{"title":"Silencing the call of the wild – howling behaviour and responses of the wolf to Anthropocene in India","authors":"S. Sadhukhan, S. Khan, B. Habib","doi":"10.1111/acv.12881","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Wolves use howls to maintain large territories, intra-pack communication and social bonding. Besides their physical presence, howls are also instrumental in creating fear and impacting foraging behaviour among the lower cascade. Anthropocene-led behavioural alteration in vocalization has been observed in a wide range of species, but the effect on wolf howl is unknown. In this context, we have studied the howling behaviour of the Indian wolf through playback surveys (<i>n</i> = 264) across the anthropogenic gradient. We found a disparity in their howl response – based on the distance to villages. In the low disturbed East-Maharashtra (EM), wolves mostly avoided responding to howling surveys (HS) if done within 1200 m of villages [response rate (RR) = 0.03 ± 0.021], but they did respond once it was done far from villages (>1200 m) (RR = 0.226 ± 0.075). In high human-density West-Maharashtra (WM), wolves showed high RR within 1200 m from the villages (RR = 0.148 ± 0.031). But the RR within 500 m from villages was less as howling near villages might lead to easy detection. The collared wolf data showed significantly high RR (0.635 ± 0.067) in their home-range core, but low RR if the core area was close to a village. Therefore, howling too close to a village is disadvantageous, although their tolerance for responding to HS has increased in the human-dominated landscape. The extent of the village may increase further with development, which will leave fewer areas for the wolf to defend territory with a long-range howl. The wolves might behaviourally adapt to a human-modified landscape by reducing their howling intensity. Adaptation to a fragmented habitat may save the wolves from extinction, but the repercussions of the fundamental behavioural alteration might adversely impact wolf behaviour and the ecological cascade. Whereas ecologists are mainly concerned with the extinction of species, this study highlights the vulnerability of fundamental behaviour of a keystone species attributed to human-induced contemporary evolution.</p>","PeriodicalId":50786,"journal":{"name":"Animal Conservation","volume":"27 1","pages":"98-111"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Animal Conservation","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acv.12881","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Wolves use howls to maintain large territories, intra-pack communication and social bonding. Besides their physical presence, howls are also instrumental in creating fear and impacting foraging behaviour among the lower cascade. Anthropocene-led behavioural alteration in vocalization has been observed in a wide range of species, but the effect on wolf howl is unknown. In this context, we have studied the howling behaviour of the Indian wolf through playback surveys (n = 264) across the anthropogenic gradient. We found a disparity in their howl response – based on the distance to villages. In the low disturbed East-Maharashtra (EM), wolves mostly avoided responding to howling surveys (HS) if done within 1200 m of villages [response rate (RR) = 0.03 ± 0.021], but they did respond once it was done far from villages (>1200 m) (RR = 0.226 ± 0.075). In high human-density West-Maharashtra (WM), wolves showed high RR within 1200 m from the villages (RR = 0.148 ± 0.031). But the RR within 500 m from villages was less as howling near villages might lead to easy detection. The collared wolf data showed significantly high RR (0.635 ± 0.067) in their home-range core, but low RR if the core area was close to a village. Therefore, howling too close to a village is disadvantageous, although their tolerance for responding to HS has increased in the human-dominated landscape. The extent of the village may increase further with development, which will leave fewer areas for the wolf to defend territory with a long-range howl. The wolves might behaviourally adapt to a human-modified landscape by reducing their howling intensity. Adaptation to a fragmented habitat may save the wolves from extinction, but the repercussions of the fundamental behavioural alteration might adversely impact wolf behaviour and the ecological cascade. Whereas ecologists are mainly concerned with the extinction of species, this study highlights the vulnerability of fundamental behaviour of a keystone species attributed to human-induced contemporary evolution.
期刊介绍：
Animal Conservation provides a forum for rapid publication of novel, peer-reviewed research into the conservation of animal species and their habitats. The focus is on rigorous quantitative studies of an empirical or theoretical nature, which may relate to populations, species or communities and their conservation. We encourage the submission of single-species papers that have clear broader implications for conservation of other species or systems. A central theme is to publish important new ideas of broad interest and with findings that advance the scientific basis of conservation. Subjects covered include population biology, epidemiology, evolutionary ecology, population genetics, biodiversity, biogeography, palaeobiology and conservation economics.
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