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A PRIMER OF
CONSERVATION
BEHAVIOR
Daniel T. Blumstein and Esteban Fernández-Juricic
Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers
Sunderland, Massachusetts 01375
© Sinauer Associates, Inc. This material cannot be copied, reproduced, manufactured
or disseminated in any form without express written permission from the publisher.
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Preface
1
xiii
What Is Conservation Behavior? 1
BOX 1.1 Some Important Definitions 2
Why Is Conservation Behavior A Unique Field?
2
I am too busy doing cutting-edge behavioral research to think about
conservation behavior 3
I am too busy conserving to think about conservation behavior 5
I am already practicing conservation behavior 6
Adaptive Management: The Key to Conservation Behavior
Examples of How Conservation Behavior Can Solve Wildlife
Management and Conservation Problems 8
Captive breeding 8
BOX 1.2 The United States Endangered Species Act 9
Translocation and reintroduction
Anthropogenic impacts 11
Urbanization 11
10
Questions Conservation Behavior Cannot Answer
Our Approach in This Primer
12
12
BOX 1.3 Tinbergen’s Four Questions 13
Further Reading
2
16
Why Do Behavioral Mechanisms Matter? 17
Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination
Sex Ratio Manipulation
Ethotoxicology
17
18
18
Mechanisms of Food Selection
19
Mechanisms of Predation Risk Assessment
Mechanisms and Models
22
24
BOX 2.1 Building an Individual-Based Model 27
Further Reading
29
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Table of Contents
3
The Evolution of Behavior and Comparative Studies 31
What Is a Comparative Study?
31
Meta-analysis 32
Methods to study trait coevolution in a correlative way
BOX 3.1
Calculating Phylogenetically Independent Contrast Values
Methods to reconstruct the evolution of a trait
BOX 3.2
Parsimonious Trait Reconstruction
Conservation Problems
Further Reading
4
33
35
36
37
39
41
Assessing Food, Habitat, and Mate Preferences 43
Price Elasticity of Demand
43
Other Methods to Study Preferences
46
BOX 4.1 Food Preference Index Used in a Field Test 50
Applications
50
Further Reading
5
53
Understanding Habitat Selection for Conservation and
Management 55
Habitat Quality and Abundance
56
BOX 5.1 Quantifying Human Disturbance in the Context of Habitat Selection 59
Density Dependence Links Behavior and Population Levels
of Habitat Selection 61
Perception of Habitat Cues in an Uncertain Environment
62
BOX 5.2 Using Isodar Theory to Establish Patterns of Density Dependence
between Adjacent Habitats
63
Cues animals perceive 64
Cues present in a patch 66
Habitat quality in fitness terms 67
Putting cues perceived, cues present, and habitat quality together
Animal Movement
69
Conservation Implications
Further Reading
67
74
76
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Understanding Foraging Behavior for Conservation
and Management 77
Costs of Foraging
77
Predation Costs of Foraging: A Tool to Monitor and Manipulate
Foraging Patch Suitability 80
Constraints in Gathering Foraging Information
82
BOX 6.1 Quantifying the Landscape of Fear 83
BOX 6.2 Allee Effects 88
Other Foraging Information Sources: Social Cues
Conclusions
91
Further Reading
7
88
92
Understanding Antipredator Behavior for Conservation
and Management 93
Encountering New Predators through Range Shifts
and Extinctions 93
How Populations Respond to the Loss of Predators
96
Having Some Predators May Improve Ability to Deal with Novel
Predators 96
BOX 7.1 A Caveat about the Relative Costs of Maintaining
No-Longer-Functional Behavior
98
How Do Predators Affect Their Prey?
101
How Do Prey Reduce Predation Risk? 101
How Do Prey Recognize Predators?
102
Tools to Quantify and Manage Antipredator Behavior
Studying microhabitat effects on behavior
Studying habitat selection 104
Studying group size effects 104
103
103
BOX 7.2 Pseudoreplication, Inference Space, and the Study of Animal
Behavior
105
Studying predator recognition 106
Training prey to respond to their predators
Conclusions
110
113
Further Reading
113
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Acoustic Communication and Conservation 115
A Brief Introduction to Habitat Acoustics
116
How Anthropogenic Changes May Change Animal Signals
117
Quantifying the Effect of the Habitat on Biological Sounds
119
Recording and digitizing sounds for analysis 119
Quantifying the structure of sounds 121
Determining whether species can modify their vocalizations to avoid
acoustic masking 122
BOX 8.1 A Set of Acoustic Measurements Used to Quantify the Structure
of Marmot Alarm Calls
Quantifying hearing abilities
Applications
123
124
126
Capitalizing on Species-Specific and Individually Specific
Vocalizations 126
Individually distinctive vocalizations in social species
127
How to Quantify Species-Specific and Individually Specific
Vocalizations 129
Describing species specificity or individuality
Assigning recorded calls to individuals 130
129
Application: Using Individuality to Estimate Population Size
of Endangered/Threatened Species 131
Further Reading
9
132
Individuality and Personalities 133
What Is Personality?
133
Quantifying Personality Types
134
Observations of experimentally induced behavior
134
BOX 9.1 Principal Components Analysis 135
Keeper surveys 138
Observations of natural behaviors 139
Determining consistency and repeatability
139
Should We View Personality Dimensions as Independent,
or Should We Look for Syndromes? 141
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Fitness Consequences of Personality
Applications
143
Further Reading
10
142
144
Demographic Consequences of Sociality 145
What Is Sociality?
145
Reproductive Skew
147
Reproductive Conflict
148
Social Behavior Reduces Mortality
Conspecific Attraction
149
151
Dispersal and Movement between Groups
Phenotypic Plasticity in Social Structure
Habitat 153
Social structure
Applications
153
154
156
Further Reading
11
153
156
Demographic Consequences of Sexual Selection and
Reproductive Behavior 159
What Is Sexual Selection?
159
How Do Animals Choose Their Mates?
161
BOX 11.1 Effective Population Size, Ne 165
Genetic Consequences of Mating Systems
167
Mate Choice Copying: A Particularly Important Mate Choice
Mechanism for Conservation Behavior 168
Anthropogenic Changes Interfere with Reproduction
How Mating Systems May Influence Demography
169
170
Sexually Selected Infanticide by Males: An Evolved Strategy
to Increase Male Reproductive Success 171
Applications
173
Further Reading
173
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Using Behavior to Set Aside Areas for Wildlife
Protection 175
The Problem
175
A Theoretical Framework
Applications
176
179
Methods Used to Estimate Patch Buffer Areas
181
What Is the Link between Landscape and Patch Buffer Areas?
Buffer Areas Upside Down: Repelling Wildlife
Further Reading
186
188
Afterword 189
Captive Breeding
190
Translocations and Reintroductions
190
Novel Tools Used to Survey Endangered and Threatened
Species 191
Urbanization
191
Attracting Animals
191
Repelling Animals 192
Reducing Mortality
192
The Link between Response and Fitness
193
Developing Predictive Models of Disturbance
Habituation and Learning
193
193
Other Effects of Anthropogenic Activities on Behavior
Climate Change and Invasive Species
Final Thoughts
194
194
194
Credits 197
Literature Cited 199
Index 217
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or disseminated in any form without express written permission from the publisher.
184