Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Integration Versus Apartheid In Post-Roman Britain: A Response To Thomas Et Al. (2008), John E. Pattison

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

The genetic surveys of the population of Britain conducted by Weale et al. and Capelli et al. produced estimates of the Germani immigration into Britain during the early Anglo-Saxon period, c.430-c.730. These estimates are considerably higher than the estimates of archaeologists. A possible explanation suggested that an apartheid-like social system existed in the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms resulting in the Germani breeding more quickly than the Britons. Thomas et al. attempted to model this suggestion and showed that it was a possible explanation if all Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had such a system for up to 400 yrs. I noted that their explanation …

Learned Recognition And Avoidance Of Invasive Mosquitofish By The Shrimp, Paratya Australiensis, Joshua D. Bool, Kristen Whitcomb, Erin Kydd, Culum Brown

Sentience Collection

Little is known about the learning ability of crustaceans, especially with respect to their anti-predator responses to invasive species. In many vertebrates, anti-predator behaviour is influenced by experience during ontogeny. Here, predator-naïve glass shrimp (Paratya australiensisis) were exposed to a predatory, invasive fish species, Gambusia holbrooki, to determine whether shrimp could learn to: (1) avoid the scent of Gambusia via classical conditioning; and (2) restrict their activity patterns to the night to reduce predatory encounters. Conditioned shrimp were placed in containers in aquaria containing Gambusia for 3 days during which time they could be harassed but not consumed by Gambusia. …

The Evolution Of Lateralized Foot Use In Parrots: A Phylogenetic Approach, Culum Brown, Maria Magat

Sentience Collection

Cerebral lateralization refers to the division of cognitive function in either brain hemisphere and may be overtly expressed as behavioral asymmetries, such as handedness. The evolutionary history of laterality is of considerable interest due to its close link with the development of human language. Although considerable research effort has aimed at the proximate explanations of cerebral lateralization, considerably less attention has been paid to ultimate explanations. The extent to which laterality is constrained by phylogeny or shaped by ecological forces through natural selection has received little attention. Here, the foot preference of 23 species of Australian parrots was examined to …

Molecular Systematics Of The Middle American Genus Hypopachus (Anura: Microhylidae), Eli Greenbaum, Eric N. Smith, Rafael O. De Sá

Biology Faculty Publications

We present the first phylogenetic study on the widespread Middle American microhylid frog genus Hypopachus. Partial sequences of mitochondrial (12S and 16S ribosomal RNA) and nuclear (rhodopsin) genes (1275 bp total) were analyzed from 43 samples of Hypopachus, three currently recognized species of Gastrophryne, and seven arthroleptid, brevicipitid and microhylid outgroup taxa. Maximum parsimony (PAUP), maximum likelihood (RAxML) and Bayesian inference (MrBayes) optimality criteria were used for phylogenetic analyses, and BEAST was used to estimate divergence dates of major clades. Population-level analyses were conducted with the programs NETWORK and Arlequin. Results confirm the placement of Hypopachus …

Effects Of Climate Change On Spring Ecosystem Hydroecology As A Guide To Developing Alternative Water Policies, Scott Mensing, Saxon E. Sharpe, Scott Bassett, Don Sada, Jim Thomas

Climate Change Seminar Series (NNE)

Hydroecology: the interface of ecological systems and water which combines the scientific disciplines of hydrology and ecology

Goal: evaluate the hydrologic and climate history using pollen, loss on ignition, total inorganic carbon, and invertebrates from spring sediments in Spring Valley, Eastern Nevada and Snake Valley, Western Utah

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 3: Two Early Publications, Charles H. Smith

DLPS Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 4: Contributions To The Garden, 1875-1912, Charles H. Smith

DLPS Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Presence Of The Dingo (Canis Lupus Dingo) On Risk Sensitive Foraging Of Small Mammals In Forest Ecosystems, Amanda Lu

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Trophic regulation of mesopredators through top order predators can have profound effects on ecosystem community and diversity. In the absence of top predators, invasive mesopredators exert strong selective pressures on native prey and can alter prey foraging behavior. When foraging in the presence of predators, prey must weigh predation risk against food gain. To examine the indirect impacts of dingo baiting on risk sensitive foraging in forests, we measured differences in giving up densities (GUDs) and surveyed local populations of mesopredators and mammals. We hypothesized that in baited areas, mesopredators would be more abundant and prey would perceive greater predation …

Picture Recognition Of Food By Macaques (Macaca Silenus), Peter G. Judge

Faculty Journal Articles

Pictorial representations of three-dimensional objects are often used to investigate animal cognitive abilities; however, investigators rarely evaluate whether the animals conceptualize the two-dimensional image as the object it is intended to represent. We tested for picture recognition in lion-tailed macaques by presenting five monkeys with digitized images of familiar foods on a touch screen. Monkeys viewed images of two different foods and learned that they would receive a piece of the one they touched first. After demonstrating that they would reliably select images of their preferred foods on one set of foods, animals were transferred to images of a second …

Upper Pleistocene Human Dispersals Out Of Africa: A Review Of The Current State Of The Debate, Amanuel Beyin

Faculty Scholarship

Although there is a general consensus on African origin of early modern humans, there is disagreement about how and when they dispersed to Eurasia. This paper reviews genetic and Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic archaeological literature from northeast Africa, Arabia, and the Levant to assess the timing and geographic backgrounds of Upper Pleistocene human colonization of Eurasia. At the center of the discussion lies the question of whether eastern Africa alone was the source of Upper Pleistocene human dispersals into Eurasia or were there other loci of human expansions outside of Africa? The reviewed literature hints at two modes of early …

The Importance Of Undecideds In The Evolution Vs. Creationism Debate, Seth Steinman

Senior Honors Projects

As a scientific theory, evolution has as much empirical support for its core assertions as the heliocentric universe theory or the belief that the Earth is round. Despite a unanimous consensus in the scientific community about evolution’s validity, the General Social Survey (GSS) consistently reports that 85 percent of Americans are either undecided or do not believe in evolution.

This divide between evolutionists, led by scientists, and creationists, led by religious leaders, has enormous scientific and political implications, which include funding for basic scientific research, acting to stop global warming, and what schools should be teaching our children.

The most …

Assortative Mating In Fallow Deer Reduces The Strength Of Sexual Selection, Mary E. Farrell, Elodie Briefer, Alan G. Mcelligott

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

Background: Assortative mating can help explain how genetic variation for male quality is maintained even in highly polygynous species. Here, we present a longitudinal study examining how female and male ages, as well as male social dominance, affect assortative mating in fallow deer (Dama dama) over 10 years. Assortative mating could help explain the substantial proportion of females that do not mate with prime-aged, high ranking males, despite very high mating skew. We investigated the temporal pattern of female and male matings, and the relationship between female age and the age and dominance of their mates.

Results: The peak of …

Historic And Contemporary Trends Of The Conservation Reserve Program And Ring-Necked Pheasants In South Dakota, Christopher R. Laingen

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Over the past century, the interactions between agricultural land use and government cropland retirement programs have affected pheasant population change. Two government land retirement programs that returned croplands to grasslands, Soil Bank in the 1960s and the current Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), help to illustrate these connections. From 2007 to 2010, South Dakota lost 41% of its CRP lands and experienced an 18% decline in pheasants per mile. However, because of where CRP expirations have occurred and where pheasant populations are found, some regional variability is seen. Western South Dakota (Region 1) had an 80% increase in pheasants per mile …

Integrating Values And Ethics Into Wildlife Policy And Management—Lessons From North America, Camilla H. Fox, Marc Bekoff

Conservation Collection

Few animals provoke as wide a range of emotions as wolves. Some see wolves as icons of a lost wilderness; others see them as intruders. As the battle continues between wolf proponents and opponents, finding solutions that resolve conflicts while supporting the integrity of nature is challenging. In this essay we argue that we need to make room for wolves and other native carnivores who are re-colonizing areas from which they were extirpated. Strategies that foster coexistence are necessary and wildlife agencies must consider all stakeholders and invest adequate resources to inform the public about how to mitigate conflicts between …

Passing Pains: Revenge, Retaliation, And Redirected Aggression In A New Light, Lixing Sun

Biology Faculty Scholarship

A review of David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton, Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression, and Take Revenge, Oxford University Press: New York, 2011, 209 pp., US$24.95, ISBN 019539514X (hardcover).

Profiles In Science For Science Librarians: "What Lives Where, And Why": Alfred Russel Wallace, And The Field Of Biogeography, Charles H. Smith

DLPS Faculty Publications

Biogeography, the study of animal and plant distribution, has a history extending back to at least the eighteenth century. But it was not until the work of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the mid-nineteenth century that it really came into its own as a science. Darwin’s importance notwithstanding, it was really Wallace who put the field on the map, and many of today’s research threads can be traced back to his influence. This article provides a summary review of Wallace’s life and work and biogeography as a field of study, including Wallace’s role in its development.

Confronting Socially Generated Uncertainty In Adaptive Management, Andrew J. Tyre, Sarah Michaels

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

As more and more organizations with responsibility for natural resource management adopt adaptive management as the rubric in which they wish to operate, it becomes increasingly important to consider the sources of uncertainty inherent in their endeavors. Without recognizing that uncertainty originates both in the natural world and in human undertakings, efforts to manage adaptively at the least will prove frustrating and at the worst will prove damaging to the very natural resources that are the management targets. There will be more surprises and those surprises potentially may prove at the very least unwanted and at the worst devastating. We …

Signs Of Mood And Anxiety Disorders In Chimpanzees, Hope Ferdowsian, Debra Durham, Charles Kimwele, Godelieve Kranendonk, Emily Otali, Timothy Akugizibwe, J. B. Mulcahy, Lilly Ajarova, Cassie Meré Johnson

Sentience Collection

Background: In humans, traumatic experiences are sometimes followed by psychiatric disorders. In chimpanzees, studies have demonstrated an association between traumatic events and the emergence of behavioral disturbances resembling posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. We addressed the following central question: Do chimpanzees develop posttraumatic symptoms, in the form of abnormal behaviors, which cluster into syndromes similar to those described in human mood and anxiety disorders?

Methodology/Principal Findings: In phase 1 of this study, we accessed case reports of chimpanzees who had been reportedly subjected to traumatic events, such as maternal separation, social isolation, experimentation, or similar experiences. We applied and …

Qualitative Behavioural Assessment And Quantitative Physiological Measurement Of Cattle Naïve And Habituated To Road Transport, C. A. Stockman, T. Collins, A. L. Barnes, D. Miller, S. L. Wickham, D. T. Beatty, D. Blache, F. Wemelsfelder, P. A. Fleming

Veterinary Science and Medicine Collection

The present study examined whether observers could distinguish between cattle that are naïve to road transport and the same cattle after becoming more habituated to transport. The behavioural expression of cattle was assessed through the method of qualitative behavioural assessment (QBA), and these assessments were correlated with various physiological parameters. Fourteen Angus steers were assessed during their first road trip and then again on their ninth trip, 15 days later. Blood samples were collected immediately before and after transport, and heart rate and core body temperature were measured continuously throughout each trip. Video footage recorded during each trip was edited …

Wolves, Canis Lupus, Carry And Cache The Collars Of Radio-Collared White-Tailed Deer, Odocoileus Virginianus, They Killed, Michael E. Nelson, L. David Mech

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Wolves (Canis lupus) in northeastern Minnesota cached six radio-collars (four in winter, two in spring-summer) of 202 radio-collared White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) they killed or consumed from 1975 to 2010. A Wolf bedded on top of one collar cached in snow. We found one collar each at a Wolf den and Wolf rendezvous site, 2.5 km and 0.5 km respectively, from each deer’s previous locations.

Use Of Cranial Characters In Taxonomy Of The Minnesota Wolf (Canis Sp.), L. David Mech, Ronald M. Nowak, Sanford Weisberg

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Minnesota wolves (Canis sp.) sometimes are reported to have affinity to a small, narrow-skulled eastern form (Canis lupus lycaon Schreber, 1775) and sometimes to a larger, broader western form (Canis lupus nubilus Say, 1823). We found that pre-1950 Minnesota wolf skulls were similar in size to those of wolves from southeastern Ontario and smaller than those of western wolves. However, Minnesota wolf skulls during 1970–1976 showed a shift to the larger, western form. Although Minnesota skull measurements after 1976 were unavailable, rostral ratios from 1969 through 1999 were consistent with hybridization between the smaller eastern wolf and …

Kin Encounter Rate And Inbreeding Avoidance In Canids, Eli Geffen, Michael Kam, Reuven Hefner, Pall Hersteinsson, Anders Angerbjorn, Love Dalen, Eva Fuglei, Karin Noren, Jennifer R. Adams, John Vucetich, Thomas J. Meier, L. David Mech, Bridgett M. Vonholdt, Daniel R. Stahler, Robert K. Wayne

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Mating with close kin can lead to inbreeding depression through the expression of recessive deleterious alleles and loss of heterozygosity. Mate selection may be affected by kin encounter rate, and inbreeding avoidance may not be uniform but associated with age and social system. Specifically, selection for kin recognition and inbreeding avoidance may be more developed in species that live in family groups or breed cooperatively. To test this hypothesis, we compared kin encounter rate and the proportion of related breeding pairs in noninbred and highly inbred canid populations. The chance of randomly encountering a full sib ranged between 1–8% and …

Parsing Demographic Effects Of Canine Parvovirus On A Minnesota Wolf Population, L. David Mech, Sagar M. Goyal

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

We examined 35 years of relationships among wolf (Canis lupus) pup survival, population change and canine parvovirus (CPV) seroprevalence in northeastern Minnesota to determine when CPV exerted its strongest effects. Using correlation analysis of data from five periods of 7-years each from 1973 through 2007, we learned that the strongest effect of CPV on pup survival (r = -0.73) and on wolf population change (r = -0.92) was during 1987 to 1993. After that, little effect was documented despite a mean CPV seroprevalence from 1994 of 2007 of 70.8% compared with 52.6% during 1987 to 1993. We …

Movements Of Wolves At The Northern Extreme Of The Species’ Range, Including During Four Months Of Darkness, L. David Mech, H. Dean Cluff

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Information about wolf (Canis lupus) movements anywhere near the northern extreme of the species’ range in the High Arctic (.75uN latitude) are lacking. There, wolves prey primarily on muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) and must survive 4 months of 24 hr/day winter darkness and temperatures reaching 253 C. The extent to which wolves remain active and prey on muskoxen during the dark period are unknown, for the closest area where information is available about winter wolf movements is .2,250 km south. We studied a pack of $20 wolves on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada (80°N latitude) from July 2009 …

The Scientific Classification Of Wolves: Canis Lupus Soupus, L. David Mech

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Gray wolf, timber wolf, red wolf, eastern wolf, brush wolf, arctic wolf, Mexican wolf, maned wolf, Ethiopian wolf, etc., etc. How many kinds of wolves are there? And what are the differences? This is a really good question, and the answer is getting more complicated all the time. Let us start by going back a few years to the way science looked at wolves more traditionally— before the days of the new field of molecular genetics. Molecular genetics examines the actual DNA of animals and tries to classify them according to genetic similarities. ...

What does all this mean in …

Gray Wolf (Canis Lupus) Movements And Behavior Around A Kill Site And Implications For Gps Collar Studies, L. David Mech

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Global Positioning System (GPS) radio-collars are increasingly used to estimate Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) kill rates. In interpreting results from this technology, researchers make various assumptions about wolf behavior around kills, yet no detailed description of this behavior has been published. This article describes the behavior of six wolves in an area of constant daylight during 30 hours, from when the pack killed a Muskox (Ovibos moschatus) calf and yearling on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canada, to when they abandoned the kill remains. Although this is only a single incident, it demonstrates one possible scenario of pack …

Infectious Diseases In Yellowstone’S Canid Community, Emily S. Almberg, Paul C. Cross, L. David Mech, Doug W. Smith, Jennifer W. Sheldon, Robert L. Crabtree

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

Each summer Yellowstone Wolf Project staff visit den sites to monitor the success of wolf reproduction and pup rearing behavior. For the purposes of wolf monitoring, Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is divided into two study areas, the northern range and the interior, each distinguished by their ecological and physiographical differences. The 1,000 square kilometer northern range, characterized by lower elevations (1,500–2,200 m), serves as prime winter habitat for ungulates and supports a higher density of wolves than the interior (20–99 wolves/1,000 km² versus 2–11 wolves/1,000 km²). The interior of the park encompasses 7,991 square kilometers, is higher …

Problems With Studying Wolf Predation On Small Prey In Summer Via Global Positioning System Collars, Vicente Palacios, L. David Mech

USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center

We attempted to study predation on various-sized prey by a male and female wolf (Canis lupus) with global positioning system (GPS) collars programmed to acquire locations every 10 min in the Superior National Forest of Minnesota. During May to August 2007, we investigated 147 clusters of locations (31% of the total) and found evidence of predation on a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) fawn and yearling, a beaver (Castor canadensis), ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), and fisher (Martes pennanti) and scavenging on a road-killed deer and other carrion. However, we missed finding …

Humane Cat Population Management Guidance, International Companion Animal Management Coalition

Stray and Feral Animal Populations Collection

The International Companion Animal Management Coalition has produced this document to provide government bodies and non-governmental organisations with a detailed resource to support them in their development and implementation of effective and humane programmes to manage cat populations.

Population Survey (Census) Of Stray Dog Population In Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Rahul Sehgal, Sunil Chawla, Jack Reece

Stray and Feral Animal Populations Collection

Ahmadabad, the biggest city of Gujarat with a human population of approximately, 6 million. The rapidly expanding population of Ahmadabad means that the metropolitan region extends far outside from the confines of the old city. However, the development is rapid but uncontrolled. Therefore, there are a large number of areas that are prone to stray dogs and these areas are constantly increasing. The old methods of population control by strychnine poisoning or electrocution employed by the municipal corporations have not proved effective in controlling street dog populations, as new dogs soon migrate into the areas, where the local dog population …