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"Animal behavior Juvenile literature.."
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Flying frogs and walking fish : leaping lemurs, tumbling toads, jet-propelled jellyfish, and more surprising ways that animals move
\"Explore unusual animal locomotion through incredible art and fascinating facts from the Caldecott Honor-winning team Steve Jenkins and Robin Page\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Antipredator mechanisms of post-metamorphic anurans
A crucial step in any ethological study is to distinguish and classify the observed behavior into categories. The literature on anuran antipredator mechanisms is largely scattered and descriptive due to the opportunistic nature of the observations and the lack of a simple, widely accepted classification scheme. We propose an explanatory classification system of antipredator mechanisms for post-metamorphic anurans (i.e., juveniles and adults) based on a thorough review of the literature and observations made during fieldwork and in the laboratory since 1970. In addition, we provide a freely available global database on antipredator mechanisms of post-metamorphic anurans. The classification system is composed of 12 antipredator mechanisms and 28 variations distributed into three stages of defense (avoid detection, prevent attack, and counterattack). The database comprises 650 species and 39 families providing a unique opportunity to investigate ecological and evolutionary questions regarding antipredator mechanisms of anuran. We provide a general overview of geographic, taxonomic, and phylogenetic patterns found in the database. Both our studies and that of our colleagues added 70 species to the database. The number of publications on antipredator mechanisms increased substantially after the year 2000. We hope to spark a renewed interest in antipredator mechanisms of post-metamorphic anurans to understand further the evolution of predator–prey interactions.
Journal Article
Far out! : animals that do amazing things
From the European eel that can migrate far distances simply from memory to chimpanzees who can learn sign language, \"Far Out!\" is packed with interesting facts about animals that can do amazing and human-like things.
Book
Mother strawberry poison frogs might supplement nutritive eggs with secretory provisioning
Many animal lineages produce and provision offspring with nutritive material such as milk, lipid-enriched skin, or mucus. Some frogs deposit offspring into small pools of water known as phytotelmata, and a subset of those species also provision offspring with eggs. Often when parental frogs enter the water, oophagous tadpoles swim erratically, vibrate, nip, and even suck on adult skin, which has traditionally been interpreted as begging and tactile stimulus for oviposition. However, these behaviors are also consistent with the hypothesis that such mouth-to-skin contact serves the function of acquiring secretory provisioning from parents, as in the mucophagous fry of some fishes. Here we present images obtained with a macro lens at 6 K resolution of mother-offspring interactions in the strawberry poison frog, Oophaga pumilio, that suggest that tadpoles not only poke or nip maternal skin during feeding visits, but rather forcefully suck on it. We compare these observations to those from numerous lower resolution videos of previous experiments with O. pumilio, and place the findings in the context of a literature review of both anecdotal evidence of mother-tadpole interactions across phytotelm-breeding anurans and secretory provisioning across the animal kingdom. We propose that (1) skin sucking behavior may involve the transfer of nutritive mucous secretions or other defensive, immunological, hormonal, or microbial factors from mother frogs to tadpoles and that (2) such secretions may serve to supplement egg provisioning in this and other frogs with oophagous and phytotelm-dwelling larvae.
Journal Article
Friend or foe : the whole truth about animals people love to hate
Takes a close look at what we dislike about each of 10 unpopular animals, and then presents the flip side: these very same animals are often smart, helpful to humans and the environment, or inspiring to scientists.
Book
The crown-of-thorns seastar species complex: knowledge on the biology and ecology of five corallivorous Acanthaster species
Coral-eating crown-of-thorns seastars (CoTS,
Acanthaster
spp.) are major contributors to the coral reef crises across the Indo-Pacific region. Until recently, CoTS throughout the Indo-Pacific were regarded to be a single species,
Acanthaster planci
. However, genetic and morphological analyses demonstrated that there are at least four distinct species:
Acanthaster benziei
in the Red Sea,
Acanthaster mauritiensis
and
A. planci
in the Indian Ocean, and
Acanthaster
cf.
solaris
in the western Pacific.
Acanthaster
cf.
ellisii
in the eastern Pacific needs more taxonomic attention. Here, we review the biological knowledge for each species adapting a pragmatic geographical species definition and using a systematic literature review complemented with more focused searches for individual species. The vast majority of CoTS research (88%) was conducted on
A.
cf.
solaris
, with much of this research undertaken on the Great Barrier Reef or in Japan. Many studies of
A.
cf.
solaris
are focused on monitoring or documenting incidences of outbreaks, though there is a solid base of knowledge on larval, juvenile and adult ecology derived from field and laboratory experiments. By contrast, most of the published studies on the four remaining species simply document cases of population outbreaks. The major taxonomic bias in CoTS research constitutes a significant limitation for understanding and managing these species for two reasons. First, even for
A.
cf.
solaris
, which is the most studied species, limited fundamental knowledge of their biology and ecology constrains understanding of the drivers of outbreaks and hinders corresponding management actions for prevention and control of these events. Second, understanding and management of other species are predicated on the assumption that all CoTS species have similar biology and behaviour, an unsatisfying assumption for ecosystem management.
Journal Article
Glowing animals
\"You know fireflies glow in the dark, but did you know there are many other animals that make their own light? Dive deep into the ocean, soar high in the sky, and explore the forest and desert floors to discover animals that glow.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Happy to breed in the city? Urban food resources limit reproductive output in Western Jackdaws
Urban areas expand worldwide, transforming landscapes and creating new challenging habitats. Some bird species, mainly omnivorous feeding on human waste and cavity nesters, commonly breed in these habitats and are, therefore, regarded as urban‐adapted. Although urban areas may provide new nesting sites and abundant human waste, the low breeding success found in some of these species suggests that the poor protein content in human waste might limit breeding parameters. We investigated whether the breeding success of a cavity nester and omnivorous species commonly breeding in urban areas, the Western Jackdaw (Corvus monedula), depended on the availability of good‐quality non‐urban food. We approached the objective by combining a literature review and experiments in the field. With the literature review, we compared jackdaw populations in different habitats across Europe and found that clutch size and number of fledglings per pair decreased with distance to non‐urban foraging grounds, even after controlling for the effect of colony size, latitude, and climate. In two experiments, we tested whether the breeding success of urban pairs could be increased by supplementing high‐quality food, first only during egg formation and second also until chick fledging. Food supplementation during egg formation led to larger eggs and higher hatching success than in urban control nests, but this did not result in higher chick survival. However, when food supplementation was prolonged until fledging in the second experiment, we observed a significant increase of nestling survival. These findings highlight that research and management actions should not only focus on species displaced by urbanization, but also on “urban‐adapted” species, as they might be suffering from a mismatch between availability of nesting sites in buildings and adequate non‐urban food resources. In these cases, nest sites should be provided in or close to adequate food resources. Urban nesting sites and human waste attract many bird species. However, low‐protein content in human waste may lead to lower breeding success. Breeding output in urban areas decreases with distance to non‐urban foraging areas. Food supplementation experiments confirmed that urban food limits reproduction. The mismatch between nesting site availability and quality food should be reduced.
Journal Article
Integrated population model reveals that kestrels breeding in nest boxes operate as a source population
The identification of the source–sink status of a population is critical for the establishment of conservation plans and enacting smart management decisions. We developed an integrated population model to formally assess the source status of a kestrel Falco tinnunculus population breeding in nest boxes in Switzerland. We estimated juvenile and adult survival, reproduction and net dispersal (emigration/immigration) by jointly analyzing capture–recapture, dead recovery, breeding monitoring and population survey data. We also investigated the role of nest boxes on kestrel demography and assessed the contributions of vital rates to realized population growth rates. The results indicate that the kestrel population breeding in nest boxes has acted as a source over the 15 years of the study duration. A quantitative approach suggests that a substantial number of individuals have emigrated annually from this population likely affecting the population dynamics outside the management area. Variation in fecundity explained 34% of the temporal variability of the population growth rate. Moreover, a literature review suggests that kestrel pairs produce on average 1.4 chicks more per breeding attempt in nest boxes compared to natural open nests. Together, these findings suggest that fecundity was an important driver for the dynamics of this population and that nest boxes have contributed to its raise. Nest boxes are regularly used as an efficient tool for conservation management. We suggest that such a conservation action can result in the establishment of a source population being beneficial for populations both inside and outside the managed area.
Journal Article