animal behaviour – Open Access Biology Summaries

Bright Lights, Bold Lizards? How invasive species thrive in urban areas

From: “Urban invaders are not bold risk-takers: a study of three invasive lizards in Southern California”, B.J. Putman, G.B. Pauly, and D.T. Blumstein (2020), Current Zoology zoaa015 https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoaa015 Invasive species have become a major headache for conservationists worldwide, causing problems ranging from rats damaging isolated seabird populations by eating their eggs to Japanese knotweed choking …

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Where the Wild Dogs Are: how Kenyan Carnivores decide where to live

From: “What wild dogs want: habitat selection differs across life stages and orders of selection in a wide-ranging carnivore”, H.M.K. O’Neill, S.M. Durant and R. Woodroffe (2020) BMC Zoology 5:1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40850-019-0050-0 African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus), also known as painted dogs for their bright brown, black and white patterning, are a highly social species of …

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How shelducks decide on their travel plans

From: “Consistent habitat preference underpins the geographically divergent autumn migration of individual Mongolian common shelducks”, F. Meng, X. Wang, N. Batbayer, T. Natsagdorj, B. Davaasuren, I. Damba, L. Cao, and A.D. Fox (2019), Current Zoology 56 https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoz056 Common Shelducks (Tadorna tadorna) are a largish species of black, white and brown ducks found across Europe, Asia …

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When does a bird decide to fly? Adventures in Flight Initiation Distance

From “Anti-predator behavior along elevational and latitudinal gradients in dark-eyed juncos”, M. Andrade, D.T. Blumstein (2019), Current Zoology zoz046 https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoz046 The vast majority of wild animals will, if a person walks towards them, run or fly away. For something so commonsense and easily taken for granted, this is actually quite poorly understood as a phenomenon. …

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Sex and Violence: The Surprising Consequences of Selective Breeding in Siamese Fighting Fish

From: ‘Artificial selection for male winners in the Siamese fighting fish Betta splendens correlates with high female aggression’, A. Ramos and D. Gonçalves (2019), Frontiers in Zoology 16:34 https://frontiersinzoology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12983-019-0333-x#Sec6 Differences between males and females (sexual dimorphisms) in animals are odd. Males and females have significant differences in their reproductive organs and hormone profiles, and in …

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Live fast, die young? Where personality is linked to altitude

From “Among-population divergence in personality is linked to altitude in plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae)”, J. Qu, D. Réale, Q.E. Fletcher and Y Zhang. (2019), Frontiers in Zoology 16:26 Plateau Pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) are rather cute rabbit-like animals which can be found across the Tibetan Plateu, north of India and on the western edges of China. …

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