Dung Beetle Ecology. Wildlife Disease Association - Chemical Immobilization and Anesthesia of Free-Living Aardvarks (Orycteropus afer) With Ketamine-Medetomidine-Midazolam and Isoflurane. Climate and the landscape of fear in an African savanna - Riginos - Journal of Animal Ecology. "Wire Netting Reduces African Elephant (<i>LOXODONTA AFRICANA</i>) Impa" by Kelly Derham.
Acoustic prey and a listening predator: interaction between calling katydids and the bat-eared fox - Bioacoustics - The bat-eared fox is an insectivorous, nocturnal predator that uses its characteristic large ears to detect sounds made by invertebrate prey. Behavioural observations of the bat-eared fox emphasize the significant role hearing plays in insect prey detection and localization.
In turn, katydids are nocturnal insects that risk attracting predators by producing conspicuous signals for mate attraction and pair formation. To determine the interaction and potential level of predation between this listening, insectivorous predator with acoustically active katydids, behavioural observations and scat collection from bat-eared fox individuals were conducted in the Western Cape, South Africa.
Acoustic surveys were also conducted to identify acoustic species within foraging areas of bat-eared foxes and assist with identifying their remains in scat. Results indicated that bat-eared foxes have a broad, opportunistic diet. Keywords: Related articles View all related articles. Effects of enclosure on home range and resource selection: A comparison of two African elephant herds ( Loxodonta africana africana) Elephant (Loxodonta africana) impact on trees used by nesting vultures and raptors in South Africa - Vogel - 2014 - African Journal of Ecology.
Using Infrared-Triggered Cameras to Monitor Activity of Forest Carnivores. Anderson, E.M., and M.J. Lovallo. 2003. Bobcat and Lynx. Pp. 758–786, In G.A. Feldhammer, B.C. Thompson and J.A. Chapman (Eds.). Azevedo, F.C.C., V. Bender, D.J., E.M. Carver, B.D., M.L. Chamberlain, M.J., and B.D. Chamberlain, M.J., and B.D. Diggs, G.M., B.L. Dijak, W.D., and F.R. Gardner, A.L., and M.E. Gehrt, S.D. 2003. Greenwood, R.J. 1982. Grinder, M.I., and P.R. Hall, H.T., and J.D. Hernandez, F., D. Jacobson, H.A., J.C. Kaufmann, J.H. 1982. Kavanau, J. Kitchings, J.T., and J.D. Koerth, B.H., C.D. Ladine, T.A. 1995. Ladine, T.A. 1997. McClennen, N., R.R. McManus, J.J. 1971. Neale, J.C.C., and B.N. Pierce, B.M., V.C. Roseberry, J.L., and Alan Woolf. 1986. SAS Institute. 2003. Sharp, W.M., and L.H. Shirer, H.W., and H.S. Interactions between a wild Bornean orang-utan and a Philippine slow loris in a peat-swamp forest - Online First. Brown bears and wolves scavenge humpback whale carcass in Alaska.
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Miller, S. 2005. Milner, A.M., E.E. Olson, T.L. Olson, T.L., B.K. Powell, R.A., J.W. Rose, M.D., and G.A. Roth, H.U. 1983. Smith, T.S., S.T. Smith, T.S., S. Stirling, I., and A.E. Van Daele, L.J. 2007. Warner, S.H. 1987. Nutritional contributions of insects to primate diets: Implications for primate evolution. Role of aeolian sediment accretion in the formation of heuweltjie earth mounds, western South Africa - McAuliffe - Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. Coping with savanna seasonality: comparative daily activity patterns of African ungulates as revealed by GPS telemetry - Owen-Smith - 2014 - Journal of Zoology.
The diet of brown hyaenas (<i>Hyaena brunnea</i>) in Shamwari Game Reserve, Eastern Cape, South Africa | Slater | Koedoe - African Protected Area Conservation and Science. Brown hyaenas (Hyaena brunnea) were introduced to Shamwari Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape Province during 2002, but their feeding ecology is poorly understood. Feeding observations of brown hyaena by field guides and the collection of 31 scats from the study area took place over an 11 month period. Standard techniques were used to analyse the scats and identify prey items present. Ten dietary categories were identified from the scats, with a mean of 3.2 dietary categories per scat. Large mammal remains were found in 30 of the 31 scats, with kudu being the most abundant (61.0% of scats). Overall the two methods indicated at least 14 mammal species being fed on by the brown hyaena.
Brown hyaenas are sparsely distributed over the arid and semi-arid regions of southern Africa (Mills & Hofer 1998). Owing to the shy behaviour of this animal, only a handful of papers report on their diet and are mainly restricted to arid areas. Mucina, L. & Rutherford, M.C. Nonshivering thermogenesis in the African lesser bushbaby, Galago moholi. Movement-based analysis of interactions in African lions. Population and habitat characteristics of caracal in semi-arid landscape, western India. Light my fire? Male fireflies flash together for sex - life - 13 February 2014. (Image: Katrien Vermeire/Courtesy of Kahmann Gallery) WANT to know the difference between a firefly and a glow-worm? First, they aren't flies or worms – both of them are beetles.
In some species, only the larvae or females glow, and these wingless individuals are known as glow-worms. In other species, males and females both have wings and emit a luminescent display – these are called fireflies, or lightning bugs. The insects shot here by Belgian photographer Katrien Vermeire are fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. The pictures are part of a sequence of work under the name Godspeed – an expression used by one of the forest rangers she spent time with. In this species (Photinus carolinus) the light show is particularly remarkable because the males – sometimes thousands at a time – synchronise their flashes.
Why do females have weaker lights? This article appeared in print under the headline "Flashing for sex" More From New Scientist Celery power (New Scientist) Elephants and rhinos benefit from drone surveillance - tech - 14 February 2014. Video: Test flight of a wildlife surveillance drone Poachers beware. Surveillance drones offer a highly effective way to catch wildlife criminals in the act. Namibia's Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) came to this conclusion after trialling a raft of wildlife crime-fighting technologies, with expertise from conservation group WWF and funding from Google.
In field tests conducted in two national parks in November 2013, drones with 2-metre wingspans flew day and night missions to video black rhino herds and send live footage to poacher-tracking rangers on the ground. Smart radio tags attached to rhinos allowed the drones to home in on each herd's current location, says Pierre du Preez, MET's chief conservation scientist. "We broke new ground using technologies that have never been integrated before to provide powerful wildlife protection," says Crawford Allan, leader of the Wildlife Crime Technology Project at WWF. Technology for nature More From New Scientist Is full-fat milk best?
Hawk Moths Rub Genitals to Block Bat Radar. The scientific paper of 2013 that reads most like a comic book comes from biologists at Boise State University and the University of Florida, who describe the spectacular results of the “evolutionary arms race” between the bat and the hawk moth, which “have been engaged in aerial warfare for nearly 65 [million years].” Insect-eating bats use echolocation, a form of sonar, to identify and capture their prey.
Various insects, including the hawk moth, can jam bat sonar systems by overwhelming them with sound. Many “loud” bugs such as cicadas and tiger moths use corrugated abdominal structures called tymbals to generate their buzz. Male hawk moths have a different method: They scrape their genitals on their abdomens to make an ultrasonic blast, the team reported in Biology Letters. You can’t make this stuff up. [This article originally appeared in print as "Hawk Moths Jam Bat Radar With Ultrasonic Blasts From Their Genitals. "] Singing in the moonlight: dawn song performance of a diurnal bird varies with lunar phase. Food Habits of Indian Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista Philippensis Elliot) in Tropical Deciduous Forest, Rajasthan, India. Altmann, J. 1974. Observational study of behavior: sampling method.Behaviour 49: 227–265.
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Krishnamani, R. 1994. Kumara, H. Kumara, H. Kumara, H. Kuo, C. Kuo, C. Lee, P. Lee, P. Lee, P. Lehmkuhl, J. Lurz, P. McKeever, S. 1960. Miyao, T. 1972. Muul, I. and Liat, L. Nandini, R. 2000a. Nandini, R. 2000b. Nandini, R. and Parthasarathy, N. 2008. Nowak, R. Prater, S. Pyare, S. and Longland, W. Serbent, M. Shafique, C. Sharma, S. Singh, K. Smith, W. Tehsin, R. Umapathy, G. and Kumar, A. 2000. Wauters, L. Weigl, P. Wilson, D. Elephant Early Warning System Alerts Humans to Danger: Scientific American Video.
Activity pattern of selected ungulates at Krau Wildlife Reserve. The active nightlife of diurnal birds: extraterritorial forays and nocturnal activity patterns. Kalahari trackers who read ice-age life in footprints - life - 26 December 2013. Clay bison of Tuc d'Audoubert (Image: Sisse Brimberg/National Geographic) Generations of archaeologists puzzled over ice-age footprints in French caves – but these three men can read them like a book IN THE darkened recesses of a remote cave in the Pyrenees, three Namibians crouch over something in the ground. They have travelled to France from the Kalahari desert, more than 7000 kilometres away. The cave is cold and wet, and they are wearing waterproofs, hard hats and headlamps. The footprint dates from the Magdalenian period of the European Upper Palaeolithic – about 17,000 years ago. The active nightlife of diurnal birds: extraterritorial forays and nocturnal activity patterns.
Living in a landscape of fear: the impact of predation, resource availability and habitat structure on primate range use. New Species of Dwarf Tapir Discovered in Amazon Rainforest. This magical moment between a pair of Kobomani tapirs was caught on camera trap in the southwest Amazon. Photo courtesy of Fabrício R. Santos. It may seem hard for a 250-pound animal to elude scientists, but a species of tapir managed to do just that for hundreds of years. Now details of the new, miniature tapir that lives in the Amazon rainforest are finally being brought to light.
Tapirs are elusive, friendly and mostly nocturnal. Since 1865, there have been four known species of tapir—one in Asia and three in Central and South America. This new find is number five. The tapir species is new to science, but has been known to and hunted by tribes in the Amazon rainforests of Colombia and Brazil for millennia.
A Case of Mistaken Identity Historically, scientists assumed the indigenous hunters were mistaken in their identification. Weighing in at about 240 pounds, the Kabomani tapir is a third the size of its closest relative, the Brazilian tapir (which averages more than 700 pounds). Zoologger: Mouse eats scorpions and howls at the moon - life - 11 January 2013. Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world Species: Onychomys torridus Habitat: The arid badlands of south-western US and adjacent regions of Mexico, in burrows stolen from other rodents In the dark expanses of the Sonoran desert in the US, a terrifying creature stalks the night, searching for fresh meat.
Anything will do: crickets, rodents, tarantulas – the nastier the better. Even the poisonous scorpion cannot escape the savage monster's little pink paws. It fights bravely, stinging its attacker on the nose. No, it's not the mythical Chupacabra. Natural born killer From the day they are born, grasshopper mice are natural killers.
Their manners don't improve with age. In tough times, the mice will kill and eat other rodents, even those of their own species. Venom? In humans, Rowe says, mutations in Nav1.7 cause a syndrome called erythromelalgia. More From New Scientist Borg assimilation on the ISS? La NASA transforme le Soleil en arc-en-ciel. Early Humans—Not Climate Change—Decimated Africa’s Large Carnivores. East Africa's Small Carnivores Flourished While Large Ones Died Out. In the Scientific American November issue cover story paleontologist Lars Werdelin of the Swedish Natural History Museum in Stockholm observes that the large-bodied carnivores inhabiting East Africa today represent a small fraction of the diversity this group once had.
He argues that competition with humans for access to prey drove many of these species to extinction, starting more than two million years ago. It’s a bold hypothesis. Although researchers know that early humans began incorporating more meat into their diet around that time, the conventional wisdom is that ancestral population sizes were small. Could our few, comparatively wimpy ancestors really have beat the saber-toothed cats and other formidable carnivores at their own game? Werdelin makes a compelling case. Readers might wonder whether climate change better explains the decline of these beasts. You’ll Never Guess How Biologists Lure Jaguars To Camera Traps | The Thoughtful Animal. Field biologists are increasingly turning to camera traps to collect data. The set-up is really simple: when an animal passes in front of a camera, an infrared sensor becomes activated, and the camera silently snaps a photo. Sometimes – especially for camera traps designed to detect nocturnal species – an infrared flash, invisible to most mammals and birds, is used.
The photographs generated from camera traps can then provide researchers with far more data than they would be able to collect themselves with more traditional field observations. Often, this allows them to generate photographic evidence of a species’ natural behaviors without the confounding effects of direct human observation. Camera traps are also far less invasive than most other forms of wildlife data collection, since critters don’t need to be trapped and released. Take the jaguar. Put together, this makes jaguars well suited for for camera trap research. Meow. What’s so special about this particular scent mixture? Coyote Land Use Inside and Outside Urban Parks. The dawn flight of the gold swift Hepialus hecta: predator avoidance and the integration of complex lek behaviour (Lepidoptera, Hepialidae) - Turner - 2013 - Biological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Visual signals or displacement activities? The function of visual displays in agonistic interactions in nocturnal tree frogs - Online First. World’s Largest Owl Needs Equally Large Trees and Forests (But It’s More Complex Than That) | Extinction Countdown. With a body the size of a small child and a wingspan of up to two meters, the Blakiston’s fish owl (Bubo blakistoni) is the largest owl in the world. It is also one of the rarest, shiest and least studied. But that didn’t stop a team of researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), University of Minnesota and the Russian Academy of Sciences from trekking into the Russian Far East in the middle of winter to study these endangered birds. There they found a complex system of large owls, gigantic trees and commercially valuable salmon, all of which in many ways depend on one another.
Their research, collected under the collaborative banner of the Blakiston’s Fish Owl Project, was published online this month in the journal Oryx. The researchers studied how Blakiston’s fish owls nested and foraged over more than 20,000 square kilometers in Primorye, Russia, along the country’s eastern coast and the Sea of Japan. Photo: Hiyashi Haka, used under Creative Commons license. Current Biology - Wolf Howling Is Mediated by Relationship Quality Rather Than Underlying Emotional Stress.
Figure 1 Cortisol Level in Test and Control Condition Error bar plot displaying the mean (±1 SE) cortisol level in wolf saliva during control and test experimental conditions. Figure 2 The Link between the Dyadic Sociality Index and Number of Howls Relationship between dyadic sociality index (SI) and number of howls produced by wolves remaining in the pack. Highlights •We investigated the influence of social and physiological factors on wolf howling•Wolves howl more to keep contact with affiliated partners and with pack leaders•Howling is mediated by the social relationship not cortisol level of the howlers•This pattern indicates that wolves have some voluntary control of their howling Summary While considerable research has addressed the function of animal vocalizations, the proximate mechanisms driving call production remain surprisingly unclear.
Wolves Howl For Pals, Not Leaders: Scientific American Podcast. Primate Locomotion | Learn Science at Scitable. Prey refuges as predator hotspots: ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) attraction to agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) dens - Online First. Urn_isbn_978-952-61-1162-9.pdf. Activity patterns of giant otters recorded by telemetry and camera traps - Ethology Ecology & Evolution -
Techniques for monitoring carnivore behavior using automatic thermal video - Brawata - 2013 - Wildlife Society Bulletin. Spatial Ecology of the Timber Rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) and Northern Pine Snake (Pituophis melanoleucus) in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey - Smith_RonaldPhD.pdf. Diversity and nectar hosts of flower-settling moths within a Florida sandhill ecosystem - Journal of Natural History - Methodological problems related to spotlight count as a census technique for Lepus europaeus in an alpine environment - Online First. Acoustic location of conspecifics in a nocturnal bird: the corncrake Crex crex - Online First. After 100 Years, Has the Elusive Night Parrot Finally Been Discovered? | Extinction Countdown. ASM Online Journals - Temporal niche switching by grizzly bears but not American black bears in Yellowstone National Park. What makes wild chimpanzees wake up at night? - Online First. 7_1.pdf. Social learning of predators in the dark: understanding the role of visual, chemical and mechanical information.
Tawny owl vocal activity is constrained by predation risk - Lourenço - 2013 - Journal of Avian Biology. The Evolution of Emotional Communication: From Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to ... Sensory Ecology, Behaviour, and Evolution - Martin Stevens. Behavior of Exotic Pets. Clocks for the city: circadian differences between forest and city songbirds. Kowalski_Thesis_130516.pdf. Diurnality and Nocturnality in Primates: An Analysis from the Rod Photoreceptor Nuclei Perspective - Online First. Assessing species occurrence and species-specific use patterns of bais (forest clearings) in Central Africa with camera traps - Gessner - 2013 - African Journal of Ecology.
Re-examining “Temporal Niche” Fruit bats and bat fruits: the evolution of fruit scent in relation to the foraging behaviour of bats in the New and Old World tropics - Hodgkison - 2013 - Functional Ecology. Zoologger: The moth with the highest-pitched hearing - life - 08 May 2013. Ultraviolet sensitivity and colour vision in raptor foraging. Metabolism as an integral cog in the mammalian circadian clockwork, Critical Reviews in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Expression and Evolution of Short Wavelength Sensitive Opsins in Colugos: A Nocturnal Lineage That Informs Debate on Primate Origins - Online First. Responses of a top and a meso predator and their prey to moon phases - Online First. The ecological impacts of nighttime light pollution: a mechanistic appraisal - Gaston - 2013 - Biological Reviews. Identifying constraints in the evolution of primate societies. Journal of Rural Studies - Echoes in the dark: Technological encounters with bats. Animal Behaviour - Questions, ideas and tools: lessons from bat echolocation. ASM Online Journals - Bird predation by the birdlike noctule in Japan. Reflections on the tapetum lucidum and eyeshine in lycosoid spiders. Effects of Temperature, Moon Phase, and Prey on Nocturnal Activity in Ratsnakes: An Automated Telemetry Study. Seed Dispersal in the Dark: Shedding Light on the Role of Fruit Bats in Africa - Seltzer - 2013 - Biotropica.
The Evolution of Emotional Communication: From Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to ... From Cheetahs to Chimpanzees: A Comparative Review of the Drivers of Human-Carnivore Conflict and Human-Primate Conflict. Zootherapy and Biodiversity Conservation in Nigeria. The Evolution of Emotional Communication: From Sounds in Nonhuman Mammals to ... Acoustic characterization of ultrasonic vocalizations by a nocturnal primate Tarsius syrichta - Online First.