Technological miniaturization is driving a biologging revolution that is producing detailed and sophisticated techniques of assessing individual behavioral responses to environmental conditions. Among the many advancements this revolution has brought is an ability to record behavioral responses of nocturnal, free-ranging species. Here, we combine captive validations of acceleration signatures with acoustic recordings from free-ranging individuals to classify behavior at two resolutions. Combining these classifications with ∼2 month-long recordings, we describe winter time budgets, and responses of free-ranging snowshoe hares to changing moonlight. We successfully classified snowshoe hare behavior into four categories (not moving, foraging, hopping, and sprinting) using low frequency accelerometry, with an overall model accuracy of 88%, and acoustic recordings to three categories (silence, hopping, and chewing) with an accuracy of 94%. Broad-scale accelerometer-classified categories were composed of multiple fine-scale behavioral states with the composition varying between individuals and across the day. Time budgets revealed that hares spent ∼50% of their time foraging and ∼50% not moving, with most foraging and feeding occurring at night. We found that hares adjusted timing of activity in response to moon phase, with a 6% reduction in foraging and 30% reduction in traveling during the night when the moon was full. Hares compensated for this lost foraging time by extending foraging into the morning hours of the following day. Using two biologging technologies to identify behavior, we demonstrate the possibility of combining multiple devices when documenting behavior of cryptic species.
Peer review is pivotal to science and academia, as it represents a widely accepted strategy for ensuring quality control in scientific research. Yet, the peer-review system is poorly adapted to recent changes in the discipline and current societal needs. We provide historical context for the cultural lag that governs peer review that has eventually led to the system's current structural weaknesses (voluntary review, unstandardized review criteria, decentralized process). We argue that some current attempts to upgrade or otherwise modify the peer-review system are merely sticking-plaster solutions to these fundamental flaws, and therefore are unlikely to resolve them in the long term. We claim that for peer review to be relevant, effective, and contemporary with today's publishing demands across scientific disciplines, its main components need to be redesigned. We propose directional changes that are likely to improve the quality, rigour, and timeliness of peer review, and thereby ensure that this critical process serves the community it was created for.
With unprecedented losses in biodiversity, the need for stronger environmental policy has emerged as a conservation priority. Yet recovery planning for imperiled species remains a cumbersome, slow legislative process. In the present article, we examine features of recovery planning for species listed under Canada's Species at Risk Act to determine those influencing recovery planning duration. We found that the time to completion of recovery strategies increases with the number of jurisdictions concurrently listing the species, greater land tenure diversity, species population size, and road density. Species at risk in Canada with no listing status in the United States also suffered longer delays. To achieve a more efficient, timely, and defensible implementation of recovery planning, we recommend that governments prioritize recovery planning on the basis of risk level, promote transjurisdictional collaboration among listing agencies, anticipate and mitigate conservation challenges associated with multitenured and developed landscapes, and adopt procedures that enhance compliance with legislated timelines for recovery planning.
The energetic consequences of body size, behaviour, and fine-scale environmental variation remain understudied, particularly among free-ranging carnivores, due to logistical and methodological challenges of studying them in the field. Here, we present novel activity, heart rate, and metabolic data on free-ranging Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis Kerr, 1792) to a) investigate intraspecific patterns of energy expenditure, particularly how they relate to body size, environmental conditions, and activity variation, and b) position lynx - a cold-climate, mesocarnivore - within interspecific allometries of carnivore energetics. Lynx demonstrated limited behavioural and metabolic responses to environmental conditions, despite extreme cold and moderate snow depths during our study, but marked body size patterns with larger lynx having higher activity and lower resting heart rate than smaller lynx. Compared to similar-sized carnivores, lynx were less active and had lower heart rate, likely due to their ambush hunting style, but higher energy expenditure, likely due to their cold-climate existence and access to abundant prey. Overall, lynx were more similar to other ambush hunters than to sympatric cold-climate species and mesocarnivores. Our data provide insight into the relative importance of abiotic and biotic drivers of carnivore energetics and the ways in which predators maintain energy balance in variable environments.
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