Contextual influences on animal decision‐making: Significance for behavior‐based wildlife conservation and management

Abstract

Survival and successful reproduction require animals to make critical decisions amidst a naturally dynamic environmental and social background (i.e. "context"). However, human activities have pervasively, and rapidly, extended contextual variation into evolutionarily novel territory, potentially rendering evolved animal decision-making mechanisms and strategies maladaptive. We suggest that explicitly focusing on animal decision-making (ADM), by integrating and applying findings from studies of sensory ecology, cognitive psychology, behavioral economics and eco-evolutionary strategies, may enhance our understanding of, and our ability to predict how, human-driven changes in the environment and population demography will influence animal populations. Fundamentally, the decisions animals make involve evolved mechanisms, and behaviors emerge from the combined action of sensory integration, cognitive mechanisms and strategic rules of thumb, and any of these processes may have a disproportionate influence on behavior. Although there is extensive literature exploring ADM, it generally reflects a canalized, discipline-specific approach that lacks a unified conceptual framework. As a result, there has been limited application of ADM theory and research findings into predictive models that can enhance management outcomes, even though it is likely that the relative resilience of species to rapid environmental change is fundamentally a result of how ADM is linked to contextual variation. Here, we focus on how context influences ADM, and highlight ideas and results that may be most applicable to conservation biology.

Integrating Behavior and Physiology Into Strategies for Amphibian Conservation

“…Likewise, an understanding of animal behavior and personality syndromes can inform the selection of optimal behavioral types for release and ensure that captive breeding pairs are behaviorally compatible, thus improving mating success, post-reintroduction survival and reproductive potential (Kelleher et al, 2018). Evidence is growing that cognitive behavior, decision making, and personality syndromes occur in amphibians (Jaeger et al, 2016;Kelleher et al, 2018) and could have many conservation and management applications (Blumstein and Berger-Tal, 2015;Owen et al, 2016; Table 1).…”

A Nose for Death: Integrating Trophic and Informational Networks for Conservation and Management

“…The same information thus does not lead inevitably to the same behavioral response, and differences in informational state may or may not lead to effectively different antipredator behaviors (Blumstein and Bouskila, 1996;Owen et al, 2016). Variation in response to the same informational state could arise by several means.…”

Effects of personality and rearing-history on the welfare of captive Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica)

“…We categorized these subjects based on their rearing histories (wild-rescued and captive-raised), sex, social grouping (pair-housed and group-housed) and personality traits (bold and shy) (Wilson et al, 1994). We measured species-typical behaviour diversity (Powell, 1995;Wemelsfelder et al, 2000;Rabin, 2003;Clark & Melfi, 2012;Miller, Pisacane & Vicino, 2016;Watanabe, 2007;Skrzypczak, 2016;Owen, Swaisgood & Blumstein, 2017), space usage patterns (Kessel & Brent, 1996;Mallapur, Qureshi & Chellam, 2002;Ross & Shender, 2016), latency to novel objects (Murphy, 1977;Meehan & Mench, 2002;Sneddon, Braithwaite & Gentle, 2003), and proportion of aberrant behaviours (Mason & Rushen, 2006;Tan et al, 2013;Japyassú & Malange, 2014;Kroshko et al, 2016) understand the relationship between individual variations and welfare measures. We believe that this study will address knowledge gaps in animal welfare evaluation procedures, leading to the adoption of individualfocused husbandry and management practices at ex-situ endangered species conservation programmes.…”