Search results for " Comparative"
showing 10 items of 657 documents
The past and the present in decision-making: the use of conspecific and heterospecific cues in nest site selection
2014
International audience; Nest site selection significantly affects fitness, so adaptations for assessment of the qualities of available sites are expected. The assessment may be based on personal or social information, the latter referring to the observed location and performance of both conspecific and heterospecific individuals. Contrary to large-scale breeding habitat selection, small-scale nest site selection within habitat patches is insufficiently understood. We analyzed nest site selection in the migratory Collared Flycatcher Ficedula albicollis in relation to present and past cues provided by conspecifics and by resident tits within habitat patches by using long-term data. Collared F…
Coping styles in farmed fish: consequences for aquaculture
2017
Individual differences in physiological and behavioural responses to stressors are increasingly recognised as adaptive variation and thus raw material for evolution and fish farming improvements including selective breeding. Such individual variation has been evolutionarily conserved and is present in all vertebrate taxa including fish. In farmed animals, the interest in consistent trait associations, that is coping styles, has increased dramatically over the last years because many studies have demonstrated links to performance traits, health and disease susceptibility and welfare. This study will review (i) the main behavioural, neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional differences between …
Voles and weasels in the boreal Fennoscandian small mammal community : What happens if the least weasel disappears due to climate change?
2019
Climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation are major threats for populations and a challenge for individual behavior, interactions and survival. Predator–prey interactions are modified by climate processes. In the northern latitudes, strong seasonality is changing and the main predicted feature is shortening and instability of winter. Vole populations in the boreal Fennoscandia exhibit multiannual cycles. High amplitude peak numbers of voles and dramatic population lows alternate in 3–5‐year cycles shortening from North to South. One key factor, or driver, promoting the population crash and causing extreme extended lows, is suggested to be predation by the least weasel. We review the ar…
Predator encounters have spatially extensive impacts on parental behaviour in a breeding bird community.
2016
Predation risk has negative indirect effects on prey fitness, partly mediated through changes in behaviour. Evidence that individuals gather social information from other members of the population suggests that events in a community may impact the behaviour of distant individuals. However, spatially wide-ranging impacts on individual behaviour caused by a predator encounter elsewhere in a community have not been documented before. We investigated the effect of a predator encounter (hawk model presented at a focal nest) on the parental behaviour of pied flycatchers ( Ficedula hypoleuca ), both at the focal nest and at nearby nests different distances from the predator encounter. We show tha…
Feeding on clean food? Potential effects of electric organ discharges by Torpedo spp. (Torpediniformes: Torpedinidae) on their trophically transmitte…
2021
Members of the Torpedinidae (torpedoes) and Hypnidae (coffin ray) use electric organ discharges (EOD) to stun or kill their prey before consumption. We investigated whether EOD could also negatively affect the helminth larvae infecting these preys through a surrogate model: we applied electric discharges to individuals of blue whiting, Micromesistius poutassou, that harbored live larvae of Anisakis. Larval mortality throughout a 6-h period was significantly higher in the treatment group, suggesting that EODs could significantly hamper helminth recruitment. We then tested whether torpedinids and hypnids ("strong-EOD" families) harbored species-poor helminth (cestode) assemblages compared wit…
Symmetry breaking in mass-recruiting ants: extent of foraging biases depends on resource quality.
2016
Abstract The communication involved in the foraging behaviour of social insects is integral to their success. Many ant species use trail pheromones to make decisions about where to forage. The strong positive feedback caused by the trail pheromone is thought to create a decision between two or more options. When the two options are of identical quality, this is known as symmetry breaking, and is important because it helps colonies to monopolise food sources in a competitive environment. Symmetry breaking is thought to increase with the quantity of pheromone deposited by ants, but empirical studies exploring the factors affecting symmetry breaking are limited. Here, we tested if (i) greater …
How Do Infanticidal Male Bank Voles (Myodes glareolus) Find the Nest with Pups?
2016
Infanticide, the killing of conspecific young, occurs in most mammal species, like in our study species, the bank vole (Myodes glareolus). Infanticide by adult males is regarded as a strong factor affecting recruitment of young into population. It is considered as an adaptive behaviour, which may increase male fitness via resource gain or an increased access to mates. When an intruder is approaching the nest, the mother should not be present, as her nest guarding is very aggressive and successful. Pups use ultrasonic vocalisation to call their mother when mother leaves nest for foraging but it is not know which cues do infanticidal males use to find the nest with vulnerable pups to commit i…
Divergence is not speciation, or why we need females : a comment on Tinghitella et al
2018
Postprint Peer reviewed
Demosponge EST sequencing reveals a complex genetic toolkit of the simplest metazoans.
2010
Sponges (Porifera) are among the simplest living and the earliest branching metazoans. They hold a pivotal role for studying genome evolution of the entire metazoan branch, both as an outgroup to Eumetazoa and as the closest branching phylum to the common ancestor of all multicellular animals (Urmetazoa). In order to assess the transcription inventory of sponges, we sequenced expressed sequence tag libraries of two demosponge species, Suberites domuncula and Lubomirskia baicalensis, and systematically analyzed the assembled sponge transcripts against their homologs from complete proteomes of six well-characterized metazoans--Nematostella vectensis, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanog…
Seasonal survival in a non-hibernating Mediterranean garden dormouse population
2020
The seasonal survival pattern of a garden dormouse Eliomys quercinus population was studied in a Mediterranean agricultural field area from East Spain, a geographical location in which this species does exhibit no hibernation. Individuals were captured from nest—boxes checked monthly during a 4-year period. Data were analysed using an open population Cormack–Jolly–Seber model including sex, age class and season as factors. Best models included the effect of age and differences in survival between adult males and females. Survival rate was more variable between seasons in males than in females or juveniles. Maximum adult male survival was reached in autumn, decreased in winter and dropped to…