Technology is revolutionizing the study of organisms in their natural environment

Self-medication behaviour is the use of natural materials or chemical substances to manipulate behaviour or alter the body’s response to parasites or pathogens. Self-medication can be preventive, performed before an individual becomes infected or diseased, and/or therapeutic, performed after an individual becomes infected or diseased. We summarized all available reports of self-medication in mammals and reconstructed its evolution. We found that reports of self-medication were restricted to eutherian mammals and evolved at least four times independently. Self-medication was most commonly reported in primates. Detailed analyses of primates suggest that self-medication is a life-history trait associated with body size, absolute brain size and longevity, but we found no support for the hypothesis that self-medication evolved to reduce the costs of social living. Large, longer-lived species might thus benefit uniquely from self-medication.

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Increases in relative encephalization (RE), brain size after controlling for body size, comes at a great metabolic cost and is correlated with a host of cognitive traits, from the ability to count objects to higher rates of innovation. Despite many studies examining the implications and trade-offs accompanying increased RE, the relationship between mammalian extinction risk and RE is unknown. I examine whether mammals with larger levels of RE are more or less likely to be at risk of endangerment than less-encephalized species. I find that extant species with large levels of encephalization are at greater risk of endangerment, with this effect being strongest in species with small body sizes. These results suggest that RE could be a valuable asset in estimating extinction vulnerability. Additionally, these findings suggest that the costbenefit trade-off of RE is different in large-bodied species when compared with small-bodied species.

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Landscape affordances, what the environment offers an animal, are inherently species-specific to the extent that each taxon has unique needs and responses to landscape characteristics. Wildlife responses to landscape features range on a continuum from avoidance to attraction and quantifying these habits are the backbone of wildlife movement ecology. In anthropogenically modified landscapes, many taxa do not occupy areas heavily influenced by humans, while some species seem to flourish, such as coyotes (Canis latrans) and pigeons (Columba livia). Sufficient overlap in landscapes designed for human purposes (e.g., freeway underpasses, channelized waterways, and cemeteries) but which are also suitable for wildlife (e.g., by providing sources of food, shelter, and refuge) underlies wildlife persistence in urban areas and is increasingly important in the world's largest metropoles. Studying these overlapping worlds of humans and wildlife in cities provides a rich foundation for broadening human perceptions of cities as ecosystems that exhibit emergent hybridity, whereby certain anthropogenic features of urban landscapes can be used by wildlife even as they maintain their utility for humans. By examining scaling dynamics of the infrastructural signature, the phenomena of urban wildlife movement patterns conforming to the shapes of human infrastructural forms, we hope to expand on prior research in wildlife landscape ecology by stressing the importance of understanding the overlapping worlds of humans and wildlife. Further knowledge of the urban ecological commons is necessary to better design cities where emergent hybridity is leveraged toward the management goals of reducing human wildlife conflict and promoting biodiversity.