Recent advances in feline and canine reproductive studies demonstrate how methodically piecing this information together is beginning to reap rewards for wildlife conservation programs. Non-invasive endocrinology can be used to monitor female reproductive function, time con-specific introductions or AI, and diagnose pregnancy. Sperm morphology characteristics and cell membrane function may be g...

Few terms in wildlife ecology and conservation biology enjoy jargon status more than the word " habitat. " The ubiquity of the word in popular, scientific, and administrative literature suggests a universal definition, yet the diversity of contexts in which it is used clearly indicates little consensus. This conceptual imprecision has strong, but generally unacknowledged, implications for under...

The domestic cat's wild ancestors are obligate carnivores that consume prey containing only minimal amounts of carbohydrates. Evolutionary events adapted the cat's metabolism and physiology to this diet strictly composed of animal tissues and led to unique digestive and metabolic peculiarities of carbohydrate metabolism. The domestic cat still closely resembles its wild ancestor. Although the c...

Keywords: cooperation Crocuta crocuta group hunting intelligence primate social cognition spotted hyaena Numerous field researchers have described cooperative hunting in social carnivores, but experimental evidence of cooperative problem solving typically derives from laboratory studies of nonhuman primates. We present the first experimental evidence of cooperation in a social carnivore, the sp...

ahead of science in imagining the information that could be obtained from single hairs or feces. Indeed, from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) to the cult movie GATTACA (Columbia Pictures Corporation 1997), writers and producers foreshadowed the scientific value of noninvasive samples. In the 1990s, with the advance of both molecular genetics and endocrine biology, forensic scientists dev...

Despite its importance in harboring genes critical for spermatogenesis and male-specific functions, the Y chromosome has been largely excluded as a priority in recent mammalian genome sequencing projects. Only the human and chimpanzee Y chromosomes have been well characterized at the sequence level. This is primarily due to the presumed low overall gene content and highly repetitive nature of t...

I examined the effects of habitat fragmentation on the distribution and abundance of mammalian carnivores in coastal southern California and tested the prediction that responses to fragmentation varied with the body size of carnivore species. I conducted track surveys for nine native and two exotic carnivore species in 29 urban habitat fragments and 10 control sites. Fragment area and isolation...