Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons^™

Modulation Of Behavior In Communicating Emotion, Martin Gardiner

Animal Sentience

King discusses many examples where two animals, as they bond, behave in ways we interpret as expressing love for one another. If one of the bonded animals then dies, signs of loving are replaced by signs we interpret as expressing grief by the animal who remains. I propose a pathway for emotional communication between an animal and an observer that can have a central role in these and other observations by King and in our overall ability to interpret observed behavior in relation to emotion. This pathway provides evidence of emotion in an observed animal by communicating evidence of emotion’s …

Leaving The Door Open For Fish Pain: Evolutionary Convergence And The Utility Of ‘Just-So Stories’, David B. Edelman

Animal Sentience

Key argues that fish do not experience pain because they lack the necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) brain structures and associated functional circuitry to engender such conscious percepts. I propose that fish pain may be dependent on neuroanatomical regions and pathways that are structurally and/or functionally analogous — but not strictly homologous — to well-characterized mammalian substrates of pain. An example is the convergent appearance of the complex, single-compartment eye across invertebrate and vertebrate phylogeny. Structural-functional convergence is ubiquitous in evolution. Comparative inferences and correlative lines of evidence play an important role in building evolutionary arguments. The dismissal of the …

Spinning Our Wheels And Deepening The Divide: Call For An Evidence-Based Approach To The Fish Pain Debate, Steven J. Cooke

Animal Sentience

There is vigorous ongoing debate about whether fish feel pain and have the capacity to suffer. The body of literature dedicated to the topic is increasing but what is particularly problematic is that the majority of the contributions represent opinion pieces and thus fall within the realm of advocacy. Many of the empirical research papers purporting that fish do or do not feel pain have problems with cavalier use of definitions, poor experimental design, or statistical/technical issues and tend to include advocacy statements in their interpretations. Rather than continuing to spin our wheels and deepen the divide, I would advocate …

Determining The Effects Of Non-Native Brook Stickleback (Cualea Inconstans) On The Lentic Systems At Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, Cheney, Wa, Jenae N. Yri

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

"The introduction of non-native fishes can cause trophic cascades in freshwater habitats; these effects may be amplified in ephemeral/temporary habitats. Non-native brook stickleback fishes (Culaea inconstans) were first documented on the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge (WA) in 1999 and are now present in many portions of the refuge. The consequences of their presence on the refuge's perennial/permanent and temporary habitats are poorly understood. Therefore, the purpose of my project was to determine if brook stickleback are affecting habitat characteristics that are important for waterfowl nesting success. From April-August 2015, I compared the macro invertebrate and macrophyte community characteristics, fingernail clam …

Invertebrate Drift In The Upper Columbia River With Implications For Young-Of-The-Year White Sturgeon, Ryan W. Reihart

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

"White sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus) in the upper Columbia River have been in decline for over 60 years and are listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Annual spawning produces dispersing larvae; however, recruitment into the juvenile age class has not occurred since the early 1970s. One hypothesis to explain this failure in recruitment is that larvae may not find adequate prey. Little is known about diet and prey availability for white sturgeon larvae, especially in Lake Roosevelt, a reservoir of the Columbia River. The Spokane Tribe of Indians collected littoral and mid-channel benthic drift samples …

How Welfare Biology And Commonsense May Help To Reduce Animal Suffering, Yew-Kwang Ng

Animal Sentience

Welfare biology is the study of the welfare of living things. Welfare is net happiness (enjoyment minus suffering). Since this necessarily involves feelings, Dawkins (2014) has suggested that animal welfare science may face a paradox, because feelings are very difficult to study. The following paper provides an explanation for how welfare biology could help to reduce this paradox by answering some difficult questions regarding animal welfare. Simple means based on commonsense could reduce animal suffering enormously at low or even negative costs to humans. Ways to increase the influence of animal welfare advocates are also discussed, focusing initially on farmed …

End-State Welfarism, Joel Marks

Animal Sentience

Yew-Kwang Ng’s research is the work of an obviously sincere, intelligent, and conscientious animal advocate. But I am unable to accept his starting assumption that animal welfare is an appropriate basis for animal ethics. More specifically I argue that animal welfare as a means to animal liberation is an issue that can be debated, but animal welfare as the ultimate end or goal of animal advocacy is misguided.

Animal Suffering Calls For More Than A Bigger Cage, Simon R. B. Leadbeater

Animal Sentience

Ng (2016) argues for incremental welfare biology partly because it would be impossible to demonstrate conclusively that animals are sentient. He argues that low cost changes in industrial practices and working collaboratively may be more effective in advancing animal welfare than more adversarial approaches. There is merit in some of Ng’s recommendations but a number of his arguments are, in my view, misdirected. The fact that nonhuman animals feel has already been adequately demonstrated. Cruelty to animals is intrinsic to some industries, so the only way to oppose it is to oppose the industry.

Considering Animals’ Feelings: Précis Of Sentience And Animal Welfare (Broom 2014), Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

The concept of sentience concerns the capacity to have feelings. There is evidence for sophisticated cognitive concepts and for both positive and negative feelings in a wide range of nonhuman animals. All vertebrates, including fish, as well as some molluscs and decapod crustaceans have pain systems. Most people today consider that their moral obligations extend to many animal species. Moral decisions about abortion, euthanasia, and the various ways we protect animals should take into account the research findings about sentience. In addition, all animal life should be respected and studies of the welfare of even the simplest invertebrate animals should …

Sentience And Animal Welfare: Affirming The Science And Addressing The Skepticism, Nancy Clarke

Animal Sentience

Broom’s (2014) book is a well-researched and thoroughly written exploration and evaluation of the journey from the origins of animal welfare science to what we can say we now know and need to consider in relation to animal sentience and welfare. This book will help to counter any skepticism among academics and policy makers.

Is Sentience Only A Nonessential Component Of Animal Welfare?, Ian J.H. Duncan

Animal Sentience

According to Broom (2014), animal welfare is a concept that can be applied to all animals, including single-celled organisms that are obviously not sentient. Such a stance makes it difficult to draw a connection between welfare and sentience, and that is the book’s downfall. Some excellent points are made about sentience and there are very good discussions on animal welfare. However, unless sentience is considered the essential component of welfare, any attempt to link the two phenomena will be unsuccessful — and that, indeed, is the case with this book.

Sentience And Animal Welfare: New Thoughts And Controversies, Donald M. Broom

Animal Sentience

Sentience involves having some degree of awareness but awareness of self is not as complex as some people believe. Fully functioning vertebrate animals, and some invertebrates, are sentient but neither humans nor non-humans are sentient early in development or if brain-damaged. Feelings are valuable adaptive mechanisms and an important part of welfare but are not all of welfare so the term welfare refers to all animals, not just to sentient animals. We have much to learn about what non-human animals want from us, the functioning of the more complex aspects of their brains and of our brains and how we …

Pain And Fish Welfare, Eliane Gonçalves-De-Freitas

Animal Sentience

The evolutionary approach of Key’s (2016) target article, generically comparing humans with fish of all kinds, is simplistic. The author ignores published research on structural and molecular aspects of pain in fish. The target article reads more like a selective polemic against fish welfare than an even-handed analysis.

Brain Processes For “Good” And “Bad” Feelings: How Far Back In Evolution?, Jaak Panksepp

Animal Sentience

The question of whether fish can experience pain or any other feelings can only be resolved by neurobiologically targeted experiments. This commentary summarizes why this is essential for resolving scientific debates about consciousness in other animals, and offers specific experiments that need to be done: (i) those that evaluate the rewarding and punishing effects of specific brain regions and systems (for instance, with deep-brain stimulation); (ii) those that evaluate the capacity of animals to regulate their affective states; and (iii) those that have direct implications for human affective feelings, with specific predictions — for instance, the development of new treatments …

Marine Ecoregion And Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Affect Recruitment And Population Structure Of A Salt Marsh Snail, Steven C. Pennings, Scott Zengel, Jacob Oehrig, Merryl Alber, T. Dale Bishop, Donald R. Deis, Donna Devlin, A. Randall Hughes, John J. Hutchens, Jr., Whitney M. Kiehn, Caroline R. Mcfarlin, Clay L. Montague, Sean P. Powers, C. Edward Proffitt, Nicholle Rutherford, Camille L. Stagg, Keith Walters

University Faculty and Staff Publications

Marine species with planktonic larvae often have high spatial and temporal variation in recruitment that leads to subsequent variation in the ecology of benthic adults. Using a combination of published and unpublished data, we compared the population structure of the salt marsh snail, Littoraria irrorata, between the South Atlantic Bight and the Gulf Coast of the United States to infer geographic differences in recruitment and to test the hypothesis that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill led to widespread recruitment failure of L. irrorata in Louisiana in 2010. Size-frequency distributions in both ecoregions were bimodal, with troughs in the distributions consistent …

Intertemporal Similarity: Discounting As A Last Resort, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Standard models of intertemporal choice assume that individuals discount future payoffs by integrating reward amounts and time delays to generate a discounted value. Alternative models propose that, rather than integrate across them, individuals compare within attributes (amounts and delays) to determine if differences in one attribute outweigh differences in another attribute. For instance, Leland (2002) and Rubinstein (2003) propose models that 1) compare the two reward amounts to determine whether they are similar, 2) compare the similarity of the two time delays, and then 3) make a decision based on these similarity judgments. Here, I tested discounting models against attribute-based …

Reflections Of The Social Environment In Chimpanzee Memory: Applying Rational Analysis Beyond Humans, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Julian N. Marewski, Lael J. Schooler, Ian C. Gilby

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

In cognitive science, the rational analysis framework allows modelling of how physical and social environments impose information-processing demands onto cognitive systems. In humans, for example, past social contact among individuals predicts their future contact with linear and power functions. These features of the human environment constrain the optimal way to remember information and probably shape how memory records are retained and retrieved. We offer a primer on how biologists can apply rational analysis to study animal behaviour. Using chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as a case study, we modelled 19 years of observational data on their social contact patterns. Much …

Cognitive Phenotypes And The Evolution Of Animal Decisions, Tamra C. Mendelson, Courtney L. Fitzpatrick, Mark E. Hauber, Charles H. Pence, Rafael L. Rodriguez, Rebecca J. Safran, Caitlin A. Stern, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Despite the clear fitness consequences of animal decisions, the science of animal decision making in evolutionary biology is underdeveloped compared with decision science in human psychology. Specifically, the field lacks a conceptual framework that defines and describes the relevant components of a decision, leading to imprecise language and concepts. The ‘judgment and decision-making’ (JDM) framework in human psychology is a powerful tool for framing and understanding human decisions, and we apply it here to components of animal decisions, which we refer to as ‘cognitive phenotypes’. We distinguish multiple cognitive phenotypes in the context of a JDM framework and highlight empirical …

Taxonomic Review Of The Wingmite Genus Cameronieta (Acari: Spinturnicidae) On Neotropical Bats, With A New Species From Northeastern Brazil, Juliana C. Almeida, Donald D. Gettinger, Scott Lyell Gardner

Scott L. Gardner Publications

The ectoparasitic mite genus Cameronieta (Acari: Mesostigmata: Spinturnicidae) is endemic to the New World and associated exclusively with bats of the family Mormoopidae. The genus consists of 7 species, 4 broadly distributed through the Caribbean and mainland of North and South America, and 3 species limited to the Greater Antilles archipelago. We present a brief review of the taxonomic history, redefine the genus, and consider some questions that remain concerning the biology and systematics of the group. A new species, Cameronieta almaensis n. sp., is described from the wings of Pteronotus parnellii collected from the Serra das Almas Reserve, in …

Phylogeny And Biogeography Of Species Of Syphacia Seurat, 1916 (Nemata : Oxyurida : Oxyuridae) From The Australian Bioregion, Haylee J. Weaver, Scott Monks, Scott Gardner

Scott L. Gardner Publications

Pinworm nematodes of the genus Syphacia (Nemata : Oxyurida : Oxyuridae) have a global distribution, and infect the caecum of rodents. Within the Australian Bioregion, 17 species of Syphacia infect a range of rodent hosts. Pinworms are traditionally thought to have coevolutionary relationships with their hosts, but the evolution and dispersal of Australian rodents and their helminths remains unclear. This combination of factors allowed us to investigate the likely relationships of Australian Syphacia species based on phylogenetic analysis, overlaid with the ecology and relationships of host species. We conducted a phylogenetic analysis using morphological characters of the species of Syphacia …

Bolivian Rhinotragini X. Odontomelitta Gen. Nov. (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae), Robin O. S. Clarke

Insecta Mundi

Epimelitta postimelina Giesbert, 1996 and Odontocera apicula Bates, 1885 are transferred to the new genus Odontomelitta. Epimelitta postimelina, with closed procoxal cavities, cannot remain in Epimelittta Bates, 1870, a genus characterized by open procoxal cavities. The short elytra and tegmen (with caliper-shaped lateral lobes) of the aedeagus of both species excludes them from the genus Odontocera Audinet-Serville, 1833, with long elytra and tegmen (with strap-shaped lateral lobes). Both species are illustrated, and host plant and host flower records provided for O. apicula.

Pyroghatsiana: A New Genus Of Fire-Colored Beetles (Coleoptera: Pyrochroidae: Pyrochroinae) From The Southern Ghats, India, Daniel K. Young

Insecta Mundi

Pyroghatsiana, a new genus of pyrochroine Pyrochroidae is described from the Southern Ghats of the Indian continental southern tip. The only known specimen is a female, Pyroghatsiana madurensis (Pic), new combination, originally placed in Dendroides Latreille, and subsequently transferred to Pseudodendroides Blair. Several striking differences including the dorsal interocular width between the compound eyes, shape and length of the third antennal segment, and shape of the pronotum preclude placement of Pyroghatsiana in either Dendroides, Pseudodendroides, or any other existing pyrochroine genus.

Studies On Palaearctic Onthophagus Associated With Burrows Of Small Mammals. V. A New Species Of The Semicornis Group From South-Central Iran (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae: Onthophagini), Stefano Ziani

Insecta Mundi

A new Iranian, probably pholeophilous species of the scarabaeine genus Onthophagus Latreille, 1802, O. roessneri n. sp., is described, illustrated, and its placement in the semicornis group within the subgenus Palaeonthophagus Zunino, 1979 is discussed. A key to the species of the group is presented.

Notes On Some Species Of Myzomorphus Sallé, 1850 (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae, Prioninae, Anacolini), Amoret Spooner, Antonio Santos-Silva

Insecta Mundi

Notes on the type of Myzomorphus quadripunctatus (Gray, 1831) are provided, and a lectotype is designated for the species. The holotype male of M. poultoni Lameere, 1912, along with a second male, are figured for the first time, and compared with M. gounellei Lameere, 1912. Notes on Myzomorphus amabilis (Tippmann, 1960) and a key to known males of Myzomorphus are also provided.

Nuevo Género Y Especie De Rutelini (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Rutelinae) De Los Andes Peruanos, José Mondaca, Gorky Valencia

Insecta Mundi

Peruquime nov. gen., is established for P. arequipensis nov. sp., a peculiar Scarabaeidae species discovered at high altitude in the Andes Mountains of southern Peru. The new genus and species is externally similar to some representatives of the subfamily Melolonthinae; however, important morphological characters place it within Rutelinae. Diagnostic characters, observations on the habitat, natural history and distribution of the new species are given. A distribution map, adult photographs and illustrations of some diagnostic features are included.

A New Species Of Paradiscopus Schwarzer (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Lamiinae: Acanthoderini) From Costa Rica, Josef Vlasak

Insecta Mundi

Paradiscopus monteverdensis Vlasak, new species (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) is described from Costa Rica. The new species is illustrated and a key is provided to Paradiscopus species

Two New Vaejovis C.L. Koch 1836 From Highlands Of The Sierra Madre Occidental, Durango, Mexico (Scorpiones, Vaejovidae), W. David Sissom, Matthew R. Graham, Taylor G. Donaldson, Robert W. Bryson

Insecta Mundi

Two new species of the mexicanus group of Vaejovis C.L. Koch are described from the Madrean pine-oak forests of the Sierra Madre Occidental in the state of Durango, Mexico. These species, Vaejovis sierrae sp. nov. and Vaejovis mcwesti sp. nov., are distinguished from each other and the only other species of the mexicanus group known from this mountain range, Vaejovis montanus Graham and Bryson, by morphometrics, carinal development of the pedipalps, granulation of the metasoma, and body size. A key to the species of the mexicanus group from the Sierra Madre Occidental is provided.

New Species Of Neocompsa And Tropidion From Bolivia (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae: Cerambycinae: Neoibidionini), James E. Wappes, Antonio Santos-Silva

Insecta Mundi

Two Neoibidionini from Bolivia are described as new: Neocompsa schneppi sp. nov. and Tropidion

nancyae sp. nov. The new species are compared to closely related species and previous keys by Martins and Galileo

(2007, 2009) are modifi ed to include them. Illustrations of dorsal, ventral and lateral habitus, as well as head

structures are included for both species. Comments are also included on color and pattern variation of each species.

Revisión Taxonómica Del Género Hempelicoccus Kozár (Hemiptera: Coccoidea: Eriococcidae) Con Descripción De Una Especie Nueva, Diego J. Moreno, Patricia González, Lucía E. Claps

Insecta Mundi

Se describe e ilustra una especie nueva de Hempelicoccus Kozár. Se da una diagnosis del género. Se aportan datos de las ocho especies ya descritas, de hospederos, distribución y una clave dicotómica para las especies del género.

A new species of Hempelicoccus Kozár is described and illustrated. A genus diagnosis is given. Data of the eight species already described, hosts, distribution and a dichotomous key to the species of the genus are provided.

Nuevos Registros De Escarabajos Longicornios (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) Para Venezuela, Carlos Taboada-Verona, Renato Mattei, Roberto Mattei, Carlos Aguilar Julio, Alfredo Lanuza-Garay

Insecta Mundi

Se reportan quince especies de escarabajos longicornios (Coleoptera; Cerambycidae) por primera vez

para Venezuela: Ambonus electus (Gaham, 1903), Eusapia guyanensis Huedepohl, 1988, Acyphoderes abdominalis

(Olivier, 1795), Isthmiade ichneumoniformis Bates, 1870, Drychateres bilineatus (Olivier, 1795), Polyschisis

rufi tarsalis Waterhouse, 1880, Carphina petulans (Kirsch, 1875), Lepturges zonula Monné, 1976, Oreodera albata

Villiers, 1971, Psapharochrus chrysopus (Bates, 1861), Estola fratercula Galileo y Martins, 1999, Oncideres cephalotes

Bates, 1865, Polyrhaphis spinosa (Drury, 1773), Nicias alurnoides (Thomson, 1857) y Ialyssus tuberculatus

(Olivier, 1795). Se da la distribución previa conocida para cada especie, así como los métodos de colecta e información

adicional sobre los sitios de …