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"Squirrels Behavior."
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Squirrel's family tree
\"What makes an oak tree an oak tree and what makes a squirrel a squirrel? In [this book], things aren't always what they seem. As squirrel searches for, finds, and hides her acorn treasures beneath the shadows of the great oak trees in the forest, little does she know the role she plays in creating the very environment she forages in\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Squirrel's world
Squirrel's well-meaning attempts to help his forest friends do not always turn out as planned.
Book
Effects of scent lure on camera trap detections vary across mammalian predator and prey species
Camera traps are a unique survey tool used to monitor a wide variety of mammal species. Camera trap (CT) data can be used to estimate animal distribution, density, and behaviour. Attractants, such as scent lures, are often used in an effort to increase CT detections; however, the degree which the effects of attractants vary across species is not well understood. We investigated the effects of scent lure on mammal detections by comparing detection rates between 404 lured and 440 unlured CT stations sampled in Alberta, Canada over 120 day survey periods between February and August in 2015 and 2016. We used zero-inflated negative binomial generalized linear mixed models to test the effect of lure on detection rates for a) all mammals, b) six functional groups (all predator species, all prey, large carnivores, small carnivores, small mammals, ungulates), and c) four varied species of management interest (fisher, Pekania pennanti; gray wolf, Canis lupus; moose, Alces alces; and Richardson's ground squirrel; Urocitellus richardsonii). Mammals were detected at 800 of the 844 CTs, with nearly equal numbers of total detections at CTs with (7110) and without (7530) lure, and variable effects of lure on groups and individual species. Scent lure significantly increased detections of predators as a group, including large and small carnivore sub-groups and fisher specifically, but not of gray wolf. There was no effect of scent lure on detections of prey species, including the small mammal and ungulate sub-groups and moose and Richardson's ground squirrel specifically. We recommend that researchers explicitly consider the variable effects of scent lure on CT detections across species when designing, interpreting, or comparing multi-species surveys. Additional research is needed to further quantify variation in species responses to scent lures and other attractants, and to elucidate the effect of attractants on community-level inferences from camera trap surveys.
Journal Article
Snow joke
\"After playing mean jokes on Bunny while they romp in the snow, Red learns how to joke nicely\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Diet of a rare herbivore based on DNA metabarcoding of feces: Selection, seasonality, and survival
In herbivores, survival and reproduction are influenced by quality and quantity of forage, and hence, diet and foraging behavior are the foundation of an herbivore's life history strategy. Given the importance of diet to most herbivores, it is imperative that we know the species of plants they prefer, especially for herbivorous species that are at risk for extinction. However, it is often difficult to identify the diet of small herbivores because: (a) They are difficult to observe, (b) collecting stomach contents requires sacrificing animals, and (c) microhistology requires accurately identifying taxa from partially digested plant fragments and likely overemphasizes less‐digestible taxa. The northern Idaho ground squirrel (Urocitellus brunneus) is federally threatened in the United States under the Endangered Species Act. We used DNA metabarcoding techniques to identify the diet of 188 squirrels at 11 study sites from fecal samples. We identified 42 families, 126 genera, and 120 species of plants in the squirrel's diet. Our use of three gene regions was beneficial because reliance on only one gene region (e.g., only trnL) would have caused us to miss >30% of the taxa in their diet. Northern Idaho ground squirrel diet differed between spring and summer, frequency of many plants in the diet differed from their frequency within their foraging areas (evidence of selective foraging), and several plant genera in their diet were associated with survival. Our results suggest that while these squirrels are generalists (they consume a wide variety of plant species), they are also selective and do not eat plants relative to availability. Consumption of particular genera such as Perideridia may be associated with higher overwinter survival. Diet and foraging behavior are the foundation of an herbivore's life history strategy and it is imperative that we know the species of plants they prefer. We used DNA metabarcoding techniques to noninvasively sample the threatened northern Idaho ground squirrel (Urocitellus brunneus) diet. We used three gene regions and found that diets differed on the genus level between season, availability, and survival was associated with particular plants.
Journal Article
Light loggers reveal weather-driven changes in the daily activity patterns of arboreal and semifossorial rodents
Measuring daily and seasonal patterns of activity is useful for understanding the ecological and evolutionary drivers of behavior. We used collar-mounted light loggers to examine how nest attendance in arboreal squirrels and aboveground activity in semifossorial ground squirrels are affected by weather-driven changes in thermoregulatory conditions. Activity of lactating red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) had a diurnal pattern showing 3 daily peaks of activity with time spent outside the nest increasing with increasing ambient temperature, but decreasing with increasing relative humidity and wind. Despite the persistence of daylight during midsummer in the arctic environment, female arctic ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii) also exhibited diurnal activity patterns with time spent above ground each day decreasing in response to precipitation but increasing with increasing ambient temperature and incident solar radiation. On cooler days, ground squirrels exhibited a unimodal activity pattern. However, on warm days, ground squirrels spent less time above ground when solar radiation and ambient temperature were both at their daily maxima, which resulted in a bimodal activity pattern. Our results highlight the utility of light loggers as a cost-effective means of addressing questions related to foraging behavior, parental care, thermoregulation, energetics, and timing of activity in arboreal and semifossorial small mammals.
Journal Article
Sex-Dependent Phenological Plasticity in an Arctic Hibernator
Hibernation provides a means of escaping the metabolic challenges associated with seasonality, yet the ability of mammals to prolong or reenter seasonal dormancy in response to extreme weather events is unclear. Here, we show that Arctic ground squirrels in northern Alaska exhibited sex-dependent plasticity in the physiology and phenology of hibernation in response to a series of late spring snowstorms in 2013 that resulted in the latest snowmelt on record. Females and nonreproductive males responded to the >1-month delay in snowmelt by extending heterothermy or reentering hibernation after several days of euthermy, leading to a >2-week delay in reproduction compared to surrounding years. In contrast, reproductive males neither extended nor reentered hibernation, likely because seasonal gonadal growth and development and subsequent testosterone release prevents a return to torpor. Our findings reveal intriguing differences in responses of males and females to climatic stressors, which can generate a phenological mismatch between the sexes.
Journal Article
Unraveling behavioral and pace-of-life syndromes in a reduced parasite and predation pressure context: personality and survival of the Barbary ground squirrel
Personality traits overlap in behavioral syndromes that are assumed to be related to physiology and life history traits, shaping pace-of-life syndromes. Boldness and explorative behavior are frequently associated with higher parasite loads, increased resource acquisition, less efficient antipredator behavior, and reduced survival (e.g., through predation). We explored how personality is related to these biological traits using an invasive species—Atlantoxerus getulus in Fuerteventura island—as a model system with reduced parasitism and low predation pressure. We used breath rate during handling, open field tests, and escape trials to test for the existence of interindividual differences in boldness, explorative behavior, and escape speed, respectively. We also tested whether the personality traits were related and formed behavioral syndromes in A. getulus. At the same time, we explored how personality is related to ectoparasite load, body condition, and survival in the species. We found strong between-individual differences in breath rate, readiness to get in the open field arena, and escape speed. We found a behavioral syndrome, linking open field entrance and escape speed, in A. getulus. However, personality was not related to parasite load or body condition and survival was higher for bolder individuals. As a whole, our results suggest reduced parasites and predator pressures on Fuerteventura may have potentially neutralized the typical drawbacks of a fast pace-of-life in the introduced population of A. getulus.
Journal Article
Vole hunting: novel predatory and carnivorous behavior by California ground squirrels
Dietary flexibility allows animals to respond adaptively to food pulses in the environment. Here we document the novel emergence of widespread hunting of California voles and carnivorous feeding behavior by California ground squirrels. Over two months in the twelfth year of a long-term study on the squirrel population, we document 74 events of juvenile and adult ground squirrels of both sexes depredating, consuming, and/or competing over vole prey. Our video footage, photographic evidence, and direct observations of marked individual squirrels provide insights into the ecological circumstances favoring behavioral flexibility in foraging associated with a decadal peak in vole abundance. Digital video images related to the article are available at
http://www.momo-p.com/showdetail-e.php?movieid=momo241126ob01a
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Journal Article