Other Animal Sciences Commons^™

Free-Ranging And Feral Cats, Alex Dutcher, Kyle Pias, Grant Sizemore, Stephen M. Vantassel

Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series

Domestic cats (Felis catus) are a common household pet in the United States, with an estimated 25.4% of households owning cats (American Veterinary Medical Association 2018). While an increasing number of cat owners keep their pet cats exclusively indoors, a portion of society maintains that domestic cats are entitled to a free-ranging lifestyle and may even consider unowned domestic cats to be wildlife. Although wildlife managers recognize the beliefs of many concerned stakeholders, including advocates who use strong emotional appeals on behalf of cats, it remains that free-ranging and feral domestic cats are an invasive species spread by humans (Lowe …

Coyotes, Rick Tischaefer

Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series

The coyote (Canis latrans; Figure 1) is a medium-sized member of the canid family. Once primarily found in western deserts and grasslands, coyotes have expanded their range across North America and into diverse habitats, including urban areas. This expansion occurred during a time of extensive habitat change and efforts by people to suppress coyote populations to prevent damage. Coyotes can cause a variety of conflicts related to agriculture, natural resources, property, and human health and safety. This document highlights a variety of methods for reducing those conflicts. Coyotes are a highly adaptable species and may become habituated to some management …

Common Ravens, Luke W. Peebles, Jack O. Spencer Jr.

Wildlife Damage Management Technical Series

Damage Management Methods for Common Ravens

Type of Control -- Available Management Options

Exclusion -- Often ineffective or impractical

Fertility Control -- None available

Frightening Devices -- Effigies • Pyrotechnics and propane cannons • Lasers and flashing lights

Habitat Modification -- Bale and bury garbage • Install dumpsters with secure lids • Remove or bury dead livestock • Remove abandoned houses, sheds, and barns to eliminate nesting structures

Nest Treatment -- Allowed with proper Federal and State permits; Egg oiling or addling and nest destruction

Repellents -- Methiocarb (EPA Reg. No. 56228-33) • Methyl anthranilate (food-grade grape flavoring agent)

Shooting …

An Historical Overview And Update Of Wolf-Moose Interactions In Northeastern Minnesota, L. David Mech, John Fieberg, Shannon M. Barber-Meyer

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Wolf (Canis lupus) and moose (Alces americanus) populations in northeastern Minnesota, USA, have fluctuated for decades and, based on helicopter counts, moose numbers declined to a new low from 2006 to about 2012. Other steep declines were found in 1991 and 1998 during periods when moose counts were done with fixed-wing aircraft; these declines also appeared to be real. Winter wolf numbers, monitored in part of the moose range, had been increasing since about 2002 to the highest population in decades in 2009. However, from 2009 to 2016, wolves decreased precipitously, and the moose- population decline leveled …

African Penguins Follow The Gaze Direction Of Conspecifics, Christian Nawroth, Egle Trincas, Livio Favaro

Social Cognition Collection

Gaze following is widespread among animals. However, the corresponding ultimate functions may vary substantially. Thus, it is important to study previously understudied (or less studied) species to develop a better understanding of the ecological contexts that foster certain cognitive traits. Penguins (Family Spheniscidae), despite their wide interspecies ecological variation, have previously not been considered for cross-species comparisons. Penguin behaviour and communication have been investigated over the last decades, but less is known on how groups are structured, social hierarchies are established, and coordination for hunting and predator avoidance may occur. In this article, we investigated how African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) …

Laterality Is Linked To Personality In The Black-Lined Rainbowfish, Melanotaenia Nigrans, Culum Brown, Anne-Laurence Bibost

Sentience Collection

Emotions such as fear in vertebrates are often strongly lateralised, that is, a single cerebral hemisphere tends to be dominant when processing emotive stimuli. Boldness is a measure of an individual’s propensity to take risks and it has obvious connections with fear responses. Given the emotive nature of this well-studied personality trait, there is good reason to suspect that it is also likely to be expressed in a single hemisphere. Here, we examined the link between laterality and boldness in wild and captive-reared rainbowfish, Melanotaenia nigrans. We found that fish from the wild were bolder than those from captivity, which …

Heritable And Experiential Effects On Boldness In A Tropical Poeciliid, Culum Brown, Fiona Burgess, Victoria Braithwaite

Sentience Collection

Consistent differences in human behaviour are often explained with reference to personality traits. Recent evidence suggests that similar traits are widespread across the entire animal kingdom and that they may have substantial fitness consequences. One of the major components of personality is the shyness–boldness continuum. Little is known about the relative contributions of genes and the environment in the development of boldness in wild animal populations. Here, we bred wild-caught fish (Brachyraphis episcopi) collected from regions of highand low-predation pressure, reared their offspring in the laboratory under varying conditions and tested boldness utilising an open-field paradigm. First-generation laboratory-reared fish showed …

Stable Isotopic Niche Predicts Fitness Of Prey In A Wolf–Deer System, C. T. Darimont, P. C. Paquet, T. E. Reimchen

Evolutionary Biology Collection

Interindividual variation in niche presents a potentially central object on which natural selection can act. This may have important evolutionary implications because habitat use governs a suite of selective forces encountered by foragers. In a free‐living native black‐tailed deer, Odocoileus hemionus, population from coastal British Columbia, we used stable isotope analysis to identify individual variation in foraging niche and investigated its relationship to fitness. Using an intragenerational comparison of surviving and nonsurviving O. hemionus over 2 years of predation by wolves, Canis lupus, we detected resource‐specific fitness. Individuals with isotopic signatures that suggested they foraged primarily in cedar ( …

Terrestrial Behavior Of Ateles Spp., Christina J. Campbell, Filippo Aureli, Colin A. Chapman, Gabriel Ramos-Fernández, Kim Matthews, Sabrina E. Russo, Scott Suarez, Laura Vick

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Spider monkeys (Ateles spp.) are well known for their highly arboreal lifestyle, spending much of their time in the highest levels of the canopy and rarely venturing to the ground. To investigate terrestriality by Ateles and to illuminate the conditions under which spider monkeys venture to the ground, we analyzed ad libitum data from 5 study sites, covering 2 species and 5 subspecies. Three of the sites are in Central/North America: Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama (Ateles geoffroyi panamensis), Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica (A. g. frontatus), and Punta Laguna, Mexico (A. g. yucatanensis). The 2 remaining sites are …

Predators And Life Histories Shape Lestes Damselfly Assemblages Along A Freshwater Habitat Gradient, Robby Stoks, Mark A. Mcpeek

Dartmouth Scholarship

Survey data from New England showed that assemblages of Lestes dam- selflies are organized along the entire gradient of pond permanence and predator presence. One assemblage occupies vernal ponds lacking large dragonfly predators and fish; four are largely confined to temporary ponds that typically contain dragonfly predators; one dom- inates fishless permanent ponds and lakes where dragonflies are the top predators; and one dominates permanent ponds and lakes where fish are the top predators. We determined the role of life history and predation in maintaining this striking pattern by conducting a series of transplant experiments in the field and a …