Conservation Behavior: From implications to applications

2007 ABS Symposium

 Conservation Behavior: From Implications to Applications

1. From behavioural implications to conservation applications

Colleen Cassady St. Clair, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E9, cstclair@ualberta.ca

Conservation Behavior: From implications to applications

Conservation Behavior is a burgeoning field at the interface between Conservation Biology and Animal Behavior.  To date, dozens of papers and several books have addressed this new field, but many of these contributions emphasize the potential for knowledge of animal behaviour to contribute to conservation policy or practice.  Some behaviorists have suggested that the actual contribution of behaviour to conservation is limited and others see conservation biology as unsuitable as a vehicle for making general theoretical contributions to animal behavior.  I will outline these limitations, both real and perceived, as an introduction to a symposium on Conservation Behaviour.  Subsequent symposium participants will challenge these reservations in two ways.  First, they will identify several domains, ranging from captive breeding to wildlife management, where behavioural information has played pivotal roles in conservation action.  Second, they will explore cases in which problems faced by conservation biologists have challenged behavioural theory to suggest new avenues of basic research.  To conclude the symposium, I will synthesize this information, compare it to the earlier potential, and suggest some profitable lines of future research.  A discussion period will give other symposium participants and members of the audience opportunities for similar synthesis, critique, and prediction.

Ron Swaisgood (Associate Director, Conservation and Research for Endangered Species, Zoological Society of San Diego; rswaisgood@sandiegozoo.org)

Manipulating social behavior for small population management

For more than a decade conservation behaviorists have suggested that understanding social behavior can make important contributions to conservation management, but the empirical application has lagged behind. Both the zoo and field conservation communities are making increasing use of knowledge of social behavior to manage conservation programs. As shrinking wild populations require more intensive management, approaches developed in conservation breeding programs will become increasingly relevant in situ. Here I will review some aspects of social behavior that can and have been manipulated for conservation purposes, in many cases drawing from my own work on giant pandas, rhinoceros, and other species. Finding the right combination and density of individuals to get animals breeding is a prerequisite for population maintenance. In the highly altered environment in which small populations typically reside, communication processes may be compromised to the detriment of breeding activity. Reproductive management in small populations is not just about offspring production, however, and must also consider the maintenance of genetic diversity. Mating strategies that lead to reproductive skew can have profound effects on effective population size. Reintroductions and translocations involve social disruption that can be addressed with manipulation of the post-release social environment. Experimental research to manipulate these behavioral mechanisms has been slow in coming, but recent studies have shown that some conservation problems can be overcome using this approach.

John Eadie (Professor, UC Davis; jmeadie@ucdavis.edu)

Behavioural ecology of harvested populations

While many in the conservation community have embraced behavioral ecology as being of potential value to guide conservation policy or practice, there has been rather little engagement of these ideas by those concerned with the management of harvested species. This is somewhat surprising given that the harvest management is concerned principally with the numerical and behavioural responses of wildlife to the risk of predation (i.e., hunting). Behavioral ecology would, therefore, seem to have much insight to offer.  Conversely, harvest policies may, in turn, impose long-term selection pressures, resulting in concomitant shifts in the behavioural ecology and life-history strategies of species under harvest pressure – behaviour affects harvest, harvest affects behaviour. These linkages have been poorly explored. In this talk, we will: (1) examine the ways in which application of behavioural ecological concepts offers pragmatic tools for the management and conservation of harvested wildlife, and (2) evaluate the potential impacts of harvest on the life histories and behavioural ecology of harvested species. We will focus particular attention on cases where behavioural ecology has provided novel or essential insight with direct utility to the management community. Too many efforts have considered only the potential value of applying behavioural principles to conservation concerns – without a more direct demonstration of on-the-ground utility, managers charged with conserving wild populations and their habitats are not likely to employ the practices we preach.

Bruce A. Schulte (Associate Professor, Department of Biology, Georgia Southern University; bschulte@georgiasouthern.edu)

Reducing human-elephant conflict through an understanding of elephant behavior

Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) is a major problem in range states of Asian and African elephants.  Post-puberty male elephants are usually the major threat.  Traditional methods to thwart elephant intrusion into fields of crops are dangerous and often ineffective.  The translocation of problem elephants offers only temporary relief.  Killing such animals is not a viable long-term solution, is not ethically appealing, and removes an important component of the ecosystem.  Male and female elephants live in different social structures as adults, but grow up in a matriarchal family unit.  Both sexes use chemical and tactile cues to investigate and to communicate.  Chemical signals can provide an honest message, but the meaning changes over maturation and with reproductive status.  Recent means to reduce crop raiding include spraying capsaicin pepper extract or growing these peppers around other crops.  Avoidance by elephants relies upon individual learning.  Chemicals that are part of a natural elephant signal may facilitate avoidance learning, especially when part of a deterrent that stimulates more than one sensory modality.  For long-lived and intelligent animals like elephants, an understanding of their dimorphic behavioral development and social structure can facilitate the creation of management tools to reduce human-elephant conflict.

Dan Blumstein (Associate Professor, UCLA; marmots@ucla.edu)

Improving adaptive management with Darwinian decision making

Conservation behavior is explicitly an experimental science, but experimental results are only one tool that managers use to make decisions.  To apply behavioral knowledge effectively, we must understand how wildlife managers make decisions.  I will thus review decision-making processes used by managers.  Adaptive management, whereby well-designed experiments are designed to compare management options, should be regularly used, but rarely is employed.  I discuss why this is so, and how we might modify the structure of proposed experiments to make them more widely used.  I suggest that by creating competing groups of experts we may quickly generate plausible alternative management options which then may be experimentally studied.  Only by understanding how managers work, and by working with them, can conservation behavior be effectively applied.

Jan Komdeur, Animal Ecology Group, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen, PO Box 14, 9750 AA Haren, The Netherlands, j.komdeur@rug.nl

Lyanne Brouwer, Animal Ecology Group, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Studies, University of Groningen, PO Box 14, 9750 AA Haren, The Netherlands, l.brouwer@rug.nl

David S. Richardson, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK, d.s.richardson@uea.ac.uk

Behavioral adaptations for inbreeding avoidance in restricted populations

The deleterious effects of inbreeding can be substantial in wild populations and can contribute towards driving populations to extinction. The consequences of these genetic effects have been well-integrated into in situ management of captive or restricted populations of threatened or endangered species. In large, unrestricted wild populations various mechanisms have evolved which enable individuals to avoid inbreeding, e.g., sex-biased dispersal or reproductive suppression. However, in small, saturated populations with little scope for expansion, individuals may have developed alternative mechanisms to avoid inbreeding. For example, in situations where individuals are likely to encounter closely related potential mates, social mate choice to avoid inbreeding should be favored by selection. However, this avoidance behavior does not occur in all species and the nature of the populations may also mean that social mate choice is restricted which may lead to non-optimal pairings. Furthermore, other strategies that have evolved in such populations, i.e. cooperatively breeding with shared breeding, may complicate the evolution of inbreeding avoidance behavior. Studying the long-term fitness consequences of inbreeding and mate choice require long-term data sets with complete knowledge about individual life histories. The Seychelles warbler (Acrocephalus sechellensis) provides us with such a system. Our findings suggest that even in small isolated and bottlenecked populations, behavior that enables inbreeding avoidance and/or the maintenance of heterozygosity at key loci may have evolved, e.g. MHC dependent extra-pair mate choice and differential micro-dispersal patterns. Such behavior may help population remain viable and resilient. These findings are important in assessing the impact and evolutionary consequences of inbreeding in small bottlenecked populations.

2. From conservation applications to behavioural theory

Judy Stamps (Professor, UC Davis, jastamps@ucdavis.edu) and Colleen Cassady St. Clair (Associate Professor, University of Alberta, cstclair@ualberta.ca)

What can conservation biology teach behaviorists? Using applied research to identify shortfalls in habitat selection theory

In many disciplines, applied researchers generate data which is directly relevant to theory developed by basic scientists. These datasets often highlight mismatches between theoretical predictions and practical outcomes, and can help basic scientists identify gaps and errors in their theory. For instance, conservation biologists attempting to retain biodiversity are currently conducting 'field tests' whose results are relevant to basic concepts in animal behavior. Unfortunately, behaviorists seldom take advantage of the valuable information provided by managers and conservation biologists. Here, we illustrate this point by highlighting situations in which conservation biologists working on translocations, corridor design and habitat enhancement have uncovered results with interesting implications for habitat selection theory. Some of their findings suggest that widely-held assumptions about habitat selection behavior merit re-examination and modification. We use these examples to demonstrate that the relationship between conservation biology and animal behavior is a 'two-way street': not only can an understanding of animal behavior improve conservation efforts, but the results of conservation studies can lead to improvements in basic theory in animal behavior.

Debra Shier (Postdoctoral Fellow, San Diego Zoo; dshier@snadiegozoo.org)

Using behaviour to inform reintroductions and reintroductions to study behaviour

Reintroduction programs (captive-breeding reintroduction and translocation) are used to introduce species to parts of their historic range.  Though they are increasingly popular conservation tools, most fail to produce sustainable populations.  For many species, high mortality during the initial establishment phase has been blamed on ineffective post-release behavior.  In particular, predation on newly released animals can be devastating.  To deal with this problem, biologists have initiated pre-release predator training programs and have begun to examine the factors that affect the development and use of effective survival skills post-release.  In this talk, I examine the importance of social learning in the ontogeny of antipredator behavior and discuss how the maintenance of social relationships during translocation affects long term survival post-release.  I use research on black tailed prairie dogs to illustrate how an understanding of basic behavioral science can be crucial for conservation management and how results from reintroduction and translocation programs can elucidate areas of behavioral biology that require attention.   

Scott Creel (Professor, Montana State University; screel@montana.edu)

Behavioral responses of elk to wolves, their costs, and their effects on demography and population dynamics

When considering how predation may limit a population, conservation and management focus largely on direct predation or offtake.  For example, EIS models evaluating the effect of wolf reintroduction on elk dynamics in the Yellowstone ecosystem simply added offtake to models of density-dependent population growth for the elk population.  This approach implicitly assumes that predators have no effects on their prey other than killing them.  This assumption is rarely correct, because most prey species engage in antipredator behavior.  If antipredator behavior reduces risk, then its benefits are automatically incorporated into measurements of the rate of predation.  If antipredator behavior carries costs, then prey must balance these indirect costs against the direct benefit of reduced predation.  These costs are not included in measurements of the predation rate, and without careful consideration, they are likely to be mistaken for bottom-up limiting factors.  We used spatial and temporal variation in the risk of predation by wolves to quantify the antipredator responses of elk, including changes in behavior, grouping, and habitat selection.  Antipredator responses were associated with significant changes in reproductive physiology and demography, which significantly altered population dynamics.  In studies of invertebrate community ecology, it is widely accepted that the ‘nonconsumptive’ effects of predation can be as strong as (or stronger than) the effects of direct killing.  Our results show that the costs of behavioral responses can also be important for predator-prey dynamics in large vertebrates.  This is important, because most large carnivores face immediate concerns of conservation and management.

Colleen Cassady St. Clair  (Associate Professor, University of Alberta; cstclair@ualberta.ca) Concluding synthesis, evaluation and future directions for Conservation Behaviour