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Articles 781 - 810 of 1541

Full-Text Articles in Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology

Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles For Bird Harassment On Fish Ponds, Ciera A. Rhoades, Peter J. Allen, D. Tommy King Jan 2019

Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles For Bird Harassment On Fish Ponds, Ciera A. Rhoades, Peter J. Allen, D. Tommy King

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The effects of aquaculture decline on piscivorous birds in the Mississippi Delta concern catfish farmers, with possible increases in fish loss and disease transmission. Piscivorous birds quickly habituate to most current methods of harassment (loud noises and visual disturbances) leading to increased depredation and disease. Our study was designed to test the efficacy of using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to effectively control piscivorous birds at fish farms. We hypothesized that a UAV would be more efficient at reducing the number of fish-eating birds on fish ponds than current forms of harassment. We conducted pre-treatment bird surveys, harassment observations, and post-treatment …

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Locally Fixed Alleles: A Method To Localize Gene Drive To Island Populations, Jaye Sudweeks, Brandon Hollingsworth, Dimitri V. Blondel, Karl J. Campbell, Sumit Dhole, John D. Eisemann, Owain Edwards, John Godwin, Gregg R. Howald, Kevin P. Oh, Antoinette J. Piaggio, Thomas A.A. Prowse, Joshua V. Ross, J. Royden Saah, Aaron B. Shiels, Paul Q. Thomas, David W. Threadgill, Michael R. Vella, Fred Gould, Alun L. Lloyd Jan 2019

Locally Fixed Alleles: A Method To Localize Gene Drive To Island Populations, Jaye Sudweeks, Brandon Hollingsworth, Dimitri V. Blondel, Karl J. Campbell, Sumit Dhole, John D. Eisemann, Owain Edwards, John Godwin, Gregg R. Howald, Kevin P. Oh, Antoinette J. Piaggio, Thomas A.A. Prowse, Joshua V. Ross, J. Royden Saah, Aaron B. Shiels, Paul Q. Thomas, David W. Threadgill, Michael R. Vella, Fred Gould, Alun L. Lloyd

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Invasive species pose a major threat to biodiversity on islands. While successes have been achieved using traditional removal methods, such as toxicants aimed at rodents, these approaches have limitations and various off-target effects on island ecosystems. Gene drive technologies designed to eliminate a population provide an alternative approach, but the potential for drive-bearing individuals to escape from the target release area and impact populations elsewhere is a major concern. Here we propose the “Locally Fixed Alleles” approach as a novel means for localizing elimination by a drive to an island population that exhibits significant genetic isolation from neighboring populations. Our …

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Population Health Of Spotted Salamanders (Ambystoma Maculatum) In Created Vernal Pools: An Integrative Approach, Alice R. Millikin Jan 2019

Population Health Of Spotted Salamanders (Ambystoma Maculatum) In Created Vernal Pools: An Integrative Approach, Alice R. Millikin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Habitat creation is an important tool for conservation to counteract habitat loss and degradation. Vernal pools are susceptible to destruction due to limited detection, protection, and regulation. These wetlands provide fishless breeding habitat for many amphibian species including spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) in eastern North America. Determining whether created vernal pool habitat is successful is often determined by demographic data of colonizing populations. I suggest that hormone levels, population genetics, and disease prevalence can improve our understanding of population health in created habitat. The goal of this dissertation was to assess the health of spotted salamander larvae in …

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Distribution And Habitat Use Of Benthic Fishes In The Lower Kanawha River, West Virginia, Nathaniel V. Owens Jan 2019

Distribution And Habitat Use Of Benthic Fishes In The Lower Kanawha River, West Virginia, Nathaniel V. Owens

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The Kanawha River in West Virginia is a historically diverse system in terms of ichthyofauna although, like many other large rivers, it has been subjected to a suite of anthropomorphic perturbations. These include this system being modified to allow the passage of commercial vessels for industry thus altering flow regimes, increased sedimentation, water depth, and channelization, and decreased interactions with its floodplain. Additionally, the fishes of this system have suffered from deleterious historical water quality issues caused by intensive timber operations, mining, and industrial waste. Post Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act water …

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Relationship Between Habitat And Barn Owl Prey Delivery Rate And Composition In A Napa Valley Vineyard Agroecosystem, Dane A. R. St. George Jan 2019

Relationship Between Habitat And Barn Owl Prey Delivery Rate And Composition In A Napa Valley Vineyard Agroecosystem, Dane A. R. St. George

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

The provision of habitat for natural enemies of agricultural pests is common in integrated pest management approaches globally but has rarely been examined for vertebrate predators controlling vertebrate pests. To mitigate the economic and environmental costs of treating for rodent pests, winegrape producers in Napa Valley, California, have installed nest boxes to attract barn owls (Tyto alba) to their properties, but their effectiveness to control rodent pests in vineyards has not been thoroughly tested. A rigorous estimate of the number of rodents barn owls remove from the landscape is a necessary first step, and this study aimed to …

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Intelligence, Complexity, And Individuality In Sheep, Lori Marino, Debra Merskin Jan 2019

Intelligence, Complexity, And Individuality In Sheep, Lori Marino, Debra Merskin

Animal Sentience

Domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are among the earliest animals domesticated for human use. They are consumed worldwide as mutton, hogget, and lamb, kept as wool and milk producers, and used extensively in scientific research. The popular stereotype is that sheep are docile, passive, unintelligent, and timid, but a review of the research on their behavior, affect, cognition, and personality reveals that they are complex, individualistic, and social.

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Sacrificial Lambs, Clive Phillips Jan 2019

Sacrificial Lambs, Clive Phillips

Animal Sentience

Sheep evolved from the mouflon as mountain animals, able to escape predation by leaping between rock ledges. Their defense was their agility. Humans brought them to the plains, where the agility was less useful, but their lack of aggression, speed or weaponry against predators made them a prime target to become one of man’s meat providers. A perfect animal in many ways, with extraordinary perceptive powers and some remarkable cognitive skills, they are often treated with complete disregard for their welfare. Yet sheep themselves won’t tell us this, for a sheep that alerted others to its weakness really would be …

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Pulling The Wool From Our Eyes, Jennifer Vonk Jan 2019

Pulling The Wool From Our Eyes, Jennifer Vonk

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin review evidence of the complexity of sheep cognition, concluding that researchers ought to feel sheepish about misrepresenting ovine cognitive capacities. However, the failure to situate the data in critical context risks pulling the wool over readers’ eyes.

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Is Knowing Enough To Change Human Attitudes And Actions?, Liv Baker Jan 2019

Is Knowing Enough To Change Human Attitudes And Actions?, Liv Baker

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin present evidence on key aspects of cognition, such as theory of mind, learning, emotional valence, and sociality, to make a convincing argument that sheep are due consideration as individual sentient beings. With this information, what will it take to produce a real, meaningful shift in our attitudes and actions towards other animals, including a species as disadvantaged as sheep? What else do we need to know?

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Reflections On Sheep Rearing, Joyce D'Silva Jan 2019

Reflections On Sheep Rearing, Joyce D'Silva

Animal Sentience

Sheep rearing has an incredibly long history. Sometimes this alone can give credibility and status to a human practice. In the twenty-first century, it may be time to reassess our treatment of sheep and their place in nature. “Just because we’ve always done it” no longer has validity by itself. There are many other human practices which used to be accepted widely in certain societies and which we now may find abhorrent. With sheep intelligence now rightly regarded as an acceptable area of research within the academic community, it is a good time to reflect on our treatment of these …

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Casting A Sheep’S Eye On Science, David M. Peña-Guzmán Jan 2019

Casting A Sheep’S Eye On Science, David M. Peña-Guzmán

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin review evidence that sheep are not just passive and reactive creatures. They have personalities that vary from individual to individual and endure over time. It follows that we must rethink what it means to study them scientifically.

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Far More To Sheep Than Meets The Casual Eye, Bernard Rollin Jan 2019

Far More To Sheep Than Meets The Casual Eye, Bernard Rollin

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s survey of the cognitive and social capacities of sheep is an eye-opener about the individuality and emotionality of this most maligned of all farm animals. My own eyes had already been opened by an adopted orphaned lamb, so much more like a dog as a companion animal than the mindless robot I had been conditioned to expect. I am morally certain that Marino & Merskin’s survey will have a similar effect on readers open to changing their minds.

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Sentient Animals Do Not Just Live In The Present, John Webster Jan 2019

Sentient Animals Do Not Just Live In The Present, John Webster

Animal Sentience

Sheep are particularly well-equipped with the cognitive and emotional skills appropriate to their phenotype and natural environment. These include spatial memory, the benefits of safety in numbers, and the ability to recognise special individuals in large flocks by sight and by sound. Marino & Merskin’s target article reviews convincing evidence on whether sheep are more or less clever than other mammalian species. Sheep are very good at being sheep. But sentient animals do not just live in the present. Their emotional state is not simply dictated by events of the moment. If they learn, they can cope; if not, they …

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Positive Sentience Is Underrated, Teya Brooks Pribac Jan 2019

Positive Sentience Is Underrated, Teya Brooks Pribac

Animal Sentience

My commentary focuses on two aspects of ovine (well-)being considered in the review: the developmental context and (un)fulfilled potentialities.

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Sheep In Aesop’S And Phaedrus’S Fables, Matteo Colombo, Chiara Raucea Jan 2019

Sheep In Aesop’S And Phaedrus’S Fables, Matteo Colombo, Chiara Raucea

Animal Sentience

Sheep feature in various animal fables. Marino & Merskin suggest that “we” view sheep as “docile, passive, unintelligent, and timid,” but animal fables do not support this view. In Aesop’s and Phaedrus’s fables, sheep are a primary target of injustice; but they are not passive targets. Sheep endure injustice actively and honestly. They are intelligent, aware and outspoken about their own condition.

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Using Sheep Psychology To Guide Sheep Policy, Ralph Adolphs Jan 2019

Using Sheep Psychology To Guide Sheep Policy, Ralph Adolphs

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s valuable review of the literature on sheep cognition shows how entrenched common views of these animals’ mental lives are disputed by the research literature. Yet the evidence they muster faces three challenges that their target article does not discuss: (1) the behavioral tasks are strongly anthropocentric; (2) neuroscientific data are absent; and (3) applications are not discussed. I touch on all three of these here.

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Why Are Sheep Sheepish? How Perception Affects Animal Stereotyping, Robert G. Franklin Jr. Jan 2019

Why Are Sheep Sheepish? How Perception Affects Animal Stereotyping, Robert G. Franklin Jr.

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin present compelling evidence that many stereotypes of sheep are incorrect. One factor that may play an important role in animal stereotyping is the physical appearance of animals, which can directly lead to stereotyping through automatic mental processes. Sheep have a round and babyish appearance that directly evokes judgments of warmth and docility. Depictions of sheep in art, and especially cartoons, reinforce this stereotype.

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Sheep Complexity Outside The Laboratory, Cheryl Abbate Jan 2019

Sheep Complexity Outside The Laboratory, Cheryl Abbate

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s review shows that sheep are intelligent and highly social but their methodology has some shortcomings. I describe five problems with reviewing only the academic and scientific literature and suggest how one might provide an even more compelling case for the complexity of sheep minds.

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Cognition, Emotion, Personality And The Conservation And Management Of Wild Ungulates, Rob Found Jan 2019

Cognition, Emotion, Personality And The Conservation And Management Of Wild Ungulates, Rob Found

Animal Sentience

Increasing public understanding of the complexity of wild ungulates can improve animal welfare and advance global conservation efforts of these keystone species. Unfortunately, shaping public opinion on wild species is challenging because personal experience with wildlife is declining, popular education is still biased towards the predator instead of the prey, and scientific research is more difficult to conduct on wild ungulates compared to those on farms, in zoos, or otherwise in captivity. Nevertheless, studies of cognition, individuality, and intelligence of wild ungulates are increasing. I briefly highlight some major results from my own work on complexity in wild elk, illustrating …

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Time To Vary The Formula, Jon Mallatt Jan 2019

Time To Vary The Formula, Jon Mallatt

Animal Sentience

In the past few years, Marino and her colleagues have written a series of comprehensive and helpful review articles on the cognitive, emotional, and social complexity of pigs, chickens, cows, and most recently, sheep. These articles are similarly structured, even formulaic, which has benefits but also limitations. Here, I point out the limitations in order to suggest new directions and contributions for the authors in the future.

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Adding Sheep To The Spectrum Of Comparative Psychology, James King Jan 2019

Adding Sheep To The Spectrum Of Comparative Psychology, James King

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s comprehensive review of cognitive complexity in sheep is a laudable and important contribution to comparative psychology. It is also valuable because it shows promising directions for future research on this neglected species. The relatively small number of neurons in the bovid cerebral cortex indicates that sheep cognitive performance on traditional measures of complex learning is limited. Nevertheless, the social and emotional complexity of sheep underscores the importance of further research into domains including personality and psychological well-being.

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Can A Mirror Capture The Self?, Cynthia Willett Jan 2019

Can A Mirror Capture The Self?, Cynthia Willett

Animal Sentience

Is the mirror a reliable indicator of self-awareness for any species, whether sheep or human? Taking a cue from feminist, phenomenological, and cross-cultural philosophy, a relational self rather than a reflective one might better capture what is at stake for the lives of social animals and for science.

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A Behaviorist Approach To Sheep Cognition, Intelligence, And Welfare, Lindsay R. Mehrkam Jan 2019

A Behaviorist Approach To Sheep Cognition, Intelligence, And Welfare, Lindsay R. Mehrkam

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s review sheds light on the complexity of the mind, learning, and cognition of sheep. Readily observable behavior has value in its own right for promoting the well-being of animals. A behavior-analytic approach can add substantially to the understanding of sheep as individuals as well as their learning capacities. The findings can also be applied to arranging their environments to promote their well-being as well as behavioral change in those responsible for their care and management.

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Deepening Our Understanding Of Sheep, Lori Marino, Debra Merskin Jan 2019

Deepening Our Understanding Of Sheep, Lori Marino, Debra Merskin

Animal Sentience

Our Response is centered on five major themes: (1) our presentation of human mythologies about sheep; (2) the relevance of cognitive complexity (“intelligence”) as a dimension underlying the way people perceive and treat sheep; (3) whether our review is too anthropocentric or anthropomorphic; (4) animal welfare versus animal rights (abolitionism); and (5) whether knowledge and education are enough to change human attitudes and behavior.

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Justice For Nature, Haydn Washington Jan 2019

Justice For Nature, Haydn Washington

Animal Sentience

Eight points are made in this commentary: (1) Ecocentrism is the preferable term. (2) Indigenous societies have long used a kinship ethics. (3) Earth jurisprudence and ecodemocracy should be considered. (4) Assumptions can be better defined. (5) Ethical pluralism is open to question. (6) The ethics of individuals vs. ecosystems needs further discussion. (7) Including justice for nature within social justice may be a serious mistake. (8) Trustees need to be ethically sophisticated.

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Just Preservation, Adrian Treves, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, William S. Lynn Jan 2019

Just Preservation, Adrian Treves, Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, William S. Lynn

Animal Sentience

We are failing to protect the biosphere. Novel views of conservation, preservation, and sustainability are surfacing in the wake of consensus about our failures to prevent extinction or slow climate change. We argue that the interests and well-being of non-humans, youth, and future generations of both human and non-human beings (futurity) have too long been ignored in consensus-based, anthropocentric conservation. Consensus-based stakeholder-driven processes disadvantage those absent or without a voice and allow current adult humans and narrow, exploitative interests to dominate decisions about the use of nature over its preservation for futurity of all life. We propose that authentically non-anthropocentric …

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Granting Political Representation To Non-Humans, Joe Gray Jan 2019

Granting Political Representation To Non-Humans, Joe Gray

Animal Sentience

This commentary discusses the representation of individuals versus populations — human and nonhuman, present and future — in Treves et al.’s proposed trusteeship for futurity. Terminological questions are also discussed.

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To Preserve Or To Conserve?, Liv Baker Jan 2019

To Preserve Or To Conserve?, Liv Baker

Animal Sentience

Treves et al. propose the notion of trusteeship to help meet our responsibility to nature and individual animals, their homes, cultures, and societies. This proposal is grounded in a real-world framework that reveals how conservation has become distorted by anthropocentrism, human exceptionalism, and ethical hypocrisy.

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Just Reductionism: In Defense Of Holistic Conservation, Bradley J. Bergstrom Jan 2019

Just Reductionism: In Defense Of Holistic Conservation, Bradley J. Bergstrom

Animal Sentience

Treves et al. (2019) argue that individual organisms should be protected by the courts. This already happens in many countries for rare and endangered species and for symbolically important species (e.g., raptors, songbirds, and bats in the U.S.), and through the international treaty for whales. But protection of these individuals stems from a focus on preserving their populations, whereas hunting of individuals is still a culturally accepted practice. Killing of individuals should be limited to valid reasons (e.g., eating the meat) and covered by fair-chase and humane-killing laws (which is not always the case). But “futurity” will not inherit present-day …

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Human Interests, Helen Tiffin Jan 2019

Human Interests, Helen Tiffin

Animal Sentience

Treves et al.’s proposal is welcome, but it will have to face at least four challenges: the interconnectedness of the human and the nonhuman portions of the biosphere, conflicts of interest, human overpopulation, and capitalism itself.

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