No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Primate social organisation is often considered to be more complex than that of ‘lower’ mammals. The dominance hierarchy, which is given especial emphasis in most studies of social species, has been criticised on the grounds that rank is poorly related to other aspects of social organisation. These two ideas were investigated in an enclosed group of red deer by looking at the relationships between four aspects of social organisation: the dominance hierarchy; social grooming behaviour; non‐copulatory mounting behaviour; spatial organisation. The last three aspects have frequently been studied in primates, but rarely in ungulates.

Studies of the dominance hierarchy in red deer have mainly concentrated on the hierarchy among stags. This study aimed to investigate in detail the dominance hierarchy of a group of hinds and their offspring and to compare it between two feeding situations, one when the deer were browsing normally in a large area, and the other when they were competing for artificially provided food in a small area.

Acoustic communication is one of the most well-known behavioural traits of the Orthoptera. Orthopteran insects and the sounds they produce are both extremely diverse, and speciesspecific sounds are an extremely important tool in orthopteran taxonomy and systematics. For most species, acoustic signalling is the most important means of communication. It plays a vital role in mating, mate choice, intrasexual competition, interspecific interactions with predators and parasitoids, and the divergence of populations and species. The enormous diversity of the orthopterans has provided researchers with a wealth of model systems for studying anatomy, physiology, neurobiology, bioacoustics, communication, life-history traits, behaviour, evolutionary ecology, and speciation, all areas in which acoustic communication is important. We first reviewed orthopteran sound signalling nearly 20 years ago (Robinson and Hall, 2002), since when there has been an enormous amount of further work. This second review will look mainly at research published since that first review.

In the current digital environment, it is vital for learners to develop digital literacy skills. The UK's Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (HE) requires graduates to demonstrate digital literacy. Employers consider these skills essential. With the high cost of HE in the UK, learners themselves also expect university courses to demonstrate relevance to the workplace. Nevertheless, some learners may not fully engage in digital literacy skills development, instead concentrating on the subject-specific content of their modules. The Faculty of Health & Social Care (FH&SC) at the UK's Open University uses different approaches to digital literacy skills development, based on skills resources that are either 'generic' (usable by any FH&SC module) or module-specific. By exploring student experiences of digital literacy skills development, we aim to understand what motivates learners to engage with the skills content of their module. We collected data from online questionnaires and interviews involving learners from three modules and present findings from an analysis of the quantitative questionnaire data, supported by qualitative interview data, where relevant. We look at learner perceptions and engagement in relation to the demographic factors gender, age, previous education, disability and financial status and whether these factors influence individual learner preferences for learning design, such as use of generic resources versus contextualisation of skills activities within the module. We aim to identify good practice in learning design and what demographic factors need to be considered to support individual learners appropriately, and so optimise engagement.

No abstract