product of the interactions between the parents influences the fitness of both individuals. A common experimental technique for testing coordinated responses to changes in the costs of parental care is to temporarily handicap one parent, inducing a higher cost of [...]
Elevated nest predation risk promotes offspring size variation in birds with prolonged parental care.
Published: 2019-01-30
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences
Predation of offspring is the main cause of reproductive failure in many species, and the mere fear of offspring predation shapes reproductive strategies. Yet, natural predation risk is ubiquitously variable and can be unpredictable. Consequently, the perceived prospect of predation early in a reproductive cycle may not reflect the actual risk to ensuing offspring. An increased variance in [...]
No honesty in warning signals across life stages in an aposematic bug
Published: 2019-01-29
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Theory predicts that warning signals should exhibit low variation to increase learning efficiency in predators. However, many species exhibit variation in warning colours within species and even within populations. An understudied example of within species variation is that between life stages, where animals change warning colouration throughout ontogeny. Understanding how warning signals change [...]
Visual-based male mate preference for conspecific females in mutually ornamented fish: possible importance of species recognition hypothesis
Published: 2019-01-18
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
Because sexual selection typically acts on males, evolution of conspicuous ornamentation in females has been understudied. Genetic correlation between sexes and sexual or social selection on females have been proposed to explain female ornamentation, but they cannot fully explain observed patterns in nature such as female ornamentation in non-territorial, promiscuous species. The species [...]
Macroecology of parental care in arthropods: higher mortality risk leads to higher benefits of offspring protection in tropical climates
Published: 2019-01-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences
The intensity of biotic interactions varies around the world, in such a way that mortality risk imposed by natural enemies is usually higher in the tropics. A major role of offspring attendance is protection against natural enemies, so the benefits of this behaviour should be higher in tropical regions. We tested this macroecological prediction with a meta‐regression of field experiments in which [...]