The North Island kākā (Nestor meridionalis septentrionalis), a threatened New Zealand native parrot, was successfully reintroduced to an urban sanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand. Conflict has recently begun to emerge with Wellington City residents due to tree damage caused by kākā sap foraging. Little is known about sap foraging behavior of kākā, and this study aimed to gain a greater underst...

Multiple mating by females characterizes most insect species, but is relatively uncommon in social insects. Females may mate with multiple mates because they experience the direct benefits of increased survival or fecundity, to acquire high quality mates, or to lower the risk of reduced fecundity by mating with incompatible males. We used the extensive natural variation in mating frequency in t...

Food webs, the networks of feeding links between species, are central to our understanding of ecosystem structure, stability, and function. One of the key aspects of food web structure is complexity, or connectance, the number of links expressed as a proportion of the total possible number of links. Connectance (complexity) is linked to the stability of webs and is a key parameter in recent mod...

As the smallest and one of the most recently evolved marine mammals, sea otters face physiological challenges rarely encountered by larger, more derived aquatic species. To examine the effect of these challenges on foraging costs and resultant daily energy budgets, we measured the energetics of resting, grooming, diving and foraging for adult, male sea otters. The energy expended for these diff...

The tiered aviary for laying hens includes a floor litter area to promote foraging and dust bathing. Data are needed on hens' use of different litter substrates and effectiveness of substrates in removing excess feather lipids to ensure a suitable litter area. Bovans White hens were housed in commercial-style aviaries with access to one of 3 litter substrates (wood shavings, straw, or plastic t...

Abstract Accelerometers capture rapid changes in animal motion, and the analysis of large quantities such data using machine learning algorithms enables inference broad behaviour categories as foraging, flying, resting over long periods time. We deployed GPS-GSM/GPRS trackers with tri-axial acceleration sensors on common woodpigeons ( Columba palumbus ) from Hesse, Germany (forest urban birds) ...

Optimal foraging theory aims to elucidate strategies that maximize resource intake. Although traditionally used to understand animal foraging behavior, recent evolutionary experiments with viruses offer a new twist on an old idea.

Some models that predict the scanning pattern to maximise the probability of predator detection by prey assume sequential randomness (i.e. lengths of inter-scan intervals are independent of each other and of the length of scan events). Sequential randomness would prevent stalking predators synchronising their attacks with long inter-scan intervals.Weanalysedthepresenceofsequential randomness in...

Organisms have finite resources, and therefore must make decisions on how to allocate these limited resources between self-care and reproduction. Studying resource allocation trade-offs and reproductive cost is prominent in avian systems because these activities are not mutually exclusive in species which exhibit contact incubation. In the Passeriformes, where over 60% of families exhibit femal...