Animal behaviour in conservation Flashcards
what are they key behavioural concepts which need to be considered for conservation
1) reproductive success
2) behavioural domains
3) behavioural flexibility and personalities
4) learning and training
define the key behavioural concept of lifetime reproductive success
the total number of offspring produced by an individual which survive to maturation
- if this decreases it is a cause for conservation concern
define the key behavioural concept of behavioural domains
The three behavioural categories in which most behaviours can be sorted to make it easier to recognise relevant behaviours
what are the three behavioural domains
1) movement and space patterns
2) foraging and predator,prey relationships
3) social behaviour and reproduction
define the key behavioural concept of behavioural flexibility
the ability for a behaviour to change with the physical/social environment
how can personality affect behaviour
many behaviours change with the physical and social environment (behavioural flexibility) but there are individual consistencies such as seen in banded mongooses were some have more helpful personalities helping with offspring care
define the key behavioural concept of learning and explain how it can be used for conservation
training takes advantage of natural learning proccess where stimuli leads to responce
can be used to
- mitigate human-wildlife conflict
- make animals avoid certain situations
how can training be used for conservation
-protect crops and farmed animals e.g. using livestock dog
- locate animals of environmental concern- training rats to detect faeces from animals
what are behavioural traits
how an animal interacts with environment - a product of genetic diversity but also highly influenced by the environment demonstrating an example of gene-environment interaction
how does behaviour affect and individuals ability for survival
behaviour acts as the mediator between am organisms fitness and human disturbances
- it allows individuals to respond rapidly to changes and to survive environments they may not be physically adapted for
- increases fitness of the individual and persistence of a population
how can an individual organisms personality from a population be used to increase the success of conservation
individual variation in behaviour stems from genetic variation and experience and can be exploited to increase success
e.g. steps can be taken to enhance certain traits (boldness habituation) to increase the viability of entire population
briefly outline how behavioural ecology and conservation biology lead to conservation behaviour
comparative behaviourists look to study behaviour in controlled conditions
evolutionary behaviourists look at how variability can be understood by NS
- rarely are any disciplines employed for management strategies or if they are it is too late which lead to the development of conservation behaviour
outline the four questions Tinenberg suggested to answer ‘why do animals behave how they do’
1) CAUSATION = what are the immediate internal/external factors have an occurrence on behaviour, including motivation
2) SURVIVAL VALUE= what the function of a behaviour to survival of an animal has
3) EVOLUTION= how did that behaviour evolove?
4) ONTOGENY= how did the behaviour develop in the individual e.g. genetic predispositions/ experiences in early life?
who proposed the conceptual frame work for conservation biology and why
Berger-Tal et al
aimed to lend structure to the developing field to define the goals of conservation behaviour studies as prior to this all studies were random collections of observations with invented personal frameworks
Draw Berger-Tal et al conservation behaviour frame work
