Animal Behaviour最新文献

{"title":"Size-based dominance relationships in female forest elephants, Loxodonta cyclotis","authors":"Daniela Hedwig ,&nbsp;Colin Swider ,&nbsp;Andrea Turkalo","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123201","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123201","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The ecological model of female social relationships predicts variation in female social behaviour based on variation in environmental factors. When resources are abundant, females should exhibit poorly defined affiliative and dominance relationships. If resources are clumped, female-bonded societies should emerge with despotic age–size-based or nepotistic dominance relationships. African elephants (<em>Loxodonta</em> sp.) contradict socioecological theory. Despite feeding primarily on abundant herbaceous vegetation, female savannah elephants, <em>Loxodonta africana</em>, exhibit age–size-based despotic dominance relationships, while female forest elephants, <em>Loxodonta cyclotis</em>, rely heavily on clumped resources and form weak social bonds as females disperse from their natal groups to forage in small groups. Here we provide first insights into dominance relationships among female forest elephants based on displacement interactions over access to small monopolizable mineral pits at the Dzanga Bai forest clearing in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park, Central African Republic. We found that body size, but not relatedness, determined the outcome of displacement interactions and resulting dominance rank relationships. Tall females were more likely to initiate displacements and had higher ranks compared to short females. Relatedness had no influence on a female’s ability to displace another, and related females were not more similar in rank compared to nonrelated females. Our results suggest that female forest elephants exhibit size-based despotic dominance relationships, similar to savannah elephants, despite the two species relying on vastly different resources. The discrepancy with the socioecological model suggests it may not be entirely applicable to elephants. As proposed for various well-armoured herbivore species, including savannah elephants, despotic dominance relationships may emerge in forest elephants to reduce the risk of injury during low-gain competitive interactions. Further studies are needed to disentangle the effects of resource distribution and the risk of injury on dominance relationships in the genus <em>Loxodonta</em>.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"224 ","pages":"Article 123201"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143935866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What it is like to be an optimist: temporal stability of cognitive bias in rats and its link to other individual traits","authors":"Sophia Marie Quante ,&nbsp;Carolin Mundinger ,&nbsp;Rupert Palme ,&nbsp;Sylvia Kaiser ,&nbsp;S. Helene Richter","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123202","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123202","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Originating from human psychology, the concept of optimism/pessimism has become increasingly popular in animal welfare science. Typically, so-called judgement bias tests are used to study optimism levels in response to different affect manipulations. Recently, however, evidence is growing that judgement biases not only reflect affective states but might also cover a trait dimension meaning that the optimism level of an individual is stable over time. Contributing to this emerging field of research, we here aimed to comprehensively characterize optimistic and pessimistic rats by repeatedly testing a cohort of Lister Hooded rats in a tactile judgement bias test. To investigate potential links to other behavioural traits, we also assessed the rats' anxiety-like and exploratory behaviour, their laterality and their vocal response to human-induced play behaviour. Furthermore, we studied concentrations of basal faecal corticosterone metabolites to record hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical activity. Therefore, we took all measures twice to assess the stability over time. In contrast to previous studies, we did not find optimism levels to be temporally stable in the present study, encouraging further research on potential factors that might affect or modulate the stability of optimism levels within and across different life phases. Furthermore, we did not detect suites of correlated behaviours, calling for more research on the impact of context and/or species on the emergence of such links. Nevertheless, our results contribute to the accumulating evidence that certain interindividual differences in behaviour, such as exploratory locomotion, vocalizations, anxiety-like behaviour and laterality as well as hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical activity, are indeed stable across time and hence can be considered aspects of an animal’s personality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"224 ","pages":"Article 123202"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143932022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"You are what you tweet: vocal traits communicate threat in a duetting tropical bird","authors":"Erin R. Stewart ,&nbsp;J. Patrick Kelley","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123200","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123200","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Animals may assess the vocal traits of opponents during resource competition to determine threat, which is a combination of the fighting ability and motivation of the opponent. Most studies have looked at how vocal traits reflect threat in males, but females and groups also vocalize during competition. Here, we examine how the vocal traits of males, females and male–female pairs signal threat in chestnut-backed antbirds, <em>Poliocrania exsul</em>, a tropical species that sings and duets to defend permanent territories. We quantified the threat of all birds in terms of both body size (indicative of fighting ability) and territory quality (indicative of fighting ability or motivation), measured as territory size and vegetation density, then recorded songs to analyse the vocal traits of each bird. We found that males and females communicated information about body size through the rate and fine-scale attributes of their songs and those communication strategies were largely similar between sexes. Furthermore, male–female pairs coordinated their songs into duets and the timing of their singing signalled the level of threat. Our results indicate that fine-scale attributes of vocalizations convey important information about individuals and groups in the context of competition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"224 ","pages":"Article 123200"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143929514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Growing up with nutritional stress leads to peripheral social network positions, independent of ‘personality’","authors":"Yoran H. Gerritsma ,&nbsp;François Lamarque ,&nbsp;Merijn M.G. Driessen,&nbsp;Simon Verhulst","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123199","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123199","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social integration predicts life span in gregarious species, including humans, but the causes of variation in social integration and its link to behaviour (‘personality’) in other domains are not well known. Early life conditions also shape fitness variation, possibly through effects on personality and social integration. We studied social integration in zebra finches, <em>Taeniopygia castanotis</em>, reared with different levels of nutritional stress, which we showed to affect offspring growth and thereby fitness prospects. Growing up with nutritional stress caused individuals to attain more peripheral positions in social networks, as they interacted (1) with fewer individuals, (2) less frequently with their connections and (3) less with well-connected (i.e. ‘popular’) individuals. Thus early-life adversity effects on social integration may mediate effects on fitness. In contrast, behaviour in five standardized tests was independent of early life adversity, and consistent with these findings, behavioural scores were at most weakly predictive of network position. Choice of interaction partner did, however, depend on personality, with individuals interacting assortatively with respect to gregariousness and disassortatively with respect to boldness. Thus, developmental conditions may affect fitness prospects through effects on social integration, independent of ‘personality’, and suggest that some level of (social) challenge is required to reveal carry-over effects of early development.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"224 ","pages":"Article 123199"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143921944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The effect of competitor presence on the foraging decisions of small mammals","authors":"Aurelie M. Kanishka ,&nbsp;Christopher MacGregor ,&nbsp;Maldwyn John Evans ,&nbsp;Nick Dexter ,&nbsp;Chris R. Dickman ,&nbsp;Natasha M. Robinson ,&nbsp;David B. Lindenmayer","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123195","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123195","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Competitive interactions between species can have marked effects on the diets and foraging behaviours of the interactants. Dominant competitors can constrain the foraging decisions of subordinate competitors, reducing the individual fitness of subordinates and potentially driving their populations to low levels. Following a sustained population decline of the bush rat, <em>Rattus fuscipes</em>, in the presence of the competitively dominant common brushtail possum, <em>Trichosurus vulpecula</em>, at Booderee National Park in south-eastern Australia, we investigated whether possums affected the foraging decisions of bush rats. Using a manipulative feeding experiment, we predicted that bush rats would (1) increase visits to baited sites where possums had restricted access to the bait and (2) restrict visits to baited sites where possums had free access. We used camera traps to investigate visit patterns and time spent foraging at 40 baited sites with two treatments, one that allowed full access by both species (full access) and the other that attempted to prevent possum access (restricted access). We also measured additional covariate factors that may influence visits. Bush rats visited both treatments less when there were more possum visits. We also found that bush rats spent less time eating bait at sites regularly visited by possums, regardless of possums’ access level. Our results indicate that negative interactions, such as competition, can restrict the ability of subordinate species to successfully forage, contributing to species declines.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"224 ","pages":"Article 123195"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143917913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Brown-headed cowbirds select nests to parasitize based on individual host attributes rather than nest type","authors":"Brian D. Peer ,&nbsp;Wei Liang","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123157","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123157","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Choosing nests of appropriate hosts is crucial to the success of obligate avian brood parasites because they rely on these hosts to care for their young. Female brood parasites may choose nests by imprinting on the habitat in which they were born, parasitizing nests randomly within their natal habitat, parasitizing a specific nest type or imprinting and preferring a specific host species. We took advantage of our system of nestboxes to conduct the first study on how female brown-headed cowbirds, <em>Molothrus ater</em>, decide which nests to parasitize by testing the nest site and host preference hypotheses. First, we tested cowbird host selection using a paired nestbox experiment with the prothonotary warbler, <em>Protonotaria citrea</em>. One nestbox had an entrance large enough for warblers and cowbirds to enter, while the second box had an entrance that only allowed warblers to enter. Cowbirds only parasitized nestboxes containing warblers and when warblers used nestboxes with small entrances, the cowbirds attempted to lay in those boxes instead of laying in the paired boxes with larger entrances that contained dummy eggs, indicating a preference for the host rather than the nest site. Second, we monitored cowbird host choice within the cavity-nesting community to ascertain whether cowbirds choose hosts based on nest type and use nestboxes at an equal rate (the nest site hypothesis) or whether they select specific hosts within the nestboxes (the host preference hypothesis). Cowbirds never parasitized inactive nestboxes and parasitized prothonotary warblers significantly more frequently than northern house wrens, <em>Troglodytes aedon</em>, and tree swallows, <em>Tachycineta bicolor</em>. Our results support the host preference hypothesis that brown-headed cowbirds choose nests to parasitize based on the individual attributes of hosts, although they may use additional cues such as the nest structure within the cavities and appearance of host eggs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"223 ","pages":"Article 123157"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143894837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The courtship song of voles: male ultrasound vocalizations modulate female receptivity in two vole species","authors":"Daria Siewierska ,&nbsp;Elżbieta Pochroń ,&nbsp;Joanna Kapusta","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123128","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123128","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Rodents use ultrasonic vocalization (USVs) during various social interactions. The research on the impact of USVs is predominantly focused on common laboratory species; however, their exact role in rodents' lives remains unknown. Within vole species, USVs are present during sexual encounters and are primarily emitted by males. Female voles, characterized as induced ovulators, require male stimuli for behavioural oestrus and ovulation. Ultrasounds occurring during male–female interactions may thus serve as external stimuli influencing female reproductive behaviour. In this study, using prerecorded male vocalization, we investigated the effects of male USVs on female proceptive and receptive behaviours towards males in two lab-bred wild-derived vole species: bank voles, <em>Clethrionomys glareolus</em> or <em>Myodes glareolus</em> and common voles, <em>Microtus arvalis</em>. The confrontation between males and females was performed after a significant delay following exposure to the vocalization, rather than immediately afterwards. This approach allowed us to investigate the delayed reactions of females. Our findings reveal that exposure to male USVs before behavioural tests significantly influenced the reproductive behaviour of females in both species. Specifically, we observed an increased frequency of lordosis positions and copulations after the ultrasound exposure, however with variations in the response timing between species. Furthermore, ultrasound exposure notably reduced the latency to the first copulation, suggesting changes in female physiology induced by the USVs. Taken together, this work underscores the significance of male USV as a potential stimulus capable of influencing female voles’ behaviour and potentially their physiology, resulting in enhanced receptivity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"223 ","pages":"Article 123128"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143894961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exposure to anthropogenic noise affects feeding but not territory defence in damselfishes","authors":"Aléxia A. Lessa ,&nbsp;Fábio C. Xavier ,&nbsp;Viviane R. Barroso ,&nbsp;Cesar A.M.M. Cordeiro ,&nbsp;Carlos E.L. Ferreira","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123130","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123130","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Anthropogenic noise is a recognized global pollutant with well-documented effects on the behaviour, physiology and survival of many marine species. However, there is a gap in our understanding of how noise impacts reef fishes under natural conditions without direct manipulation. To address this, we conducted field experiments to examine how two types of sound sources affect the behaviour of an endemic southwestern Atlantic reef fish, <em>Stegastes fuscus</em>. Both motorboat noise playback (0.2–1 kHz) and pure tone (0.4 kHz) influenced behavioural traits of the species. Specifically, individuals reduced their foraging rates when exposed to either sound and spent more time refuging during pure tone exposure. Despite these changes, fish did not exhibit increased agonistic interactions during any of the sound exposures. Our findings indicate that both motorboat playback and pure tone negatively affect damselfishes by increasing antipredator behaviour, seen through increasing refuge time and decreasing foraging rates, which could potentially impact their fitness and population dynamics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"223 ","pages":"Article 123130"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143894970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Estimating social network metrics from single-file movements in Barbary macaques, Macaca sylvanus","authors":"Derek Murphy ,&nbsp;Julia Fischer","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123146","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123146","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Traditional methods for quantifying animal social network structure, and especially global-structural measures such as community structure, require large amounts of high-resolution data, which can be time-consuming and labour-intensive to collect. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of using a recently proposed, less effort-intensive method for collecting social association data based on the observed order of individuals in single-file movements. We used this method to estimate the social network of a group of semi-free-ranging Barbary macaques, <em>Macaca sylvanus</em> and then applied the Louvain community detection algorithm to estimate the community structure within the group. We validated the results by comparing them to networks informed by data from more traditional sampling methods for social network analysis, namely scan sampling and focal observations. Using Mantel tests with Spearman correlations, we found statistically significant but weak positive associations between the community assignments and dyadic association indices derived from the single-file movement data and those from the scan and focal data. Our findings do not provide convincing evidence that association data obtained from only 20 observations of single-file movements can reliably be used to estimate the strength of dyadic relationships or the composition of discrete communities within the larger group. However, the results from the community detection algorithm converged to similar estimates for the modularity value and the number of communities present in the group, irrespective of the data collection method used. We suggest that data from observations of single-file movements may not be useful for estimating fine-grained social network structure but may offer researchers a ‘quick and dirty’ method for determining whether meaningful community structure exists within their study groups as part of a pilot study and an efficient method for wildlife managers and conservationists to monitor population-level disturbances to social structure.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"223 ","pages":"Article 123146"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143894971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Temperature affects conspecific and heterospecific mating rates in Drosophila","authors":"Jonathan A. Rader,&nbsp;Daniel R. Matute","doi":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123168","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123168","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Behavioural mating choices and mating success are important factors in the development of reproductive isolation during speciation. Environmental conditions, especially temperature, can affect these key traits. Environmental conditions can vary across, and frequently delimit, species’ geographical ranges. Pairing suboptimal conditions with relative rarity of conspecifics at range margins may set the stage for hybridization. Despite the importance of mating behaviours as a reproductive barrier, a general understanding of the interaction between behavioural choices and the environment is lacking, in part because systematic studies are rare. With this report, we begin to bridge that gap by providing evidence that temperature has a significant but inconsistent influence on mating choices and success and, thus, on reproductive isolation in <em>Drosophila</em>. We studied mating propensity and success at four different temperatures among 14 <em>Drosophila</em> species in no-choice conspecific mating trials and in heterospecific trials among two <em>Drosophila</em> species triads that are known to regularly hybridize in the wild. We found that mating frequency varied significantly across a 10 °C range (from 18 °C to 28 °C), both in 1:1 mating trials and in high-density en masse trials, but that the effect of temperature was highly species specific. We also found that mating frequency was consistently low and that temperature had a moderate effect on some heterospecific crosses. As conspecific mating propensity decreased outside of the optimal thermal range, while heterospecific matings remained constant, the proportion of heterospecific matings at suboptimal temperatures was relatively high. This result indicates that temperature can modulate behavioural choices that impose reproductive barriers and influence the rate of hybridization. More broadly, our results demonstrate that to truly understand how mating choice and reproductive isolation occur in nature, they need to be studied in an environmental context.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50788,"journal":{"name":"Animal Behaviour","volume":"223 ","pages":"Article 123168"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2025-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143894844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}