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Articles 31 - 45 of 45

Full-Text Articles in Ornithology

Bird Red List And Its Future Development In Mongolia, Sundev Gombobaatar, D. Samiya, Jonathan M. Baillie Jan 2012

Bird Red List And Its Future Development In Mongolia, Sundev Gombobaatar, D. Samiya, Jonathan M. Baillie

Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolei / Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia, ISSN 0440-1298

With the involvement of the World Bank, Zoological Society of London, Dutch Government and National University of Mongolia, the volumes of Mongolian Red Lists of Fish, Amphibians and Reptiles, Birds and Mammals were completed, and Mongolia is now among the few nations that have up-to-date conservation assessments for all vertebrates. Of the 476 assessed native bird species of Mongolia, 10% were categorized as regionally threatened including Near Threatened. A further 0.6% were categorized as Critically Endangered (CR), 1.7% as Endangered (EN), 3.3% as Vulnerable (VU), and 4.4% as Near Threatened (NT). Almost 90% of Mongolian birds are categorized as Least …


Do Clark’S Nutcrackers Demonstrate What-Where-When Memory On A Cache-Recovery Task?, Kristy L. Gould, Amy J. Ort, Alan C. Kamil Jan 2012

Do Clark’S Nutcrackers Demonstrate What-Where-When Memory On A Cache-Recovery Task?, Kristy L. Gould, Amy J. Ort, Alan C. Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

What-where-when (WWW) memory during cache recovery was investigated in six Clark’s nutcrackers. During caching, both red- and blue-colored pine seeds were cached by the birds in holes filled with sand. Either a short (3 day) retention interval (RI) or a long (9 day) RI was followed by a recovery session during which caches were replaced with either a single seed or wooden bead depending upon the color of the cache and length of the retention interval. Knowledge of what was in the cache (seed or bead), where it was located, and when the cache had been made (3 or 9 …


About Turkeys, The Humane Society Of The United States Jan 2010

About Turkeys, The Humane Society Of The United States

Agribusiness Collection

John James Audubon, a well-known bird expert and nature enthusiast, described wild turkeys as birds of great beauty. The history and origin of wild turkeys is uncertain, yet many share Audubon’s sentiment that the wild turkey is “one of the most interesting of the birds indigenous to the United States of America.” Today, wild turkeys can be found throughout the nation. Following the selection of the bald eagle as the American symbol, Benjamin Franklin remarked that the turkey was more “respectable”, and a “true original native”.


About Chickens, The Humane Society Of The United States Jan 2010

About Chickens, The Humane Society Of The United States

Agribusiness Collection

The chicken is the world’s most numerous domesticated bird, with over 52 billion farmed worldwide in 2008, rivaling the dog as the most ubiquitous domestic animal globally. These birds have fascinated scholars and researchers since the dawn of Western civilization, and recent studies are beginning to reveal the depths of their complexity and cognitive ability. According to Andrew F. Fraser, professor of veterinary surgery at Memorial University of Newfoundland, and Donald M. Broom, professor of animal welfare at University of Cambridge: “Those who have studied the behaviour of the domestic fowl in detail…, especially those who have looked at feral …


Effects Of Gregariousness, Conspicuousness, And Novelty On Blue Jay (Cyanocitta Cristata) Learned Avoidance And Stimulus Generalization Of Unpalatable Prey, Joyce M. Dykema Apr 2008

Effects Of Gregariousness, Conspicuousness, And Novelty On Blue Jay (Cyanocitta Cristata) Learned Avoidance And Stimulus Generalization Of Unpalatable Prey, Joyce M. Dykema

Avian Cognition Papers

I examined a variety of factors hypothesized to be important in the evolution and maintenance of aposematism. Aposematism occurs when prey individuals advertise their toxic or otherwise aversive nature to potential predators via evolved conspicuous signals. I conducted three experiments in which blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) were allowed to search a printed grayscale pixilated background for grayscale pixilated moths in an open room. I manipulated moth appearance and food reward, and recorded jay predation on the varying moth stimuli. In my first experiment, I repeated Alatalo & Mappes’ (1996) study examining the effects of prey gregariousness, or grouping, …


K-Means Clustering With Multiresolution Peak Detection, Guanshan Yu, Leen-Kiat Soh, Alan B. Bond May 2005

K-Means Clustering With Multiresolution Peak Detection, Guanshan Yu, Leen-Kiat Soh, Alan B. Bond

Avian Cognition Papers

Clustering is a practical data mining approach of pattern detection. Because of the sensitivity of initial conditions, k-means clustering often suffers from low clustering performance. We present a procedure to refine initial conditions of k-means clustering by analyzing density distributions of a data set before estimating the number of clusters k necessary for the data set, as well as the positions of the initial centroids of the clusters. We demonstrate that this approach indeed improves the accuracy and performance of k-means clustering measured by average intra to interclustering error ratio. This method is applied to the virtual ecology project to …


The Effect Of Proximity On Landmark Use In Clark’S Nutcrackers, Kristy L. Gould-Beierle, Alan Kamil Jan 1999

The Effect Of Proximity On Landmark Use In Clark’S Nutcrackers, Kristy L. Gould-Beierle, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

Clark’s nutcrackers, Nucifraga columbiana, store thousands of pine seeds during the autumn and retrieve them throughout the winter. It has been shown that these birds are able to use visual cues to relocate hidden food in the laboratory. In this set of experiments, we trained three groups of Clark’s nutcrackers to find a hidden food goal that was placed in the same spatial location relative to the testing room. During training, the location of two local cues in relation to the goal differed between the three groups. Group 1 learned the task with the cues closest to the goal, group …


Patterns Of Movement And Orientation During Caching And Recovery By Clark’S Nutcrackers, Nucifraga Columbiana, Alan Kamil, Russell P. Balda, Sally Good Jan 1999

Patterns Of Movement And Orientation During Caching And Recovery By Clark’S Nutcrackers, Nucifraga Columbiana, Alan Kamil, Russell P. Balda, Sally Good

Avian Cognition Papers

Clark’s nutcrackers regularly store large numbers of pine seeds and remember the locations of the cached seeds. Although they are very accurate, they do make some errors during recovery. In an attempt to determine whether any behaviours during caching predicted the occurrence of errors during recovery, we videotaped Clark’s nutcrackers while they cached and recovered seeds under laboratory conditions. We used the videotapes to develop complete, quantitative descriptions of caching and recovery behaviour, with an emphasis on body orientation and directions of movement. During caching, the birds showed the greatest change in their orientation and direction following cache creation. During …


How Do They, Indeed? A Reply To Biegler Et Al., Alan Kamil, Juli E. Jones Jan 1999

How Do They, Indeed? A Reply To Biegler Et Al., Alan Kamil, Juli E. Jones

Avian Cognition Papers

We trained Clark’s nutcrackers, Nucifraga columbiana, to search halfway between two landmarks while varying the distance between the landmarks (Kamil & Jones 1997). We found that the birds learned the problem readily and generalized to novel interlandmark distances within the range of distances used during training. Unlike some other studies in which responses to proportional distance were obtained (e.g. O’Keefe & Burgess 1996; Tommasi et al. 1997), the nutcrackers showed very precise search and maintained this precision during the transfer test. The distributions of digging locations around the central position were concentrated within ±1–2 cm of the central location …


The Ecology Of Foraging Behavior: Implications For Animal Learning And Memory, Alan Kamil, Herbert L. Roitblat Jan 1985

The Ecology Of Foraging Behavior: Implications For Animal Learning And Memory, Alan Kamil, Herbert L. Roitblat

Avian Cognition Papers

In his recent Annual Review of Psychology article, Snowdon (1983) discussed the synthesis of ethology and comparative psychology. A similar synthesis of behavioral ecology and animal learning is beginning to take place. This article reviews developments in the behavioral ecology and ethology of foraging behavior relevant to psychological research on animal learning. The psychological literature shows that animals possess a wide range of learning abilities, including “simple” classical and operant conditioning; they acquire spatial, nonspatial, and temporal discriminations; they exhibit various forms of rule learning (e.g. matching-to-sample and learning set), and may even in certain senses learn language. Why does …


Optimal Foraging Theory And The Psychology Of Learning, Alan Kamil Jan 1983

Optimal Foraging Theory And The Psychology Of Learning, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

The development of optimization theory has made important contributions to the study of animal behavior. But the optimization approach needs to be integrated with other methods of ethology and psychology. For example, the ability to learn is an important component of efficient foraging behavior in many species, and the psychology of animal learning could contribute substantially to testing and extending the predictions of optimal foraging theory.


Spatial Learning As An Adaptation In Hummingbirds, Susan Cole, F. Reed Hainsworth, Alan Kamil, Terre Mercier, Larry L. Wolf Jan 1982

Spatial Learning As An Adaptation In Hummingbirds, Susan Cole, F. Reed Hainsworth, Alan Kamil, Terre Mercier, Larry L. Wolf

Avian Cognition Papers

An ecological approach based on food distribution suggests that hummingbirds should more easily learn to visit a flower in a new location than to learn to return to a flower in a position just visited, for a food reward. Experimental results support this hypothesis as well as the general view that differences in learning within and among species represent adaptations.


Visual Detection Of Cryptic Prey By Blue Jays (Cyanocitta Cristata), Alexandra T. Pietrewicz, Alan Kamil Jan 1977

Visual Detection Of Cryptic Prey By Blue Jays (Cyanocitta Cristata), Alexandra T. Pietrewicz, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

Blue jays learned to respond differentially to the presence or absence of Catocala moths in slides. This detection of the moths by the jays was affected by the background upon which the moth was placed and its body orientation, thus providing an objective measure of crypticity. These procedures are useful for the study of visual detection of prey.


The Breeding Biology Of The Western Tanager (Piranga Ludoviciana), Gary G. Benson Jan 1971

The Breeding Biology Of The Western Tanager (Piranga Ludoviciana), Gary G. Benson

All Master's Theses

In 1969 a two-year study was undertaken in an effort to enlarge our knowledge of the life history of the western tanager (Piranga ludoviciana). Bent (1958) summarizes the literature on the western tanager, and a review of his work clearly shows an almost total absence of detailed information on the species' life history. To obtain this information, observations were conducted from 1 May through 29 July 1969. A few observations were made during the 1968 breeding season.


The Role Of Adventitious Reinforcement In Operant Discrimination, Alan Kamil, John W. Davenport Jan 1968

The Role Of Adventitious Reinforcement In Operant Discrimination, Alan Kamil, John W. Davenport

Avian Cognition Papers

Rats were trained in 2 SD-SΔ discrimination experiments in which the effects of an SD-postponement contingency during SΔ and temporal regularity of SΔ duration were assessed. Experiment I showed that discrimination is markedly facilitated by the presence of an SD-postponement contingency of either fixed or variable duration. Experiment II showed that variable-duration SΔ periods in a noncontingent schedule can also greatly enhance formation of an operant discrimination. These effects were attributed to differences in the probability of adventitious reinforcement of SΔ behavior by SD events.