Knowledge about the environment is fundamentally important to move, find resources and forage efficiently. This information can either be acquired through individual exploration (personal information) or from other group members (social information). We experimentally assessed the use of social information and its influence on foraging efficiency in sheep, Ovis aries. Naïve individuals paired with an informed partner that knew the food patch location, found the patch significantly faster compared to naïve individuals paired with another naïve individual. Similarly, they spent a significantly lower proportion of time exploring areas away from the food patch. We further found that the outcome of using social information in one directly previous trial (success = access to feed vs failure = no access to feed) had no impact and sheep continued to use social information in the subsequent foraging trial and foraged similarly efficient. Our results suggest, naïve sheep that are unfamiliar with resource locations, forage more efficiently when informed individuals are present compared to when all individuals are naïve. If informed individuals play a similar role in larger groups, new management practices that integrate informed sheep could be developed to improve foraging efficiency when sheep are moved to new paddocks or in paddocks with heterogenous and dynamic resource distribution.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2024.104994 | DOI Listing |
Biol Aujourdhui
January 2025
Institut d'Écologie et des Sciences de l'Environnement de Paris (iEES Paris), Paris, France - Sorbonne Université, 4 place Jussieu, 75005 Paris, France.
The evolutionary success of angiosperms, which make up more than 95 percent of the world's terrestrial flora, is largely based on their interactions with animal pollinators. Indeed, it is estimated that, on average, 87.5 percent of flowering plants are pollinated by animals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhysiol Plant
January 2025
College of Grassland Science and Technology, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China.
The gene GAD1 encodes a glutamate decarboxylase, which is a rate-limiting enzyme for the biosynthesis of endogenous γ-aminobutyrate acid (GABA), but a potential role of GAD1 in regulating cadmium (Cd) tolerance needs to be further elucidated in plants. The objective of this study was to investigate Cd tolerance of creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera) and transgenic yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) or Arabidopsis thaliana overexpressing AsGAD1. The Cd-tolerant creeping bentgrass cultivar LOFTSL-93 accumulated more endogenous GABA in relation to a significant upregulation of AsGAD1 in leaf and root than the Cd-sensitive W66569 in response to Cd stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Anim Ecol
January 2025
Environmental Defense Fund, Seattle, Washington, USA.
For similar species to co-occur in places where resources are limited, they need to adopt strategies that partition resources to reduce competition. Our understanding of the mechanisms behind resource partitioning among sympatric marine predators is evolving, but we lack a clear understanding of how environmental change is impacting these dynamics. We investigated spatial and trophic resource partitioning among three sympatric seabirds with contrasting biological characteristics: greater crested terns Thalasseus bergii (efficient flyer, limited diver, and preference for high quality forage fish), little penguins Eudyptula minor (flightless, efficient diver, and preference for high quality forage fish) and silver gulls Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae (efficient flyer, limited diver and generalist diet).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlants (Basel)
January 2025
Key Laboratory of Efficient Forage Production Mode, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affair, College of Grassland Science, Shanxi Agricultural University, Jinzhong 030801, China.
Grassland degradation is a serious ecological issue in the farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China. Utilizing native grasses for the restoration of degraded grasslands is an effective technological approach. is a superior indigenous grass species for grassland ecological restoration in northern China.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSensors (Basel)
January 2025
Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória 29075-910, ES, Brazil.
The increasing demand for autonomous mobile robots in complex environments calls for efficient path-planning algorithms. Bio-inspired algorithms effectively address intricate optimization challenges, but their computational cost increases with the number of particles, which is great when implementing algorithms of high accuracy. To address such topics, this paper explores the application of the leader-based bat algorithm (LBBA), an enhancement of the traditional bat algorithm (BA).
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