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Full-Text Articles in Behavior and Ethology
Play Behavior And The Development Of Boldness And Caution In Juvenile Belding’S Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus Beldingi), Madelene Shehan
Play Behavior And The Development Of Boldness And Caution In Juvenile Belding’S Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus Beldingi), Madelene Shehan
Master's Theses
The ubiquity of play among juvenile mammals suggests it provides adaptive benefits, potentially through influences on the development of temperament in young animals. Juvenile Belding’s ground squirrels (Urocitellus beldingi) must balance competing demands for boldness and caution imposed by the fundamental trade-off between their short active season and their vulnerability to predation. In this study, I evaluated whether play helps to facilitate the development of an appropriate balance between boldness and caution in juvenile U. beldingi.I observed the play behavior of juvenile U. beldingiand conducted flight-initiation distance tests to measure boldness-caution at the beginning and toward …
Sources Of Ecologically Important Trait Variation In Mosquitofish (Gambusia Affinis And Gambusia Holbrooki), Heather Ann Arnett
Sources Of Ecologically Important Trait Variation In Mosquitofish (Gambusia Affinis And Gambusia Holbrooki), Heather Ann Arnett
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The study of contemporary evolution and eco-evolutionary dynamics is classically defined in terms of genetic evolution, but the actual suite of processes driving contemporary trait change is likely much more complex than often credited. This dissertation considers additional mechanisms of trait change that might be important to an emerging model system for study of contemporary evolution and eco-evolutionary dynamics. Specifically, the research focuses on phenotypically plastic and demographic trait variation in Eastern and Western Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis and G. holbrooki) facing the major ecological gradient of predation risk. Plasticity experiments employed a common-garden rearing design to manipulate fish …