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Animal Vigilance

Monitoring Predators and Competitors

  • 1st Edition - June 29, 2015
  • Latest edition
  • Author: Guy Beauchamp
  • Language: English

Animal Vigilance builds on the author’s previous publication with Academic Press (Social Predation: How Group Living Benefits Predators and Prey) by developing several other th… Read more

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Description

Animal Vigilance builds on the author’s previous publication with Academic Press (Social Predation: How Group Living Benefits Predators and Prey) by developing several other themes including the development and mechanisms underlying vigilance, as well as developing more fully the evolution and function of vigilance.

Animal vigilance has been at the forefront of research on animal behavior for many years, but no comprehensive review of this topic has existed. Students of animal behavior have focused on many aspects of animal vigilance, from models of its adaptive value to empirical research in the laboratory and in the field. The vast literature on vigilance is widely dispersed with often little contact between models and empirical work and between researchers focusing on different taxa such as birds and mammals. Animal Vigilance fills this gap in the available material.

Key features

  • Tackles vigilance from all angles, theoretical and empirical, while including the broadest range of species to underscore unifying themes
  • Discusses several newer developments in the area, such as vigilance copying and effect of food density
  • Highlights recent challenges to assumptions of traditional models of vigilance, such as the assumption that vigilance is independent among group members, which is reviewed during discussion of synchronization and coordination of vigilance in a group
  • Written by a top expert in animal vigilance

Readership

advanced undergraduates and graduate students in animal behavior, biology and behavioral ecology, and faculty and researchers interested in vigilance

Table of contents

  • Preface
  • Chapter 1: Overview of Animal Vigilance
    • Abstract
    • 1.1. Introduction
    • 1.2. Definition and measurements
    • 1.3. A history of vigilance
    • 1.4. Research themes
    • 1.5. Conclusions
  • Chapter 2: Function of Animal Vigilance
    • Abstract
    • 2.1. Introduction
    • 2.2. Types of threats
    • 2.3. Monitoring competitors
    • 2.4. Monitoring predators
    • 2.5. Advertising to predators
    • 2.6. Conclusions
  • Chapter 3: Causation, Development and Evolution of Animal Vigilance
    • Abstract
    • 3.1. Introduction
    • 3.2. Causation
    • 3.3. Development of animal vigilance
    • 3.4. Evolutionary origin of animal vigilance
    • 3.5. Conclusions
  • Chapter 4: Drivers of Animal Vigilance
    • Abstract
    • 4.1. Introduction
    • 4.2. Drivers associated with social risk
    • 4.3. Drivers associated with predation risk
    • 4.4. Drivers of vigilance associated with food or state
    • 4.5. Individual differences
    • 4.6. Conclusions
  • Chapter 5: Animal Vigilance and Group Size: Theory
    • Abstract
    • 5.1. Introduction
    • 5.2. Predation risk and group size
    • 5.3. Models of animal vigilance in groups
    • 5.4. Validity of the assumptions
    • 5.5. Conclusions
  • Chapter 6: Animal Vigilance and Group Size: Empirical Findings
    • Abstract
    • 6.1. Introduction
    • 6.2. Meta-analysis
    • 6.3. Why vigilance fails to decrease with group size?
    • 6.4. Why the magnitude of the group-size effect varies?
    • 6.5. Alternative hypotheses to explain the group-size effect on vigilance
    • 6.6. Conclusions
  • Chapter 7: Synchronization and Coordination of Animal Vigilance
    • Abstract
    • 7.1. Introduction
    • 7.2. Synchronization of vigilance
    • 7.3. Coordination of vigilance
    • 7.4. Sentinel behaviour
    • 7.5. Conclusions
  • Chapter 8: Applied Vigilance
    • Abstract
    • 8.1. Introduction
    • 8.2. Vigilance and flight initiation distance
    • 8.3. Vigilance in disturbed habitats
    • 8.4. Vigilance when predation risk is relaxed
    • 8.5. Vigilance at night
    • 8.6. Vigilance in mixed-species groups
    • 8.7. Conclusions
  • Conclusions
  • References
  • Subject Index

Review quotes

"This is the first book devoted to this thriving field of biology...This volume goes beyond capturing the current state of the field and encourages the field to grow in new directions…I highly recommend this book both as an entry point to the vast literature and as a discussion starter for new research."—The Quarterly Review of Biology

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: July 8, 2015
  • Language: English

About the author

GB

Guy Beauchamp

Guy Beauchamp is a behavioural ecologist specializing on social foraging in birds. He has written over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has been studying sandpipers for the last 10 years. He currently works as a research officer at the Veterinary College of the University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Affiliations and expertise
Veterinary College, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada

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