|
|
Zhang, Y., Cao, Q. S., Rubenstein, D. I., Zang, S., Songer, M., Leimgruber, P., et al. (2015). Water Use Patterns of Sympatric Przewalski's Horse and Khulan: Interspecific Comparison Reveals Niche Differences. Plos One, 10(7), e0132094.
Abstract: Acquiring water is essential for all animals, but doing so is most challenging for desert-living animals. Recently Przewalski's horse has been reintroduced to the desert area in China where the last wild surviving member of the species was seen before it vanished from China in the1960s. Its reintroduction placed it within the range of a close evolutionary relative, the con-generic Khulan. Determining whether or not these two species experience competition and whether or not such competition was responsible for the extinction of Przewalski's horses in the wild over 50 years ago, requires identifying the fundamental and realized niches of both species. We remotely monitored the presence of both species at a variety of water points during the dry season in Kalamaili Nature Reserve, Xinjiang, China. Przewalski's horses drank twice per day mostly during daylight hours at low salinity water sources while Khulans drank mostly at night usually at high salinity water points or those far from human residences. Spatial and temporal differences in water use enables coexistence, but suggest that Przewalski's horses also restrict the actions of Khulan. Such differences in both the fundamental and realized niches were associated with differences in physiological tolerances for saline water and human activity as well as differences in aggression and dominance.
|
|
|
|
Briefer, E. F., Haque, S., Baciadonna, L., & McElligott, A. G. (2014). Goats excel at learning and remembering a highly novel cognitive task. Front. Zool., 11(1), 20.
Abstract: The computational demands of sociality (maintaining group cohesion, reducing conflict) and ecological problems (extractive foraging, memorizing resource locations) are the main drivers proposed to explain the evolution cognition. Different predictions follow, about whether animals would preferentially learn new tasks socially or not, but the prevalent view today is that intelligent species should excel at social learning. However, the predictions were originally used to explain primate cognition, and studies of species with relatively smaller brains are rare. By contrast, domestication has often led to a decrease in brain size, which could affect cognition. In domestic animals, the relaxed selection pressures compared to a wild environment could have led to reduced social and physical cognition. Goats possess several features commonly associated with advanced cognition, such as successful colonization of new environments and complex fission-fusion societies. Here, we assessed goat social and physical cognition as well as long-term memory of a complex two-step foraging task (food box cognitive challenge), in order to investigate some of the main selection pressures thought to affect the evolution of ungulate cognition.
|
|
|
|
Van Schaik, C. P., Isler, K., & Burkart, J. M. (2012). Explaining brain size variation: from social to cultural brain. Trends Ecol Evol, 16.
|
|
|
|
Squire, L. (2004). Memory systems of the brain: a brief history and current perspective. Neurobiol Learn Mem, 82.
|
|
|
|
Range, F., Möslinger, H., & Virányi, Z. (2012). Domestication has not affected the understanding of means-end connections in dogs. Anim Cogn, 15.
|
|
|
|
Meddock, T., & Osborn, D. (1968). Neophobia in wild and laboratory mice. Psychol Sci, 12.
|
|
|
|
Langbein, J., Siebert, K., & Nuernberg, G. (2008). Concurrent recall of serially learned visual discrimination problems in dwarf goats (Capra hircus). Behav Proc, 79.
|
|
|
|
Healy, S. D., & Rowe, C. (2013). Costs and benefits of evolving a larger brain: doubts over the evidence that large brains lead to better cognition. Anim Behav, 86.
|
|
|
|
Emery, N. J., Clayton, N. S., & Frith, C. D. (2007). Introduction. Social intelligence: from brain to culture. Philos Trans R Soc B, 362.
|
|
|
|
Albiach-Serrano, A., Bräuer, J., Cacchione, T., Zickert, N., & Amici, F. (2012). The effect of domestication and ontogeny in swine cognition (Sus scrofa scrofa and S. s. domestica). Appl Anim Behav Sci, 141.
|
|
