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Estimates of life history parameters such as age at maturity, maximum body size and rates of growth and mortality play a crucial role in understanding and managing animal populations, but in the case of many species they’re lacking or poorly measured. Fortunately however, compilations of existing estimates now exist, and these databases open up opportunities […]
July 5, 2018
Comments Off on Embryos learn about future predators
Because anti-predator strategies are highly adaptive, many prey species have evolved the ability to assess future predation risk and respond accordingly. It’s been discovered that this capacity extends to embryos, which can use environmental cues, such as odours from predators and injured fellow prey, to learn about predators that will pose a threat for them […]
March 26, 2018
Comments Off on Why are there so many crocodiles in tropical waterholes?
Transfers of organic material from one aquatic environment to another (for example, through flood pulses or animal migrations) allow productive donor ecosystems to subsidise less productive habitats. However, there are big variations in the extent to which different animal species depend on production subsidies. To explore such differences, Australian researchers collected a wide array of […]
March 26, 2018
Comments Off on Freshwater fish surveys: direct observation works well
Although surveys of freshwater fish populations often rely on electrofishing, it’s difficult to use this technique in some habitats. An alternative sampling method is direct observation by snorkelling, an approach often applied in marine environments. While comparisons of the sampling efficiency of electrofishing and snorkelling have been carried out, most of them have been based […]
March 25, 2018
Comments Off on Guppies know their way around
Rats, mice and other rodents can quickly learn to solve complex spatial problems such as mazes consisting of sequences of left-right turns. Although the spatial abilities of rodents may be the result of their burrow-dwelling existence, it’s also possible that such abilities are widely shared by other vertebrates. Fish are known to have well-developed spatial […]
March 25, 2018
Comments Off on A mature approach to growth data
The age at which an animal matures is a key life history trait with implications for ecology, evolution and population dynamics, but data on maturation can be costly to collect. However, in many animals growth occurs in two phases, with a change-point at maturity, which means that it’s sometimes possible to estimate the maturation age […]
December 21, 2017
Comments Off on Benefits and costs of habitat complexity
The fact that biodiversity tends to be higher in structurally complex habitats suggests that, on balance, the fitness-related advantages of habitat complexity outweigh the disadvantages. Possible advantages include a greater supply of locations where animals can hide from predators and conserve their energy, and higher abundances of potential prey. Also, in complex habitats less energy […]
July 5, 2018
Comments Off on Fish life histories: filling in the gaps