Colonial breeding is widespread among animals. Some, such as eusocial insects, may use agonistic behavior to partition available foraging habitat into mutually exclusive territories; others, such as breeding seabirds, do not. We found that northern gannets, satellite-tracked from twelve neighboring colonies, nonetheless forage in largely mutually exclusive areas and that these colony-specific home ranges are determined by densitydependent competition. This segregation may be enhanced by individual-level public information transfer, leading to cultural evolution and divergence among colonies.Main Text: Colonial animals are constrained by their colony locations, which are ultimately limited by resource availability (1). However, within species, potential colony home ranges often overlap, implying competition among colonies may also be limiting (2). In eusocial central-place foragers the spatial effects of direct competition among colonies are well understood (2). In contrast, the spatial influences of indirect competition and information transfer on non-territorial species (e.g. seals, swallows and seabirds), where levels of relatedness are much lower, remain conjectural. For example, the hinterland model (3) predicts that breeding seabirds segregate along colonial lines, because of inequalities in travel costs from each colony. Predicted home ranges therefore comprise Voronoi polygons (Fig. 1A), as seen in some territorial animals (2). Food availability is assumed to be proportional to polygon area, limiting colony size. An alternative model proposes that density-dependent competition among colony members is limiting (4). As colonies grow, local prey depletion or disturbance requires birds to travel further to provision their young. However, this model ('Ashmole's halo') does not consider interactions among colonies and tacitly assumes that adjacent colonies' home ranges overlap (5).Indirect evidence exists to support both models (3,6,7) and recent tracking studies suggest that seabirds and pinnipeds segregate along colonial lines (8-12). However, these studies proved inconclusive on the causes and ubiquity of segregation, largely because few colonies were sampled or tracking resolution was low. Here we use high resolution satellite-tracks of the foraging movements of 184 chick-rearing northern gannets Morus bassanus (hereafter gannets) from 12 of the 26 colonies fringing the British Isles (median 17 birds/colony), representing ~80% of the area's breeding population (Fig. 1A, Table S1), to test whether among-colony segregation occurs in a model colonial non-territorial central-place forager. We then use population-and individual-level models to explore potential mechanisms underlying spatial segregation.Gannets are wide-ranging (max. foraging range ~700 km) pelagic seabirds that forage in patches of enhanced production, primarily on shoaling, mesotrophic fish and to a lesser extent fisheries discards (13)(14)(15). In almost all cases we tracked birds from adjacent colonies simultaneously (16). Individua...

(2017), Integrating research using animal-borne telemetry with the needs of conservation management. J Appl Ecol, 54: 423-429., which has been published in final form at https://doi

The tagging of aquatic and semi-aquatic animals with acoustic transmitters and their detection by passive underwater receivers has gained huge popularity over the past decade. This technology offers researchers the opportunity to monitor the finite- to broad-scale movements of multiple individuals over many years; however, the sheer scale and spatial complexity of these datasets are often beyond the capabilities of routine database and spread-sheet applications. In the present paper, we describe software (V-Track) that greatly facilitates the assimilation, analysis and synthesis of animal-location data collected by underwater passive acoustic receivers. The principal features within V-Track are the behavioural event qualifier (BEQ) and the receiver-distance matrix (RDM) calculator. The BEQ identifies and catalogues horizontal movements from receiver detection data, or vertical movements from transmitter sensor data (depth or temperature). The RDM is generated from the geographical location of the acoustic receivers and is utilised by V-Track to illustrate the behavioural event information in a spatial context. V-Track is a package written within the R-programming language, and a graphical user interface is also provided. Here, we feature two case studies to demonstrate software functionality for defining and quantifying behaviour in acoustically tagged marine and freshwater vertebrates.

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus, initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness.

Summary1. Intertidal habitats provide important feeding areas for migratory shorebirds. Anthropogenic developments along coasts can increase ambient light levels at night across adjacent inter-tidal zones. Here, we report the effects of elevated nocturnal light levels upon the foraging strategy of a migratory shorebird (common redshank Tringa totanus) overwintering on an industrialised estuary in Northern Europe. 2. To monitor behaviour across the full intertidal area, individuals were located by day and night using VHF transmitters, and foraging behaviour was inferred from inbuilt posture sensors. Natural light was scored using moon-phase and cloud cover information and nocturnal artificial light levels were obtained using geo-referenced DMSP/OLS night-time satellite imagery at a 1-km resolution. 3. Under high illumination levels, the commonest and apparently preferred foraging behaviour was sight-based. Conversely, birds feeding in areas with low levels of artificial light had an elevated foraging time and fed by touch, but switched to visual rather than tactile foraging behaviour on bright moonlit nights in the absence of cloud cover. Individuals occupying areas which were illuminated continuously by lighting from a large petrochemical complex invariably exhibited a visually based foraging behaviour independently of lunar phase and cloud cover. 4. We show that ambient light levels affect the timing and distribution of foraging opportunities for redshank. We argue that light emitted from an industrial complex improved nocturnal visibility. This allowed sight-based foraging in place of tactile foraging, implying both a preference for sight-feeding and enhanced night-time foraging opportunities under these conditions. The study highlights the value of integrating remotely sensed data and telemetry techniques to assess the effect of anthropogenic change upon nocturnal behaviour and habitat use.

Highlights d Marine protected areas must extend over 10 km to protect site-attached reef sharks d More mobile reef shark species can be protected only if MPAs are over 50 km long d Annual fishing mortality was cut by 50% for all assessed species with 15-km MPAs d Atlantic MPAs should be 2.63 larger than Pacific MPAs to protect similar abundances

The estuarine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) is the apex-predator in waterways and coastlines throughout south-east Asia and Australasia. C. porosus pose a potential risk to humans, and management strategies are implemented to control their movement and distribution. Here we used GPS-based telemetry to accurately record geographical location of adult C. porosus during the breeding and nesting season. The purpose of the study was to assess how C. porosus movement and distribution may be influenced by localised social conditions. During breeding, the females (2.92±0.013 metres total length (TL), mean ± S.E., n = 4) occupied an area<1 km length of river, but to nest they travelled up to 54 km away from the breeding area. All tagged male C. porosus sustained high rates of movement (6.49±0.9 km d−1; n = 8) during the breeding and nesting period. The orientation of the daily movements differed between individuals revealing two discontinuous behavioural strategies. Five tagged male C. porosus (4.17±0.14 m TL) exhibited a ‘site-fidelic’ strategy and moved within well-defined zones around the female home range areas. In contrast, three males (3.81±0.08 m TL) exhibited ‘nomadic’ behaviour where they travelled continually throughout hundreds of kilometres of waterway. We argue that the ‘site-fidelic’ males patrolled territories around the female home ranges to maximise reproductive success, whilst the ‘nomadic’ males were subordinate animals that were forced to range over a far greater area in search of unguarded females. We conclude that C. porosus are highly mobile animals existing within a complex social system, and mate/con-specific interactions are likely to have a profound effect upon population density and distribution, and an individual's travel potential. We recommend that impacts on socio-spatial behaviour are considered prior to the implementation of management interventions.

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