Horses' Use of Lying Halls and Time Budget in Relation to Available Lying Area.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Kjellberg L
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8614411 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Horses reared for meat production can be kept in intensive breeding farms where they are housed in group pens at high stocking densities. The present study aimed to evaluate whether the expressed behaviours correlated with stocking density, and to compare their time-budget with that of wild-living horses. An ethogram of 13 mutually exclusive behavioural activities was developed. Behavioural observations were performed over a 72 h period on group pens selected on the basis of stocking density and the homogeneity of breed, age, height at the withers, and time since arriving at the farm. Scan sampling (n = 96 scans/horse/day) was used on 22 horses. The mean frequency (%) ± standard deviation (±SD) for each behavioural activity was calculated to obtain the time-budget. The associations between time-budget and stocking density were evaluated using a bivariate analysis. The relationships were analysed by Pearson's correlation coefficient (r). Our results show that locomotion, playing, and self-grooming positively correlated with a reduction in stocking density, indicating the potential to use these behaviours as positive welfare indicators for young horses kept in group pens. The data also revealed an unusual time-budget, where the main behavioural activity expressed was standing (30.56% ± 6.56%), followed by feeding (30.55% ± 3.59%), lying (27.33% ± 2.05%), and locomotion (4.07% ± 1.06%).
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Project description:Increasing human population growth has led to elevated levels of human-carnivore conflict. However, some carnivore populations have adapted to urban environments and the resources they supply. Such associations may influence carnivore ecology, behaviour and life-history. Pockets of urbanisation sometimes occur within protected areas, so that anthropogenic influences on carnivore biology are not necessarily confined to unprotected areas. In this study we evaluated associations between human infrastructure and related activity and space use of spotted hyaenas within one of the largest protected areas in South Africa, the Kruger National Park. Home range size was smaller for the dominant female of a clan living in close proximity to humans than that of the dominant female of a clan without direct access to human infrastructure. The home range including human infrastructure was also used less evenly during the night, presumably when the animals were active. Within this home range, a village area was preferred during the night, when the least modified areas within the village were preferred and administration and highly modified areas were avoided. During the day, however, there were no preference or avoidance of the village area, but all habitats except unmodified habitats within the village area were avoided. We suggest that human infrastructure and associated activity influenced hyaena space use, primarily through alterations in the spatial distribution of food. However, these effects may have been indirectly caused by habitat modification that generated favourable hunting habitat rather than a direct effect caused by access to human food such as garbage. Because of the often pivotal effects of apex predators in terrestrial ecosystems, we encourage further work aimed to quantify how human presence influences large carnivores and associated ecosystem processes within protected areas.
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Project description:Insomnia, i.e., difficulties initiating and/or maintaining sleep, is one of the most common sleep disorders. To study underlying mechanisms for insomnia, we studied autonomic activity changes around sleep onset in participants without clinical insomnia but with varying problems with initiating or maintaining sleep quantified as increased sleep onset latency (SOL) and wake after sleep onset (WASO), respectively. Polysomnography and electrocardiography were simultaneously recorded in 176 participants during a single night. Cardiac autonomic activity was assessed using frequency domain analysis of RR intervals and results show that the normalized spectral power in the low frequency band (LF nu ) after sleep onset was significantly higher in participants with long SOL compared to participants with short SOL. Furthermore, the normalized spectral power in the high frequency band (HF nu ) was significantly lower in participants with long SOL as compared to participants with short SOL over 3 time periods (first 10 min in bed intending to sleep, 10 min before, and 10 min after sleep onset). These results suggest that participants with long SOL are more aroused in all three examined time periods when compared to participants with short SOL, especially for young adults (20-40 years). As there is no clear consensus on the cutoff for an increased WASO, we used a data-driven approach to explore different cutoffs to define short WASO and long WASO groups. LF nu , HF nu , and LF/HF differed between the long and the short WASO groups. A higher LF nu and LF/HF and a lower HF nu was observed in participants with long WASO for most cutoffs. The highest effect size was found using the cutoff of 66 min. Our findings suggest that autonomic cardiac activity has predictive value with respect to sleep characteristics pertaining to sleep onset and maintenance.
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Project description:We developed an automated method using depth and one axis of body acceleration data recorded by animal-borne data loggers to identify activities of penguins over long-term deployments. Using this technique, we evaluated the activity time budget of emperor penguins (n = 10) both in water and on sea ice during foraging trips in chick-rearing season. During the foraging trips, emperor penguins alternated dive bouts (4.8 ± 4.5 h) and rest periods on sea ice (2.5 ± 2.3 h). After recorder deployment and release near the colony, the birds spent 17.9 ± 8.4% of their time traveling until they reached the ice edge. Once at the ice edge, they stayed there more than 4 hours before the first dive. After the first dive, the mean proportions of time spent on the ice and in water were 30.8 ± 7.4% and 69.2 ± 7.4%, respectively. When in the water, they spent 67.9 ± 3.1% of time making dives deeper than 5 m. Dive activity had no typical diurnal pattern for individual birds. While in the water between dives, the birds had short resting periods (1.2 ± 1.7 min) and periods of swimming at depths shallower than 5 m (0.25 ± 0.38 min). When the birds were on the ice, they primarily used time for resting (90.3 ± 4.1% of time) and spent only 9.7 ± 4.1% of time traveling. Thus, it appears that, during foraging trips at sea, emperor penguins traveled during dives >5 m depth, and that sea ice was primarily used for resting. Sea ice probably provides refuge from natural predators such as leopard seals. We also suggest that 24 hours of sunlight and the cycling of dive bouts with short rest periods on sea ice allow emperor penguins to dive continuously throughout the day during foraging trips to sea.
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Project description:BackgroundPeer drinking is one of the most robust predictors of college students' alcohol use and can moderate students' genetic risk for alcohol use. Peer effect research generally suffers from 2 problems: selection into peer groups and relying more on perceptions of peer alcohol use than peers' self-report. The goal of the present study was to overcome those limitations by capitalizing on a genetically informed sample of randomly assigned college roommates to examine multiple dimensions of peer influence and the interplay between peer effects and genetic predisposition on alcohol use, in the form of polygenic scores.MethodsWe used a subsample (n = 755) of participants from a university-wide, longitudinal study at a large, diverse, urban university. Participants reported their own alcohol use during fall and spring and their perceptions of college peers' alcohol use in spring. We matched individuals into their rooms and residence halls to create a composite score of peer-reported alcohol use for each of those levels. We examined multiple dimensions of peer influence and whether peer influence moderated genetic predisposition to predict college students' alcohol use using multilevel models to account for clustering at the room and residence hall level.ResultsWe found that polygenic scores (β = 0.12), perceptions of peer drinking (β = 0.37), and roommates' self-reported drinking (β = 0.10) predicted alcohol use (all ps < 0.001), while average alcohol use across residence hall did not (β = -0.01, p = 0.86). We found no evidence for interactions between peer influence and genome-wide polygenic scores for alcohol use.ConclusionsOur findings underscore the importance of genetic predisposition on individual alcohol use and support the potentially causal nature of the association between peer influence and alcohol use.
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Project description:Dishonesty in communication has important economic implications. The standing literature has shown that lying is less pervasive than predicted by standard economic theory. We explore whether biology can help to explain this behavior. In a sample of men, we study whether masculine traits are related to (dis)honesty in a sender-receiver game. We study three masculine physical traits: the second-to-fourth digit ratio, facial morphometric masculinity and the facial width-to-height ratio. These biomarkers display significant associations with lying and deception in the game. We also explore the extent to which these effects operate through social preferences or through beliefs about the behavior of receivers.
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Project description:One of the most thrilling cultural experiences is to hear live symphony-orchestra music build up from a whispering passage to a monumental fortissimo. The impact of such a crescendo has been thought to depend only on the musicians' skill, but here we show that interactions between the concert-hall acoustics and listeners' hearing also play a major role in musical dynamics. These interactions contribute to the shoebox-type concert hall's established success, but little prior research has been devoted to dynamic expression in this three-part transmission chain as a complete system. More forceful orchestral playing disproportionately excites high frequency harmonics more than those near the note's fundamental. This effect results in not only more sound energy, but also a different tone color. The concert hall transmits this sound, and the room geometry defines from which directions acoustic reflections arrive at the listener. Binaural directional hearing emphasizes high frequencies more when sound arrives from the sides of the head rather than from the median plane. Simultaneously, these same frequencies are emphasized by higher orchestral-playing dynamics. When the room geometry provides reflections from these directions, the perceived dynamic range is enhanced. Current room-acoustic evaluation methods assume linear behavior and thus neglect this effect. The hypothesis presented here is that the auditory excitation by reflections is emphasized with an orchestra forte most in concert halls with strong lateral reflections. The enhanced dynamic range provides an explanation for the success of rectangularly shaped concert-hall geometry.
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Project description:Bats and birds must balance time and energy budgets during migration. Migrating bats face similar physiological challenges to birds, but nocturnality creates special challenges for bats, such as a conflict between travelling and refueling, which many birds avoid by feeding in daylight and flying at night. As endothermic animals, bats and birds alike must expend substantial amounts of energy to maintain high body temperatures. For migratory birds refueling at stopovers, remaining euthermic during inactive periods reduces the net refuelling rate, thereby prolonging stopover duration and delaying subsequent movement. We hypothesized that bats could mitigate similar ambient-temperature dependent costs by using a torpor-assisted migration strategy. We studied silver-haired bats Lasionycteris noctivagans during autumn migration using a combination of respirometry and temperature-sensitive radiotelemetry to estimate energy costs incurred under ambient temperature conditions, and the energy that bats saved by using torpor during daytime roosting periods. All bats, regardless of sex, age, or body condition used torpor at stopover and saved up to 91% of the energy they would have expended to remain euthermic. Furthermore, bats modulated use of torpor depending on ambient temperature. By adjusting the time spent torpid, bats achieved a rate of energy expenditure independent of the ambient temperature encountered at stopover. By lowering body temperature during inactive periods, fuel stores are spared, reducing the need for refuelling. Optimal migration models consider trade-offs between time and energy. Heterothermy provides a physiological strategy that allows bats to conserve energy without paying a time penalty as they migrate. Although uncommon, some avian lineages are known to use heterothermy, and current theoretical models of migration may not be appropriate for these groups. We propose that thermoregulatory strategies should be an important consideration of future migration studies of both bats and birds.
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Project description:We present a theory for the dispersion of generated harmonics in a traveling nonlinear wave. The harmonics dispersion relation (HDR), derived by the theory, provides direct and exact prediction of the collective harmonics spectrum in the frequency–wave number domain and does so without prior knowledge of the u = u(x, t) solution. It is valid throughout the evolution of a distorting unbalanced wave or the steady-steady propagation of a balanced wave with waveform invariance. The new relation is shown to be a special case of the general nonlinear dispersion relation (NDR), which is also derived. The theory is examined on a diverse range of cases of one-dimensional elastic waves and shown to hold irrespective of the spatial form of the initial wave profile, type and strength of the nonlinearity, and the level of dispersion in the linear limit. Another direct outcome of the general NDR is an analytical condition for soliton synthesis.
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