Animal Behavior and Ecology: A Comprehensive Overview

Posted on May 13, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

Lecture 1: Maori Culture and Resource Management

  • Maori Culture: Deep connection to the natural world, kaitiakitanga (guardianship)
  • Historical Timeline:
    • Settlement from Polynesia (1200-1300 AD)
    • Captain James Cook’s arrival (1769), followed by missionaries from England (late 1700s-early 1800s)
  • Significant Events:
    • Declaration of Independence (1835), signed by Ngāpuhi chiefs
    • Treaty of Waitangi (1840), discrepancies in translation regarding sovereignty
    • British colonization: conflicts, land confiscations, decline in Maori population
  • Cultural Resilience:
    • Suppression of Maori customs by past governments
    • Persistence of cultural practices, resurgence in Maori population (1940s-1950s)
  • Maori Worldview:
    • Connection to land, water, air, forests
    • Importance of integrating traditional and modern knowledge for resource management
  • Decision-Making Processes:
    • Collective consensus-building
    • Respect for tribal structures (iwi or hapū)
  • Research Engagement:
    • Respectful approach to Maori communities
    • Acknowledgment of cultural protocols
    • Securing appropriate funding for collaboration

Lecture 2: Wildlife Management and Animal Welfare

  • To catch, hold, release, or kill most wildlife species, you must have permission from DOC.
  • Sections 53 (wildlife except marine), 54 (wildlife causes damage to humans or their property), 63 (marine wildlife)
  • Section 63 makes it a specific offense to hunt or kill certain marine wildlife (cannot hunt, kill, buy or process, rob, disturb, destroy, or have in his/her possession marine wildlife).
  • Section 53, however, allows for catching alive or killing for a purpose approved by the Director General (can catch, kill, take eggs).
  • Shark cage diving -> (cannot under section 63, but could if it were a normal wildlife animal)
  • Implications:
  • Offense to hunt or kill absolutely protected marine species unless lawful authorization.
  • DOC can authorize a person to catch alive or kill under section 53.
  • What’s affected if both are implemented?
  • Falconry (cannot capture birds for sport)
  • Applications to accidentally killing wildlife (won’t be considered as no intention, yet an application to kill wildlife can be considered)
  • Authorizations for pure disturbance (playing bird sounds to attract gannets)
  • Permits are used to recognize that animals are sentient, to provide a process for approving animals in research, testing, and teaching, establish a national animal welfare advisory committee and national animal ethics, provide codes of welfare and the approval of codes.
  • An animal is a vertebrate (M, A, R, B, F), decapod, cephalopod, M fetus, A or R pre-hatched young that is in the last half of its period of gestation or development, marsupial pouch young.
  • Does not include human beings, pre-natal, pre-hatched, larval, or other development stages.
  • Manipulation (subject to interfering normal physiological, behavioral, or anatomical integrity), exposing to parasites, microorganisms, drugs, chemicals, etc., depriving the animal of usual care.
  • Physical health and behavioral needs (food, water, shelter, opportunity to display normal eating patterns, physical handling in a bad manner, protection from any significant injury or disease).

Lecture 3: Critical Thinking in Science

  • Critical Thinking:
  • Clarify, question, identify, analyze, evaluate, create
  • Question the data:
  • Who collected it?
  • Why is the data being collected?
  • Where is it collected from?
  • How is it being analyzed?
  • How has it been analyzed?
  • How has it been interpreted?
  • How has it been communicated?
  • Our first hypothesis may not be the correct hypothesis.
  • E.g., “only humans use tools”
  • Primates, dolphins, birds, other mammals, crocodiles, fish, octopus, insects all use tools.
  • Questions are good, it’s okay to reject hypotheses, critical thinking requires practice.

Lecture 4: Tools and Techniques in Behavioral Ecology

  • Tools for Behavioral Ecology: R Studio, SPSS, Primer-e, Online tools (VasserStats)
  • What is the graph trying to tell me? Legends, titles, descriptions
  • The P-value does not prove anything; it simply tells us if the value is statistically significant or not.
  • The P-value should instead be phrased as little, weak, moderate, strong, or very strong evidence.
  • P-values are very sensitive to sample sizes.
  • Effect sizes tell us the magnitude of the difference between two groups.
  • This can be seen through Cohen’s formula:
  • Mean of the (experimental group – mean of the control group) / standard deviation
  • Clear Axes Labels
  • No color unless necessary
  • No gridlines unless necessary
  • Includes a figure legend
  • Includes a key
  • Includes scales

Lecture 5: Avoiding Bias in Research

  • Correlation does not equal causation.
  • There are different levels of analysis (ecosystem vs. species).
  • Balance cautious interpretation with over-interpretation.
  • Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation for existing beliefs.
  • You can combat this via double-blind experiments or by randomization.
  • You can also get sampling bias (traps tend to capture the boldest individuals in a population).
  • Interpret results (80% of a population is consistent, but what about the other 20%? Are they consistent too?).
  • Survivorship bias is the tendency to focus on the survivors, or the winners rather than losers, or success rather than failure.
  • Treasure your exceptions.

Lecture 6: Applied Animal Behavior: Management and Biosecurity

  • In domestic and companion animals, behavior is central to management.
  • Attributes (herding (sociality), animal welfare (basic needs), use predators (guarding, control))
  • In fisheries, select species for human use and management (salmon), target species for exploitation (schooling fish, time of year to hunt).
  • You can use animal behavior to manage them in biosecurity.
  • Interactions between species and devices
  • Risk allocation, fear, trophic cascades, drive responses and demographics, outcomes of management actions (stoats fear and avoid cats and ferrets).
  • Predator-prey interactions
  • Sensory Ecology: Sound, Smell
  • Bats echolocate -> arms race between bats and moths who drop 90 degrees.
  • Detecting sounds can be used to find invasive species, attract pests to traps, to deter pests from at-risk species.
  • Smell is carried long distances by the flow of air.
  • The smelling of an odor is a lock and key interaction.
  • Dogs have many more receptors than humans do; the nasal cavity contains hundreds of millions of sensory neurons (used to find rats, pests, and rare endemic species).
  • Understanding scent use can allow for better management and biosecurity of animals, allowing you to trap them.
  • Sex pheromones can be used (monitoring, mass trapping (attraction-annihilation), and mating disruption (pheromone dispensers create “noise”)).
  • Food baits or oviposition can be used.
  • Integrated Pest Management
  • A broad-based approach that uses practices for economic control of pests.
  • Aims to suppress pest populations.
  • Requires knowledge of several key factors.
  • Allows for safer pest control.
  • Acceptable pest levels
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  • Control measures: insecticides, biological control, cultural control, plant resistance, pheromones, and growth regulation.
  • 3 Types of Biological Control
  • Classical biological control (importation)
  • Augmentation: supplementation of existing natural enemies (periodic release, inoculation, inundation (can reduce pesticide use))
  • Conservation: protect or enhance activities of natural enemies, reducing pest effects (preservation, environmental manipulation to improve conditions for predators and parasitoids)
  • Biological Control
  • Arthropod natural enemies (predators, parasites, complexities of food webs and complications)
  • Microbial control (nematodes, fungi, bacteria, viruses, protists)
  • Understanding the behavior of both the pest/predator and the species at risk is the key to successful pest/predator control.
  • Agricultural pest control (arthropods and disease)
  • Conservation and biodiversity (eradicating invasive predators)
  • Occasionally the goals overlap (TB in possums and cows).

Lecture 7: Integrating Behavior, Ecology, and Physiology

  • To know behavior is to know ecology and physiology: integration and the flexible phenotype.
  • Monogamy, polyandry, polygyny, promiscuity, polygynandry
  • Sexual selection, behavior, hormones, all affect each other.
  • Testes are physiologically expensive and reflect mating systems.
  • Some reduce testes size after mating.
  • In polyandrous species, males will have larger testes size as there will be sperm competition.
  • Behavior can drive phenotypic changes in animals.
  • The Ecology of Fear: Behavioral, physiological, and neurobiological costs of avoiding predation.
  • Nonconsumptive Effects: (You are not eating, drinking, you are staying vigilant, you are not tending to young.)
  • Prey that are incredibly stressed won’t eat, drink.
  • This can have cascading effects on ecosystems (Yellowstone).
  • When one animal leaves, such as a grazer, those plants can flourish, nourish streams, increase populations of other species.
  • Fear can lead to evolutionary changes.
  • Less fear equals more predation, less offspring, and less fitness.
  • Or it can be the other way around when predators are rare.
  • More fear can lead to more vigilance and medium fitness.