Animal Ecology

Animal Ecology

Every animal is (1,2) closely linked with a number of other animals living round it, and these relations in an animal community are largely food relations. (3) Man himself is in the centre of such an animal community, as is shown by his relations to plague-carrying rats and (4) to malaria or the diseases of his domestic animals, e.g. liver-rot in sheep. (5) The dependence of man upon other anim...

Decision ecology: foraging and the ecology of animal decision making.

In this article, I review the approach taken by behavioral ecologists to the study of animal foraging behavior and explore connections with general analyses of decision making. I use the example of patch exploitation decisions in this article in order to develop several key points about the properties of naturally occurring foraging decisions. First, I argue that experimental preparations based...

Use of Chromatography in Animal Ecology

The analysis of wild collected feces is a fundamental ecological tool, applied in studies about population size, diet analysis and to identify the presence of a species in a certain area. Moreover, it is useful when it is necessary to monitor those species which are elusive, difficult to observe, threatened, nocturnal or sympatric, or exist in low densities. The identification can be done by ex...

Mass-Balance Models for Animal Isotopic Ecology

Analysis of natural stable isotope ratios has created a methodological upheaval in animal ecology. Because the distribution of stable isotopes in organisms follows reliable patterns, their analyses have become established useful methods for animal ecologists. However, because animal ecologists have adopted a phenomenological approach to the use of stable isotopes, the mechanisms that create iso...

Animal Population Ecology and Control Fundamentals