Animal Behavior in Conservation Biology

Abstract

Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com impacts on the biodiversity of an area is crucial. From a management perspective, searching for the fitness consequences of behavioral responses may provide insights into the impacts of certain human activities on wild animals. For example, a strategy to better manage the negative impacts of tourism on wild animals is to understand the proximate mechanisms underlying the response of wild animals to humans. 4,5 Under such conditions, management decisions should be focused on manipulating behavior because it can be used as a leading indicator of anthropogenic disturbances or population health conditions. 3 Moreover, unlike population density, animal behavior instantaneously can be changed with changing of environment. 5,6 How does understanding the behaviors of an animal species contribute to its conservation? The answer might vary depending on the focal species but it has profound consequences for our efforts toward conserving endangered and/or rare species. By doing so, the conceptual framework can provide novel management questions and can help to make the structure of the scientific study of an endangered species. For example, behavioral knowledge implicitly guides conservation and monitoring strategies because ranging patterns, breeding times and locations affect spatial and temporal aspects of population censuses.1 Previous theoretical and empirical studies suggested that behavioral responses of organisms to environmental changes are quick and can represent true leading indicators which are useful to conservation biology. 3,5,6 However, the linkage between animal behavior and conservation biology is very weak due to historical and cultural setbacks, 7 and scientific roadblocks. 8,9 For example, differences in scales, themes, professional biasness, and approaches have hindered such important progresses. Recently, a growing interest in integrating an understanding of animal behavior into conservation biology is clearly present.6,9 By virtue of this reality, recent books and journals imply to a new movement toward integrating animal behavior and conservation biology.9 For example, a number of behavioral biologists have written several reviews and book chapters on the role and importance of animal behavior in conservation arguing which form a fundamental understanding of behavioral processes for contributing to conservation biology.1-3,6-13 Without a clear conceptual framework for such integration, conservation biologists may have difficulties to recognize that how behavioral knowledge can help them to solve real-world conservation problems.6,9 For example, if behavioral research becomes more central than to conservation, it needs more professionals working at the interface, and its nature should also be changed. 1,6,8,9 Most importantly, it needs to focus on aspects of animal behavior which are most likely to influence vital rates or susceptibility to exploitations or perturbations by humans. 9,13Conservation biologists have already begun to apply general principles...