ORCID Profile
0000-0003-2547-5056
Current Organisations
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
,
University of Adelaide
,
Flinders University
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Publisher: Canadian Science Publishing
Date: 12-2018
Abstract: Movement is often used to indicate host vigour, as it has various ecological and evolutionary implications, and has been shown to be affected by parasites. We investigate the relationship between tick load and movement in the Australian Sleepy Lizard (Tiliqua rugosa (Gray, 1825)) using high resolution GPS tracking. This allowed us to track in iduals across the entire activity season. We hypothesized that tick load negatively affects host movement (mean distance moved per day). We used a multivariate statistical model informed by the ecology and biology of the host and parasite, their host–parasite relationship, and known host movement patterns. This allowed us to quantify the effects of ticks on lizard movement above and beyond effects of other factors such as time in the activity season, lizard body condition, and stress. We did not find any support for our hypothesis. Instead, our results provide evidence that lizard movement is strongly driven by internal state (sex and body condition independent of tick load) and by external factors (environmental conditions). We suggest that the Sleepy Lizard has largely adapted to natural levels of tick infection in this system. Our results conform to host–parasite arms race theory, which predicts varying impacts of parasites on hosts in natural systems.
Publisher: Society for Neuroscience
Date: 02-06-2017
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 26-02-2023
DOI: 10.1101/2023.02.26.530064
Abstract: Extreme weather conditions, like heatwave events, are becoming more frequent with climate change. Animals often modify their behaviour to cope with environmental changes and extremes. If the environmental conditions influence the trade-off between an in idual's social propensity and optimal thermoregulation through shade use for instance, then ergent social decisions may be made. Hence, such behavioural changes have the potential to influence an in idual's position in its social network, and the social network structure as a whole. We investigated whether heat stress conditions (quantified through the Temperature Humidity Index) and the resulting use of shaded areas, influences the social network structure and an in idual's position in it. We studied this in free-ranging sheep in the arid zone of Australia, GPS-tracking all 48 in iduals in a flock. When heat stress conditions worsened, in iduals spent more time in the shade and the network was more connected (higher density) and less modular. Furthermore, an in idual's social connectivity scaled with its shade use behaviour. Interestingly, in iduals with intermediate shade use were most strongly connected (degree, strength, betweeness), indicating their importance for the connectivity of the social network during heat stress conditions. Our study shows that heat stress conditions, which are predicted to increase in severity and frequency due to climate change, influence the resource use within the ecological environment. This has flow on effects for the animal's social environment through the changed social network structure.
Publisher: Elsevier
Date: 2017
Publisher: Brill
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1163/1568539X-00003507
Abstract: Contact network models have enabled significant advances in understanding the influence of behaviour on parasite and pathogen transmission. They are an important tool that links variation in in idual behaviour, to epidemiological consequences at the population level. Here, in our introduction to this special issue, we highlight the importance of applying network approaches to disease ecological and epidemiological questions, and how this has provided a much deeper understanding of these research areas. Recent advances in tracking host behaviour (bio-logging: e.g., GPS tracking, barcoding) and tracking pathogens (high-resolution sequencing), as well as methodological advances (multi-layer networks, computational techniques) started producing exciting new insights into disease transmission through contact networks. We discuss some of the exciting directions that the field is taking, some of the challenges, and importantly the opportunities that lie ahead. For instance, we suggest to integrate multiple transmission pathways, multiple pathogens, and in some systems, multiple host species, into the next generation of network models. Corresponding opportunities exist in utilising molecular techniques, such as high-resolution sequencing, to establish causality in network connectivity and disease outcomes. Such novel developments and the continued integration of network tools offers a more complete understanding of pathogen transmission processes, their underlying mechanisms and their evolutionary consequences.
Publisher: MDPI AG
Date: 13-10-2021
DOI: 10.3390/S21206816
Abstract: Monitoring activity patterns of animals offers the opportunity to assess in idual health and welfare in support of precision livestock farming. The purpose of this study was to use a triaxial accelerometer sensor to determine the diel activity of sheep on pasture. Six Perendale ewe lambs, each fitted with a neck collar mounting a triaxial accelerometer, were filmed during targeted periods of sheep activities: grazing, lying, walking, and standing. The corresponding acceleration data were fitted using a Random Forest algorithm to classify activity (=classifier). This classifier was then applied to accelerometer data from an additional 10 ewe lambs to determine their activity budgets. Each of these was fitted with a neck collar mounting an accelerometer as well as two additional accelerometers placed on a head halter and a body harness over the shoulders of the animal. These were monitored continuously for three days. A classification accuracy of 89.6% was achieved for the grazing, walking and resting activities (i.e., a new class combining lying and standing activity). Triaxial accelerometer data showed that sheep spent 64% (95% CI 55% to 74%) of daylight time grazing, with grazing at night reduced to 14% (95% CI 8% to 20%). Similar activity budgets were achieved from the halter mounted sensors, but not those on a body harness. These results are consistent with previous studies directly observing daily activity of pasture-based sheep and can be applied in a variety of contexts to investigate animal health and welfare metrics e.g., to better understand the impact that young sheep can suffer when carrying even modest burdens of parasitic nematodes.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-01-2021
DOI: 10.1186/S40317-020-00225-9
Abstract: The automated collection of phenotypic measurements in livestock is becoming increasingly important to both researchers and farmers. The capacity to non-invasively collect real-time data, provides the opportunity to better understand livestock behaviour and physiology and improve animal management decisions. Current climate models project that temperatures will increase across the world, influencing both local and global agriculture. Sheep that are exposed to high ambient temperatures experience heat stress and their physiology, reproductive function and performance are compromised. Body temperature is a reliable measure of heat stress and hence a good indicator of an animals’ health and well-being. Non-invasive temperature-sensing technologies have made substantial progress over the past decade. Here, we review the different technologies available and assess their suitability for inferring ovine heat stress. Specifically, the use of indwelling probes, intra-ruminal bolus insertion, thermal imaging and implantable devices are investigated. We further evaluate the capacity of behavioural tracking technology, such as global positioning systems, to identify heat stressed in iduals based on the exhibition of specific behaviours. Although there are challenges associated with using real-time thermosensing data to make informed management decisions, these technologies provide new opportunities to manage heat stress in sheep. In order to obtain accurate real-time information of in idual animals and facilitate prompt intervention, data collection should be entirely automated. Additionally, for accurate interpretation on-farm, the development of software which can effectively collect, manage and integrate data for sheep producer’s needs to be prioritised. Lastly, understanding known physiological thresholds will allow farmers to determine in idual heat stress risk and facilitate early intervention to reduce the effects in both current and subsequent generations.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-04-2015
DOI: 10.1111/ETH.12390
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 03-04-2017
Abstract: Modular organization in animal social networks is hypothesized to alleviate the cost of disease burden in group-living species. However, our analysis of empirical social networks of 43 animal species along with theoretical networks demonstrates that infectious disease spread is largely unaffected by the underlying modular organization, except when social networks are extremely sub ided. We show that high fragmentation and high subgroup cohesion, which are both associated with high modularity in social networks, induce structural delay and trapping of infections that spread through these networks, reducing disease burden. We validate our results using real animal social networks and recommend the use of appropriate null network models when data-limited estimates of epidemic consequences are necessary.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-04-2016
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2010
Publisher: No publisher found
Date: 2018
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-05-2010
Publisher: CSIRO Publishing
Date: 21-11-2022
DOI: 10.1071/ZO22039
Abstract: Parasite load can vary with seasonality, but this is rarely quantified. The garden skink (L ropholis guichenoti) is host to multiple species of endoparasite. To measure seasonal effects of parasite transmission we established three captive groups of wild-caught in iduals in which 2 of 16 in iduals (12.5%) were initially infected with nematodes. We collected three faecal s les from each lizard, a s le at the beginning and at the end of the non-activity season and at the end of the following activity season. We measured parasite load (ascarid group) by counting parasite eggs per gram of faeces using a microscope. We found that parasite load was significantly higher in the activity season than in the non-activity season. The prevalence of parasites increased from 15.9% in the non-activity season to 72.5% in the activity season. The activity season is characterised by greater host activity and warmer ambient temperatures, which promote parasite egg survival in the environment as well as egg development. Taken together, this facilitates parasite transmission and could ultimately explain the higher parasite load during the activity season.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 12-02-2013
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 18-02-2022
DOI: 10.1186/S40317-022-00278-Y
Abstract: Remote-sensing technology facilitates longitudinal collection of body temperature during periods of hot or cold environmental stress without human interference, producing high-frequency measurements whilst reducing labour and stress to the animal. A pilot study was conducted to validate an improved, minimally invasive method for the continual measurement of vaginal temperature (VT) in female sheep. A silicon mould of a modified controlled internal drug release (CIDR) device (Zoetis Animal Health, Parsippany), was manufactured to securely house a temperature logger (Micro-T 16-bit Star Oddi, Iceland) and allow direct contact at the collection site. These temperature-sensing CIDR devices were validated against manual rectal temperature (RT) measurements collected from 15 mature, non-pregnant, non-lactating Merino ewes. Rectal temperature was measured from each in idual, six times per day in 2-h intervals for 14 consecutive days. The simultaneous measures of VT and RT did not differ significantly within each ewe ( P 0.05) and demonstrated a moderate linear relationship ( R 2 = 0.62, P 0.05). The mean (± SEM) difference between RT and VT was small (0.010 ± 0.004 °C), with a 95% confidence interval of − 0.26 to 0.29 °C. Additionally, the coefficient of variation was lower on average for VT (0.49%) compared to RT (0.59%). Differences among paired readings were likely due to interval variation as well as penetration depth, air influx and faecal temperature when collecting RT. The initial silicone manufacturing costs were high (2200 AUD), with each unit costing 1.25 (AUD) thereafter however, the temperature-sensing CIDR device was an effective and efficient research tool for the remote monitoring of body temperature. While further validation of these devices within extensive grazing environments is warranted, the collection and analysis of longitudinal physiological data from ewes has the potential to improve a variety of management aspects related to extensively grazed ewes maintained and joined in harsh conditions.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-2019
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 07-08-2023
DOI: 10.1101/2023.08.05.552097
Abstract: Knowledge about the environment is fundamentally important to move, find resources and forage efficiently. This information can either be acquired through in idual exploration (personal information) or from other group members (social information). We experimentally assessed the use of social information and its influence on foraging efficiency in sheep, Ovis aries . Naïve in iduals paired with an informed partner that knew the food patch location, found the patch significantly faster compared to naïve in iduals paired with another naïve in idual. Similarly, they spent a significantly lower proportion of time exploring areas away from the food patch. We further found that the previous outcome of using social information (success = access to feed vs failure = no access to feed) had no impact and sheep continued to use social information in subsequent foraging trials and foraged similarly efficient. Our results suggest, naïve sheep that are unfamiliar with resource locations, forage more efficiently when informed in iduals are present compared to when all in iduals are naïve. If informed in iduals play a similar role in larger groups, new management practices could be developed to improve foraging efficiency when sheep are moved to new paddocks or in paddocks with heterogenous and dynamic resource distribution.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 20-12-2016
DOI: 10.1111/ELE.12708
Abstract: Recent studies have established the ecological and evolutionary importance of animal personalities. In idual differences in movement and space-use, fundamental to many personality traits (e.g. activity, boldness and exploratory behaviour) have been documented across many species and contexts, for instance personality-dependent dispersal syndromes. Yet, insights from the concurrently developing movement ecology paradigm are rarely considered and recent evidence for other personality-dependent movements and space-use lack a general unifying framework. We propose a conceptual framework for personality-dependent spatial ecology. We link expectations derived from the movement ecology paradigm with behavioural reaction-norms to offer specific predictions on the interactions between environmental factors, such as resource distribution or landscape structure, and intrinsic behavioural variation. We consider how environmental heterogeneity and in idual consistency in movements that carry-over across spatial scales can lead to personality-dependent: (1) foraging search performance (2) habitat preference (3) home range utilization patterns (4) social network structure and (5) emergence of assortative population structure with spatial clusters of personalities. We support our conceptual model with spatially explicit simulations of behavioural variation in space-use, demonstrating the emergence of complex population-level patterns from differences in simple in idual-level behaviours. Consideration of consistent in idual variation in space-use will facilitate mechanistic understanding of processes that drive social, spatial, ecological and evolutionary dynamics in heterogeneous environments.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 21-05-2020
DOI: 10.1111/AEC.12899
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 03-11-2010
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 08-2023
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.231083
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 20-12-2021
DOI: 10.1371/JOURNAL.PCBI.1009604
Abstract: The spread of pathogens fundamentally depends on the underlying contacts between in iduals. Modeling the dynamics of infectious disease spread through contact networks, however, can be challenging due to limited knowledge of how an infectious disease spreads and its transmission rate. We developed a novel statistical tool, INoDS (Identifying contact Networks of infectious Disease Spread) that estimates the transmission rate of an infectious disease outbreak, establishes epidemiological relevance of a contact network in explaining the observed pattern of infectious disease spread and enables model comparison between different contact network hypotheses. We show that our tool is robust to incomplete data and can be easily applied to datasets where infection timings of in iduals are unknown. We tested the reliability of INoDS using simulation experiments of disease spread on a synthetic contact network and find that it is robust to incomplete data and is reliable under different settings of network dynamics and disease contagiousness compared with previous approaches. We demonstrate the applicability of our method in two host-pathogen systems: Crithidia bombi in bumblebee colonies and Salmonella in wild Australian sleepy lizard populations. INoDS thus provides a novel and reliable statistical tool for identifying transmission pathways of infectious disease spread. In addition, application of INoDS extends to understanding the spread of novel or emerging infectious disease, an alternative approach to laboratory transmission experiments, and overcoming common data-collection constraints.
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 22-11-2015
Abstract: Understanding space use remains a major challenge for animal ecology, with implications for species interactions, disease spread, and conservation. Behavioural type (BT) may shape the space use of in iduals within animal populations. Bolder or more aggressive in iduals tend to be more exploratory and disperse further. Yet, to date we have limited knowledge on how space use other than dispersal depends on BT. To address this question we studied BT-dependent space-use patterns of sleepy lizards ( Tiliqua rugosa ) in southern Australia. We combined high-resolution global positioning system (GPS) tracking of 72 free-ranging lizards with repeated behavioural assays, and with a survey of the spatial distributions of their food and refuge resources. Bayesian generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) showed that lizards responded to the spatial distribution of resources at the neighbourhood scale and to the intensity of space use by other conspecifics (showing apparent conspecific avoidance). BT (especially aggressiveness) affected space use by lizards and their response to ecological and social factors, in a seasonally dependent manner. Many of these effects and interactions were stronger later in the season when food became scarce and environmental conditions got tougher. For ex le, refuge and food availability became more important later in the season and unaggressive lizards were more responsive to these predictors. These findings highlight a commonly overlooked source of heterogeneity in animal space use and improve our mechanistic understanding of processes leading to behaviourally driven disease dynamics and social structure.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 25-04-2023
DOI: 10.1111/ETH.13379
Abstract: Wild animals are often concurrently infected by multiple parasites, which are assumed to negatively affect their host by exploiting the host's resources. The cumulative effect of parasite infections is often not studied. Despite this assumption, many hosts do not suffer significant costs from parasitism in the wild. Hosts can adapt to parasitic infections by mounting physiological and behavioural defences. A commonly used behavioural defence by ectotherms is to frequently visit warm environments to increase body temperature (i.e., behavioural fever) and thereby mount an immune response to parasites. Using the Australian common garden skink ( L ropholis guichenoti ), we investigated the cumulative effect of endo‐ and ectoparasites on host performance. First, we investigated whether endo‐ and ectoparasites were associated with whole‐organism performance in the lizards. Second, we explored whether host in iduals responded to their parasite infection through thermoregulatory behaviour. We found no significant relationship between parasitism and body condition. However, the infection with ectoparasitic mites was significantly related to reduced sprint speed, while the nematode infection had no significant relationship with any of our three performance measures (sprint speed, endurance and foraging efficiency). We showed no evidence of behavioural fever and infected lizards did not differ in their body temperature from uninfected lizards. Our findings suggest that short‐lived lizards may simply endure parasitic infections. The study provides an important ex le of how multiple infections with endo‐ and ectoparasites affect their host. It adds to the growing evidence for a negligible effect of parasites on host whole‐organism performance.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2008
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 07-2023
DOI: 10.1098/RSOS.230402
Abstract: Fission–fusion events, i.e. changes to the size and composition of animal social groups, are a mechanism to adjust the social environment in response to short-term changes in the cost–benefit ratio of group living. Furthermore, the time and location of fission–fusion events provide insight into the underlying drivers of these dynamics. Here, we describe a method for identifying group membership over time and for extracting fission–fusion events from animal tracking data. We applied this method to high-resolution GPS data of free-ranging sheep ( Ovis aries ). Group size was highest during times when sheep typically rest (midday and at night), and when anti-predator benefits of grouping are high while costs of competition are low. Consistent with this, fission and fusion frequencies were highest during early morning and late evening, suggesting that social restructuring occurs during periods of high activity. However, fission and fusion events were not more frequent near food patches and water resources when adjusted for overall space use. This suggests a limited role of resource competition. Our results elucidate the dynamics of grouping in response to social and ecological drivers, and we provide a tool for investigating these dynamics in other species.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-04-2020
DOI: 10.1111/OIK.06670
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2020
DOI: 10.1016/J.TREE.2019.10.001
Abstract: Across animal societies, in iduals invest time and energy in social interactions. The social landscape that emerges from these interactions can then generate barriers that limit the ability of in iduals to disperse to, and reproduce in, groups or populations. Therefore, social barriers can contribute to the difference between the physical capacity for movement through the habitat and subsequent gene flow. We call this contributing effect 'social resistance'. We propose that social resistance can act as an agent of selection on key life-history strategies and promote the evolution of social strategies that facilitate effective dispersal. By linking landscape genetics and social behaviour, the social resistance hypothesis generates predictions integrating dispersal, connectivity, and life-history evolution.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 15-02-2021
DOI: 10.1186/S40104-020-00537-Z
Abstract: Heat stress significantly impairs reproduction of sheep, and under current climatic conditions is a significant risk to the efficiency of the meat and wool production, with the impact increasing as global temperatures rise. Evidence from field studies and studies conducted using environmental chambers demonstrate the effects of hot temperatures (≥ 32 °C) on components of ewe fertility (oestrus, fertilisation, embryo survival and lambing) are most destructive when experienced from 5 d before until 5 d after oestrus. Temperature controlled studies also demonstrate that ram fertility, as measured by rates of fertilisation and embryo survival, is reduced when mating occurs during the period 14 to 50 d post-heating. However, the contribution of the ram to heat induced reductions in flock fertility is difficult to determine accurately. Based primarily on temperature controlled studies, it is clear that sustained exposure to high temperatures (≥ 32 °C) during pregnancy reduces lamb birthweight and will, therefore, decrease lamb survival under field conditions. It is concluded that both ewe and ram reproduction is affected by relatively modest levels of heat stress (≥ 32 °C) and this is a concern given that a significant proportion of the global sheep population experiences heat stress of this magnitude around mating and during pregnancy. Despite this, strategies to limit the impacts of the climate on the homeothermy, behaviour, resource use and reproduction of extensively grazed sheep are limited, and there is an urgency to improve knowledge and to develop husbandry practices to limit these impacts.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 22-01-2016
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 04-10-2021
DOI: 10.1093/ORNITHOLOGY/UKAB061
Abstract: Dickcissel (Spiza americana) males occupying territories in cropland sites produced songs that were less similar on average to other Dickcissel songs in their neighborhood than did Dickcissels living in grasslands, where conformity to the local vocal culture was higher. Further, Dickcissel vocal culture changed more quickly over time in cropland sites relative to grassland sites. These differences may have resulted from the lower site fidelity we observed in Dickcissel males in cropland sites relative to grassland sites. We expected this link with site fidelity because we hypothesized that conformity to local culture in Oscine songbirds and the persistence of culture over time and space are promoted by habitats that facilitate stable populations. In contrast, sites in which habitat features cause rapid population turnover provide more territory vacancies and so more opportunities for colonization. Colonization should drive cultural change, either through adult colonists importing foreign cultural variants or young colonists making errors as they learn the local song. This potential link between population turnover and cultural stability may apply to animal cultures more broadly and so may be a fruitful area for further research. Besides the link between site fidelity and cultural change over time, we also investigated the possibility that habitats with different levels of site fidelity might show differences in the spatial scale of song similarity. However, we found no evidence of such a difference. Finally, although our conclusions regarding conformity and change in vocal culture were based on many recorded songs, automated assessments of song similarity imprecisely estimated the overall degree of song similarity. Thus, we may have underestimated the strength of the effects of time and distance on song similarity.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2016
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-2021
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 14-08-2023
DOI: 10.1101/2023.08.10.552758
Abstract: Animals constantly experience periods of uncertainty due to seasonal changes in food distribution. The changing climate results in more variable weather patterns, which in turn alter environmental conditions, and can result in resource distribution being less predictable in space and time. How animals respond to these uncertain conditions, in particular the changing distribution of food resources, remains largely unclear and is an important question in the field of movement and animal ecology. Here we used an experimental approach to study how Merino sheep ( Ovis aries ) responded to different levels of environmental uncertainty in a drought-impacted region of the Australian arid zone. Sheep were unfamiliar with the experimental resource distribution at the start and progressively decreased their uncertainty (i.e., increased their environmental knowledge) when discovering an increasing number of foraging patches. We tracked 50 sheep with GPS collars (1 location every 15 sec) and deduced their movement and space use behaviour. When environmental uncertainty decreased, in iduals moved more directionally (greater step length, smaller turn angles) and moved greater distances per day. They also had larger daily home ranges but rested in similar areas on consecutive nights (similar displacement, with the exception when five patches were discovered). Our study demonstrates how an arid zone, free-ranging ungulate adjusts its movement and space use behaviour as it gains environmental information in order to forage efficiently during periods of uncertainty. Our study provides important insights into how animals cope with variable environments and different levels of uncertainty.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2013
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 22-03-2016
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.1844
Abstract: In idual movement influences the spatial and social structuring of a population. Animals regularly use the same paths to move efficiently to familiar places, or to patrol and mark home ranges. We found that Australian sleepy lizards ( Tiliqua rugosa ), a monogamous species with stable pair-bonds, repeatedly used the same paths within their home ranges and investigated whether path re-use functions as a scent-marking behaviour, or whether it is influenced by site familiarity. Lizards can leave scent trails on the substrate when moving through the environment and have a well-developed vomeronasal system to detect and respond to those scents. Path re-use would allow sleepy lizards to concentrate scent marks along these well-used trails, advertising their presence. Hypotheses of mate attraction and mating competition predict that sleepy lizard males, which experience greater intra-sexual competition, mark more strongly. Consistent with those hypotheses, males re-used their paths more than females, and lizards that showed pairing behaviour with in iduals of the opposite sex re-used paths more than unpaired lizards, particularly among females. Hinterland marking is most economic when home ranges are large and mobility is low, as is the case in the sleepy lizard. Consistent with this strategy, re-used paths were predominantly located in the inner 50% home range areas. Together, our detailed movement analyses suggest that path re-use is a scent marking behaviour in the sleepy lizard. We also investigated but found less support for alternative explanations of path re-use behaviour, such as site familiarity and spatial knowledge. Lizards established the same number of paths, and used them as often, whether they had occupied their home ranges for one or for more years. We discuss our findings in relation to maintenance of the monogamous mating system of this species, and the spatial and social structuring of the population.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 02-2018
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 20-02-2020
Abstract: Direct pathogen and parasite transmission is fundamentally driven by a population’s contact network structure and its demographic composition and is further modulated by pathogen life-history traits. Importantly, populations are most often concurrently exposed to a suite of pathogens, which is rarely investigated, because contact networks are typically inferred from spatial proximity only. Here, we use 5 years of detailed observations of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) that distinguish between four different types of social contact. We investigate how demography (sex and age) affects these different social behaviors. Three of the four social behaviors can be used as a proxy for understanding key routes of direct pathogen transmission (sexual contact, skin contact, and aerosol contact of respiratory vapor above the water surface). We quantify the demography-dependent network connectedness, representing the risk of exposure associated with the three pathogen transmission routes, and quantify coexposure risks and relate them to in idual sociability. Our results suggest demography-driven disease risk in bottlenose dolphins, with males at greater risk than females, and transmission route-dependent implications for different age classes. We hypothesize that male alliance formation and the ergent reproductive strategies in males and females drive the demography-dependent connectedness and, hence, exposure risk to pathogens. Our study provides evidence for the risk of coexposure to pathogens transmitted along different transmission routes and that they relate to in idual sociability. Hence, our results highlight the importance of a multibehavioral approach for a more complete understanding of the overall pathogen transmission risk in animal populations, as well as the cumulative costs of sociality.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2021
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2020
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 07-03-2018
No related grants have been discovered for Stephan T. Leu.