Blinking behavior in great‐tailed grackles (<i>Quiscalus mexicanus</i>) increases during simulated rainfall

Yorzinski, Jessica L.

doi:10.1111/eth.13003

“…Although we conducted our sampling in the field, this could be done using video footage. Being able to analyze video footage means that information about blink duration can also be collected, and previous studies have demonstrated that this additional metric can also vary between individuals and species (Beauchamp, 2017; Matsumoto‐Oda et al, 2018; Rands, 2021; Tada et al, 2013; Yorzinski, 2020a; Yorzinski & Argubright, 2019), and may increase in relation to group size (Beauchamp, 2017). From a field observation perspective, being able to zoom in on detail may also be extremely useful if the observed individuals are a long distance away (as we acknowledge we were lucky with being able to get within 100 m of our sample animals).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Red deerCervus elaphusblink more in larger groups

Rowe

¹

,

Robins

²

,

Rands

³

2023

Ecology and Evolution

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Most animals need to spend time being vigilant for predators, at the expense of other activities such as foraging. Group-living animals can benefit from the shared vigilance effort of other group members, with individuals reducing personal vigilance effort as group size increases. Behaviors like active scanning or head lifting are usually used to quantify vigilance but may not be accurate measures of this. We suggest that measuring an animal's blinking rate gives a meaningful measure of vigilance: increased blinking implies reduced vigilance, as the animal cannot detect predators when its eyes are closed. We describe an observational study of a captive population of red deer, where we measured the blinking rates of individual deer from groups of differing sizes (where mean group size ranged between 1 and 42.7 individuals). We demonstrate that as group size increases in red deer, individuals increase their blink rate, confirming the prediction that vigilance should decrease. Blinking is a simple non-invasive measure and offers a useful metric for assessing the welfare of animals experiencing an increase in perceived predation risk or other stressors.

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“…Little is known about how blinking differs between species, and more detailed comparative studies comparing the behaviour both between and within species are needed, with larger sample sizes taken within species (as the current data were based on observations of between one and five individuals in captive conditions, which could conceivably mean that some of the results used were atypical for a species). This would need to be done using a suitably standardised technique ( Tada et al, 2013 ) to allow comparison between species, as blinking behaviour is likely to be affected by environmental conditions ( Nakamori et al, 1997 ; Yorzinski & Argubright, 2019 ; Yorzinski, 2020a ). The reanalysis presented here highlights that care needs to be taken when considering data from related species, and that phylogenetically-controlled correlations may exist with ecological data from existing datasets.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phylogenetically-controlled correlates of primate blinking behaviour

Rands

¹

2021

PeerJ

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Eye blinking is an essential maintenance behaviour for many terrestrial animals, but is also a risky behaviour as the animal is unable to scan the environment and detect hazards while its eyes are temporarily closed. It is therefore likely that the length of time that the eyes are closed and the length of the gap between blinks for a species may reflect aspects of the ecology of that species, such as its social or physical environment. An earlier published study conducted a comparative study linking blinking behaviour and ecology, and detailed a dataset describing the blinking behaviour of a large number of primate species that was collected from captive animals, but the analysis presented did not control for the nonindependence of the data due to common evolutionary history. In the present study, the dataset is reanalysed using phylogenetic comparative methods, after reconsideration of the parameters describing the physical and social environments of the species. I find that blink rate is best described by the locomotion mode of a species, where species moving through arboreal environments blink least, ground-living species blink most, and species that use both environments show intermediate rates. The duration of a blink was also related to locomotion mode, and positively correlated with both mean species group size and mean species body mass, although the increase in relation to group size is small. How a species moves through the environment therefore appears to be important for determining blinking behaviour, and suggests that complex arboreal environments may require less interruption to visual attention. Given that the data were collected with captive individuals, caution is recommended for interpreting the correlations found.

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“…This would need to be done using a suitably standardised technique (e.g. (Tada et al, 2013)) to allow comparison between species, as blinking behaviour is likely to be affected by environmental conditions (Nakamori et al, 1997;Yorzinski and Argubright, 2019;Yorzinski, 2020a).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peer Review #1 of "Phylogenetically-controlled correlates of primate blinking behaviour (v0.2)"

2021

0

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Eye blinking is an essential maintenance behaviour for many terrestrial animals, but is also a risky behaviour as the animal is unable to scan the environment and detect hazards while its eyes are temporarily closed. It is therefore likely that the length of time that the eyes are closed and the length of the gap between blinks for a species may reflect aspects of the ecology of that species, such as its social or physical environment. An earlier published study conducted a comparative study linking blinking behaviour and ecology, and detailed a dataset describing the blinking behaviour of a large number of primate species that was collected from captive animals, but the analysis presented did not control for the nonindependence of the data due to common evolutionary history. In the present study, the dataset is reanalysed using phylogenetic comparative methods, after reconsideration of the parameters describing the physical and social environments of the species. I find that blink rate is best described by the locomotion mode of a species, where species moving through arboreal environments blink least, ground-living species blink most, and species that use both environments show intermediate rates. The duration of a blink was also related to locomotion mode, and positively correlated with both mean species group size and mean species body mass, although the increase in relation to group size is small. How a species moves through the environment therefore appears to be important for determining blinking behaviour, and suggests that complex arboreal environments may require less interruption to visual attention. Given that the data were collected with captive individuals, caution is recommended for interpreting the correlations found.

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Blinking behavior in great‐tailed grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus) increases during simulated rainfall

Cited by 9 publications

References 40 publications

Red deerCervus elaphusblink more in larger groups

Red deerCervus elaphusblink more in larger groups

Phylogenetically-controlled correlates of primate blinking behaviour

Peer Review #1 of "Phylogenetically-controlled correlates of primate blinking behaviour (v0.2)"

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