Ultimately, it is behavior that determines survival.
Contents
Timberlake & Lucas 1989 [1]
Conservation behavior is the interdisciplinary field about how animal behavior can assist in the conservation of biodiversity. [2] [3] [4] It encompasses proximate and ultimate causes of behavior and incorporates disciplines including genetics, physiology, behavioral ecology, and evolution. [3] [4]
Conservation behavior is aimed at applying an understanding of animal behavior to solve problems in the field of conservation biology. These are problems that may arise during conservation efforts such as captive breeding, species reintroduction, reserve connectivity, and wildlife management. By using patterns in animal behavior, biologists can be successful in these conservation efforts. This is done by understanding the proximate and ultimate causes of problems that arise. For example, understanding how proximate processes affect survival can help biologist train captive-reared animals to recognize predators post-release. Ultimate causes also have a clear benefit to conservation. For example, understanding social relationships that lead to fitness (biology) can help biologists manage wildlife that exhibit infanticide. Conservation projects may have a better chance of being successful if biologists search for a deeper understanding of how animals make adaptive decisions. [3]
While animal behavior and conservation biology are conceptually intertwined, the idea of using animal behavior in conservation management was only first used explicitly in 1974. [5] Since then, conservation behavior has slowly gained prominence with a surge of publications in the field since the mid-1990s and the Animal Behavior Society even forming a committee in support of conservation behavior. [6] [7] [8] [2] A number of studies have shown that animal behavior can be an important consideration during conservation projects. [9] [10] [11] More importantly, ignorance of animal behavior in conservation projects may lead to their failure. [12] Recent calls for stronger integration of behavior and physiology to advance conservation science emphasize the growing recognition that when studying animals in nature it is impossible to decouple behavior and physiology. [13]
Understanding animal behavior can help limit the impact of humans on the environment. Wildlife conservation is concerned with protecting species and their habitats from the impact of human development. Wildlife management is concerned with manipulating and exploiting wild species to achieve a desired end while ensuring their persistence and availability. Because management is often a component of conservation strategies, incorporating knowledge of animal behavior into wildlife management has potential for improving the outcomes of conservation projects. [14] This understanding of animal behavior can help managers design better wildlife and nature reserves, reduce human–wildlife conflict, understand and manage species’ responses to human-induced environmental stress, and manage introduced species. [15]
Wildlife managers commonly try to create wildlife reserves to conserve habitat for species of concern. The behavior of target animals is pivotal in designing the size, shape, location, and habitat of these reserves. For example, many bird reserves in Central and South America are located in high mountains, but in one instance 25% of the local birds left the protected area to forage. [16] Understanding behaviors including recruitment, settling, spawning, foraging, territoriality, daily movements, and seasonal patterns of migration are all important for conservation success. [15]
Minimizing human–wildlife conflict is a persistent challenge in wildlife management and conservation. Behavioral manipulation can help mitigate some conflicts such as livestock depredation or agricultural destruction by repelling animals with strobe lights, sounds, aversive conditioning, or taste aversion. Not only are humans frequently coming into conflict with animals, but humans can also induce environmental stress on animals. Humans can begin to mitigate these stresses by understanding behaviors, such as the effect tourists have on wildlife in reserves.
Because an animal's survival and reproductive success relies on its behavior, knowledge of behavior is essential in actively reversing the decline of imperiled wild species. [15] Knowledge of behavior can be used to reduce bycatch of fish species, reestablish breeding populations, or boost reproduction. [14] [17] Understanding the behavior of fish has helped reduce bycatch by improving the selectivity of fishing gear. Species can be separated by their initial response to a trawl mouth, their position within a net, and their responses to visual and rheotactic sensory cues. [15] Use of behavioral characteristics such as these can help reduce tremendous waste that often occurs during industrial fishing and help manage for sustainable fisheries.
The state of a declining species can sometimes be reversed by augmenting reproduction through behavior. By manipulating auditory, olfactory, and visual cues of animals, biologists can attract animals to breeding grounds or increase the number of breeding individuals. This method has been applied most successfully to bird populations. [14] For example, acoustic playbacks have attracted seabirds to historic and new breeding grounds. [18] Similarly, adding eggs to nests of some male fish species may promote increased spawning by females who prefer to spawn with males already possessing eggs. [14]
Knowing species richness and abundance in a given area has been an important part of ecology since its creation. Censusing and monitoring methods can use animal behavior to assess and track the status of species of concern. Many times this involves using communication signals or other conspicuous behaviors to locate and count species. For example, knowledge of behavior can be used to locate birds by their mating calls, count mammals who are more active during mating season, or track whale vocalizations and dolphin echolocation signals. [19] [20] [21]
Population viability analysis (PVA) can provide important information when assessing the status of a species and help evaluate conservation priorities. PVA is a process that can help determine the probability that a species will go extinct within a given number of years. Along with survival and reproduction, behavior can be factored into population viability models. These are behaviors that influence population demographics such as immigration, emigration, dispersal, and inbreeding depression. [22]
Captive breeding and reintroductions of endangered species are becoming more common and necessary for the conservation of some species. [23] Rearing wild animals in a captive setting requires behavioral understanding of factors such as mate choice, social structure, and environmental influences on mating. [24] Many captive breeding and reintroductions have failed due to behavioral deficiencies of released animals because many times captive animals lack natural parental care or other environmental influences during critical learning periods. [15] Animals need to learn a variety of behaviors that may be difficult to replicate in captive settings, including how to forage or catch prey, where it is safe to sleep, how to avoid predators, and intraspecies relationships and traditions. [24] [25] Captive breeding programs often inadvertently alter behaviors of animals including interfering with normal patterns of mate selection, creating inappropriate social conditions, antipredator behavior, and conditioning them to humans. The loss or altercation of behaviors such as these can have devastating effects on released animals.
There has been some concern in the field of conservation behavior about the lack of official cohesion between behavior and conservation biology and the potentially avoidable mistakes that have been made in conservation. [4] [15] [26] It has even been argued that theoretical advances in behavior have made little practical contributions to conservation biology. [26] While theory-driven behavior may have yet to become fully integrated into conservation, its importance is clear and application necessary.
The red wolf is a canine native to the southeastern United States. Its size is intermediate between the coyote and gray wolf.
Herpetology is a branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians and reptiles. Birds, which are cladistically included within Reptilia, are traditionally excluded here; the separate scientific study of birds is the subject of ornithology.
Conservation biology is the study of the conservation of nature and of Earth's biodiversity with the aim of protecting species, their habitats, and ecosystems from excessive rates of extinction and the erosion of biotic interactions. It is an interdisciplinary subject drawing on natural and social sciences, and the practice of natural resource management.
Conservation genetics is an interdisciplinary subfield of population genetics that aims to understand the dynamics of genes in a population for the purpose of natural resource management, conservation of genetic diversity, and the prevention of species extinction. Scientists involved in conservation genetics come from a variety of fields including population genetics, research in natural resource management, molecular ecology, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, and systematics. The genetic diversity within species is one of the three fundamental components of biodiversity, so it is an important consideration in the wider field of conservation biology.
The flight zone of an animal is the area surrounding an animal that if encroached upon by a potential predator or threat, including humans, will cause alarm and escape behavior. The flight zone is determined by the animal's flight distance, sometimes called flight initiation distance (FID) which extends horizontally from the animal and sometimes vertically. It may also be termed escape distance, alert distance, flush distance, and escape flight distance.
The domestication of vertebrates is the mutual relationship between vertebrate animals including birds and mammals, and the humans who have influence on their care and reproduction.
Wildlife management is the management process influencing interactions among and between wildlife, its habitats and people to achieve predefined impacts. It attempts to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people using the best available science. Wildlife management can include wildlife conservation, gamekeeping and pest control. Wildlife management draws on disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, biology, ecology, climatology and geography to gain the best results.
Captive breeding, also known as captive propagation, is the process of keeping plants or animals in controlled environments, such as wildlife reserves, zoos, botanic gardens, and other conservation facilities. It is sometimes employed to help species that are being threatened by the effects of human activities such as climate change, habitat loss, fragmentation, overhunting or fishing, pollution, predation, disease, and parasitism.
Charismatic megafauna are animal species that are large—in the relevant category that they represent—with symbolic value or widespread popular appeal, and are often used by environmental activists to gain public support for environmentalist goals. Examples include tigers, lions, jaguars, hippopotamuses, elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, giant pandas, brown and polar bears, rhinoceroses, kangaroos, koalas, blue whales, humpback whales, orcas, walruses, elephant seals, bald eagles, white-tailed and eastern imperial eagles, penguins, crocodiles and great white sharks among countless others. In this definition, animals such as penguins or bald eagles can be considered megafauna because they are among the largest animals within the local animal community, and they disproportionately affect their environment. The vast majority of charismatic megafauna species are threatened and endangered by overhunting, poaching, black market trade, climate change, habitat destruction, invasive species, and many more causes.
The golden-headed lion tamarin, also the golden-headed tamarin, is a lion tamarin endemic to Brazil. It is found only in the lowland and premontane tropical forest fragments in the state of Bahia, and therefore is considered to be an endangered species. It lives at heights of 3–10 metres (9.8–32.8 ft). Its preferred habitat is within mature forest, but with habitat destruction this is not always the case. Several sources seem to have different information on the number of individuals within a group, and the type of social system that may be apparent. The golden-headed lion tamarin lives within group sizes ranging from 2 to 11 individuals, with the average size ranging from 4 to 7. According to various sources, the group may consist of two adult males, one adult female, and any immature individuals, one male and one female and any immature individuals, or there may be one producing pair and a varying number of other group members, usually offspring from previous generations. There is not much known on its mating system, but according to different sources, and information on the possible social groups, it can be assumed that some may practice monogamous mating systems, and some may practice polyandrous mating systems. Both males and females invest energy in caring for the young, and all members of the group also help with juvenile care.
Animal captivity is the confinement of domestic and wild animals. More specifically, animals that are held by humans and prevented from escaping are said to be in captivity. The term animal captivity is usually applied to wild animals that are held in confinement, but this term may also be used generally to describe the keeping of domesticated animals such as livestock or pets. This may include, for example, animals in farms, private homes, zoos, and laboratories. Animal captivity may be categorized according to the particular motives, objectives, and conditions of the confinement.
Behavioral enrichment is an animal husbandry principle that seeks to enhance the quality of captive animal care by identifying and providing the environmental stimuli necessary for optimal psychological and physiological well-being. Enrichment can either be active or passive, depending on whether it requires direct contact between the animal and the enrichment. A variety of enrichment techniques are used to create desired outcomes similar to an animal's individual and species' history. Each of the techniques used is intended to stimulate the animal's senses similarly to how they would be activated in the wild. Provided enrichment may be seen in the form of auditory, olfactory, habitat factors, food, research projects, training, and objects.
The Cheetah Conservation Fund is a research and lobby institution in Namibia concerned with the study and sustenance of the country's cheetah population, the largest and healthiest in the world. Its Research and Education Centre is located 44 kilometres (27 mi) east of Otjiwarongo. The CCF was founded in 1990 by conservation biologist Laurie Marker who won the 2010 Tyler Prize for her efforts in Namibia.
Evolutionary physiology is the study of the biological evolution of physiological structures and processes; that is, the manner in which the functional characteristics of individuals in a population of organisms have responded to natural selection across multiple generations during the history of the population. It is a sub-discipline of both physiology and evolutionary biology. Practitioners in the field come from a variety of backgrounds, including physiology, evolutionary biology, ecology, and genetics.
Sensory ecology is a relatively new field focusing on the information organisms obtain about their environment. It includes questions of what information is obtained, how it is obtained, and why the information is useful to the organism.
Translocation is the human action of moving an organism from one area and releasing it in another. In terms of wildlife conservation, its objective is to improve the conservation status of the translocated organism or to restore the function and processes of the ecosystem the organism is entering.
The plateau pika, also known as the black-lipped pika, is a species of mammal in the pika family, Ochotonidae.
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, and invasive species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List lists the global conservation status of many species, and various other agencies assess the status of species within particular areas. Many nations have laws that protect conservation-reliant species which, for example, forbid hunting, restrict land development, or create protected areas. Some endangered species are the target of extensive conservation efforts such as captive breeding and habitat restoration.
A large proportion of living species on Earth live a parasitic way of life. Parasites have traditionally been seen as targets of eradication efforts, and they have often been overlooked in conservation efforts. In the case of parasites living in the wild – and thus harmless to humans and domesticated animals – this view is changing. The conservation biology of parasites is an emerging and interdisciplinary field that recognizes the integral role parasites play in ecosystems. Parasites are intricately woven into the fabric of ecological communities, with diverse species occupying a range of ecological niches and displaying complex relationships with their hosts.
Steven J. Cooke is a Canadian biologist specializing in ecology and conservation physiology of fish. He is best known for his integrative work on fish physiology, behaviour, ecology, and human-dimensions to understand and solve complex environmental problems. He currently is a Canada Research Professor in Environmental Science and Biology at Carleton University and the Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Conservation Physiology.
