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Abstract
Behavioural ecologists are continually challenged with the problem of how to observe species in their natural environments without inadvertently disturbing them. One solution that has become increasingly popular is the use of remote cameras to monitor animal habitat use and behaviour. In this chapter we review the use of remote cameras in wildlife ecology and discuss remote camera study design. Two case-studies are presented: one focusing on grizzly bear habitat use in Canada and the other on snow leopard presence in Kazakhstan. Both studies generated important data for conservation management.
Abstract
Behavioural ecologists are continually challenged with the problem of how to observe species in their natural environments without inadvertently disturbing them. One solution that has become increasingly popular is the use of remote cameras to monitor animal habitat use and behaviour. In this chapter we review the use of remote cameras in wildlife ecology and discuss remote camera study design. Two case-studies are presented: one focusing on grizzly bear habitat use in Canada and the other on snow leopard presence in Kazakhstan. Both studies generated important data for conservation management.
Cultural evolution is a powerful process shaping behavioural phenotypes of many species including our own. Killer whales are one of the species with relatively well-studied vocal culture. Pods have distinct dialects comprising a mix of unique and shared call types; calves adopt the call repertoire of their matriline through social learning. We review different aspects of killer whale acoustic communication to provide insights into the cultural transmission and gene-culture co-evolution processes that produce the extreme diversity of group and population repertoires. We argue that the cultural evolution of killer whale calls is not a random process driven by steady error accumulation alone: temporal change occurs at different speeds in different components of killer whale repertoires, and constraints in call structure and horizontal transmission often degrade the phylogenetic signal. We discuss the implications from bird song and human linguistic studies, and propose several hypotheses of killer whale dialect evolution.