Ethology最新文献

Animal responses to risky situations are shaped by both environmental (external) cues and internal states such as body condition. Recent meta-analyses indicate that individuals in better condition take fewer risks, consistent with the idea that they protect their assets. However, these results rely mostly on short-term, standard laboratory assessments of threat response. Consequently, it remains unclear whether variation in condition influences risk-taking consistently across different ecological contexts. Here, we address this by testing whether house mice from high- or standard-quality food environments, and mice of different weight (used as a proxy for condition), vary in their risk-taking behaviour across two scenarios. First, we quantified foraging behaviour in low- and high-risk areas in the absence of predation cues. We then introduced predator stimuli to assess how foraging changed under increased perceived threat. Overall, we aimed to determine whether the effect of risk on foraging depended on diet quality and body mass. Mice originating from the high-quality food environment reduced foraging in the high-risk area under predation cues significantly more than those from standard-quality environments. In contrast, heavier individuals, irrespective of food quality, foraged less and for shorter periods in the high-risk area. Last, when predation cues were introduced, these heavier mice increased their foraging effort in the high-risk area but did not spend more time there. These findings indicate condition-dependent responses to risk and support core predictions of the asset-protection hypothesis. Importantly, they highlight that different traits related to individual state or condition may shape different responses to ecological unpredictability, such as predation risk. This variation as a function of different variables related to state warrants further investigation.

Biodiversity and conservation are often the least noticed during armed conflicts. From October 1st, 2024, and again between June 13 and 24th, 2025, a brief but intense military conflict broke out between Israel and Iran. Iran primarily launched ballistic missile strikes, which Israel attempted to intercept using dedicated missiles. During both periods, we conducted a movement-monitoring experiment on Spalerosophis diadema snakes using accelerometer biologgers. In total, movements of four snakes were recorded during the conflict. We found that snakes exhibited immediate movement responses to missile attacks that produced loud explosion noises. Moreover, the strength of these movements increased with the intensity of the attacks; however, snakes showed little to no response to such noises after feeding. Here, we report for the first time the movement responses of snakes to missile attacks producing loud explosions. While the consequences of human armed conflict for wildlife may vary depending on the context, our findings emphasize that the role of wildlife as potential victims is often overlooked.

Wemer, N., V. N. Naude, V. C. van der Merwe, M. Smit, G. de Lange, and J. Komdeur. 2022. “Successful Predatory-Avoidance Behaviour to Lion Auditory Cues During Soft-Release From Captivity in Cheetah.” Ethology 128: 247–256. https://doi.org/10.1111/eth.13261.

In the originally published article, the link in the Data Availability Statement is incorrect. The correct link is https://doi.org/10.25375/uct.14839575.

We apologise for this error.

Individuals may maximise fitness by adopting alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) that are shaped by environmental conditions and reflect the individual's competitive ability. While variation in morphology or physiology in ARTs is well understood, the role of consistent behavioural variation is less clear. Yet, adopting certain ARTs can be driven by individual variation in personality traits and behavioural syndromes if individuals of certain behavioural types (e.g., shy, less aggressive) have lower competitive abilities, switching to tactics other than those used by competitive males. To investigate the relationship between ARTs and individual variation in behaviour, we focused on males of the spider Pisaura mirabilis, known for courting females with either a genuine tactic consisting of silk-wrapped nutritionally valuable (prey) or a cheating tactic using worthless (leftovers) gifts. Environmental and social conditions, such as prey availability and the intensity of sexual selection, are known to maintain flexible ARTs in this species, but the underlying behavioural types of males that are more likely to cheat remain unknown. We screened males for exploration, aggressiveness and body size—traits relevant for resource acquisition—and tested their likelihood of producing worthless gifts by offering them a prey carcass over repeated trials. We predicted behavioural traits to be repeatable, correlate in syndromes and be size-dependent, with larger, highly explorative-aggressive individuals, better at resource acquisition, to be less likely to produce worthless gifts. Personality traits were repeatable, especially exploration behaviour, but lacked an aggressive-exploration syndrome and size-dependency. The likelihood of taking a prey carcass was also repeatable, indicating between-male differences in response to worthless items, and was linked to higher male aggressiveness and larger size, suggesting a potentially higher capacity for exploiting scarce resources in these phenotypes. Our findings suggest that, despite not affecting gift production per se but only responses towards worthless prey items, size dependence and individual variation in aggressive behaviour may play a role in the initial acquisition of worthless items but are not decisive factors for ARTs.

Biases in animal behaviour research are inevitable consequences of our societal and cultural standpoint. To remove our biases, the first stage is to identify them. We call on individual researchers to adopt a more active approach to addressing bias within their research. We propose that biases exist within a matrix defined by the general acceptance of a bias's existence and the understanding of the impact this bias has on research outputs. Borrowing from a conceptual framework previously applied to the study of biodiversity, our matrix consists of four categories: “known knowns” are biases we are aware exist and are empirically tested; “known unknowns” are biases we know of but have limits to being mitigated against; “unknown knowns” are biases which we know exist but are overlooked; and “unknown unknowns” are biases we are unaware exist. Contextualising biases in this way, we believe, will lead to greater investment by individual researchers to locate and mitigate biases in their own research. To facilitate this process, we provide a set of self-reflective questions designed to help researchers critically evaluate the assumptions, limitations, and generalisability of their research. By acknowledging and addressing biases within this framework, we move toward a more robust and trustworthy scientific process.

Male courtship signals are generally a product of strong selection on their capacity to attract mates and convey signaller quality to achieve mating success. Given the costly nature of courtship signals, their expression may also be influenced by the quality of the courted female. However, such effects are rarely considered. I tested how male and female nutritional conditions affect male drumming intensity, female abdomen lifting behaviour and mating success in the jumping spider Saitis barbipes, known for its elaborate drumming displays. As expected from a condition-dependent signal, well-fed males drummed more intensely than hungry males and thereby increased their mating success. Yet, contrary to expectations, males often reduced drumming towards well-fed females. Well-fed females were observed to frequently lift their abdomens, which strongly reduced male drumming and mating success. Curiously, males that achieved mating despite female abdomen lifting did so with lower drumming intensity than in nonabdomen lifting trials. These results illustrate that condition-dependent behaviours in both sexes can interact in unexpected ways, shaping male investment and influencing courtship outcomes.