Physicalphysiological adaptations

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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked
into jet engines.
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Ecological adaptationsThriving Surviving

• What to do?
• Where to be?
• What to eat?

Takin
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Learning goals

• Learn how activity, habitat and food selection
  influence survival and productivity of ungulates
• Learn how animals perceive and learn about their
  environments

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Niche

• Position or status of an organism within its
  community and ecosystem resulting from the
  organisms structural adaptation, physiological
  responses and specific behavior

Address or profession?
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Heuristics

• Humans and animals make inferences about their
  world with limited time, knowledge, and
  computational power. In contrast, many models of
  rational inference view the mind as if it were a
  supernatural being possessing demonic powers of
  reason, boundless knowledge, and all of eternity
  with which to make decisions.
• Such visions of rationality often conflict with
  reality. But we can use them as points of
  comparison to help clarify our own vision of
  ecological rationality adaptive behavior
  resulting from the fit between the minds
  mechanisms and the structure of the environment
  in which it operates.
• Todd and Gigerenzer 2000. Precis of simple
  heuristics that make us smart. Behav. Brain Sci.
  23 727-780.

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UmweltDefining the operational environment

• Ausserwelt not perceived
• Merkwelt perceived elements
• Nutzwelt world of resources
• Mitwelt social world of interactions

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Perceived environment

• Sensory characteristics
• Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch
• Thermal, barometric, etc.??
• Neurological characteristics
• Structure
• Detail

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Preference-fixing mechanisms

• Imprinting
• Morphologically-guided learning
• Socially-guided learning
• Social facilitation
• Tradition formation

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Decision rules

• Maximizing energy
• Minimizing time
• Satisficing

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What to do?

• Activity budgets

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Erasmus Darwin
hunger
fear
lust
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Activity budgets

• Feed
• Selection, ingestion
• Rest
• Stand, bed ruminate
• React
• Hide, flee, fight, shelter
• Interact
• Join, fight, mate
• Orient
• Migration, habitat selection

Ungulates spend up to 95 of their time either
feeding or resting. Therefore, energy budgets
often can be usefully summarized by considering
feeding time.
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Feeding time

• Energy and nutrient requirements
• Condition, age, physiological state, season
• Forage availability
• Biomass, snow cover
• Pre-emptive factors
• Social interaction, predation, insects, weather

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Diel feeding cycles

• Gut repletion-depletion cycles
• Crepuscular, nocturnal, diurnal
• Thermal, insect
• Disturbance

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News break
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Where to be?

• Occupational patterns and habitat selection

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Range use patterns

• Resident
• Nomadic
• Arctic, deserts
• Dispersal
• Water other point resources
• Migratory
• Altitudinal, latitudinal

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Home range pattern
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Home range size

• Environment
• Productivity
• Resource distribution
• Animal
• Monogastric vs ruminant
• Browser, grazer, mixed feeder
• Body size
• Gregariousness

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Scale of selection

• Region
• Landscape
• Community
• Sward
• Feeding station

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Density-dependent habitat selection
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What to eat?

• Forage selection

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Optimal diets
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Definitions

• Principal foods
• Major dietary items
• Preferred foods
• Items actually favoured
• Preference
• Selective response
• Palatability
• Plant characteristics

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Relative preference index

• RPI(fdiDi)/(friRi)

RP
Biomass
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Diet determination

• Direct observation
• Feeding sites or exclosures
• Rumen or fecal analysis
• Stable isotopes (13/12C, 15/16N, ½H)

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Preference

• Senses
• Smell
• Touch
• Sight
• Taste

• Learning
• Aversive conditioning
• Diversity
• Social learning

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Participation

• FJ Perez-Barberia IJ Gordon. 1999. The
  relative roles of phylogeny, body size and
  feeding style on the activity time of temperate
  ruminants a reanalysis. Oecologia 120193-197.

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Study questions

• Identify behavioral means by which ungulates
  regulate energy budgets.
• What is the role of learning in habitat and food
  selection?
• What is risk-sensitive foraging?
• What factors determine seasonal foraging time?
• Are ungulates inherently crepuscular?
• What factors determining home range size?
• Define satisficing and explain how it accounts
  for resource use behavior.
• Define aversive conditioning and explain its
  role in forage selection by ruminants.

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Next

• Populations and harvest