Don't Stop Movin'.

This talk was delivered by Dr Graeme Shannon, a Bangor University lecturer who specialises in Zoology and animal behaviour, for the 3rd year Advances in Behaviour module. The focus of this interesting lecture is discussing the different domains of behaviour and how they can indicate and inform conservation decisions.

Why Even Move?

The fundamental reasons for which an organism will move is to:

a) Find resources - Water, Food, Shelter, Mates

b) Avoid risk - Predation, Competition, Pathogens, Conflict

Movement is very energy costly for an individual and many different factors are considered before initiating movement, this results in what we call a ‘movement path’. What is the reason for movement? Can I navigate to where I need to move? How far or fast do I need to move?

This determines how much time an organism allocates to these different behaviours; avoiding predators, acquiring food and landscape exploration. The individual's previous experience and phenotypic traits (Eg. their boldness, more/less dominant) will further modulate the behaviour choices made.

Image: Wildebeest Mass Movement, Masai Mara National Reserve, Kenya.

This movement decision making also scales up to a population level; large scale movements such as migrations have a large impact on the surrounding ecosystem, such as, habitat structure, nutrient cycling and the distribution of the relative predator populations.

Ultimately, such movement is an evolutionary driving force and can be used as a key metric for exploring animal ecology and any anthropogenic influence upon wildlife. For me, this element of animal behaviour and the fluctuations that occur within it due to a changing environment will further our understanding of the severity of human impact on the natural world.

Observation & Tracking

Over recent decades technology has been developed that allows us to remotely track individuals using satellites and collars to determine their position. This technology evolved further with the development of highly accurate GPS.

Over time, tracking devices have become smaller, cheaper and more accurate, allowing tracking to become a data rich discipline across many taxa. However, there are still limitations with very small birds and the weight of the GPS.

Video: An African Wild Dog wearing Anti-Snare Tracking Collar

My Thoughts

During the talk, Graeme presented a study that I found particularly interesting; The influence of human disturbance on wildlife nocturnality. It was found that higher levels of human activity was creating a shift in peak animal activity into low light and/or night time. This will therefore impact the individuals foraging and mating opportunity as well as possibly altering predation risk.

These key behavioural shifts indicate the scale of human impact upon different populations and therefore, assist to inform us of conservation mechanisms that can be put in place to reduce the risk upon the individual. A blend of both behaviour and conservation science that is vital for us to further understand our negative influence and mitigate its impact.

Resources:

Cover Image: Photo by Pieter van Noorden on Unsplash

Image: Photo by Rohan Reddy on Unsplash

Video: Wildlife Act: African Wild Dog wearing Anti-Snare Tracking Collar. Shot by volunteer Kristen Vaccariello.