scholarly journals Does an Animal–Visitor Interactive Experience Drive Conservation Action?

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-486
Author(s):  
Courtney Keane Collins ◽  
Sean McKeown ◽  
Ruth O’Riordan

Inspiring visitors to engage in conservation-related behaviour following a zoo visit is a primary objective for most zoos. Animal–visitor interactive (AVI) experiences are often central to this goal. Yet, these interactive experiences are insufficiently evaluated from both the visitors’ and captive animals’ perspectives. The current study took place at Fota Wildlife Park and involved the construction of an environmental enrichment device during an interactive visitor experience with Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae). It aimed to simultaneously encourage pro-conservation behaviour in visitors and promote animal welfare. Visitors (n = 51) completed a survey, observed the tigers’ behaviour and made a pledge to help tigers in the wild after completion of the AVI. Tiger behaviour was simultaneously observed by a trained researcher using occurrence or non-occurrence sampling, which found no indication that tiger welfare was compromised during the activity and was likely enhanced by engaging with the enrichment. Additionally, visitors observed a range of tigers’ behaviours. The results indicated that some visitors (8%) had continued with their pledge six weeks after the experience, and most visitors exhibited a high level of knowledge and a positive attitude towards tigers. The use of enrichment during AVIs may be a positive link between the visitor experience and animal welfare. These results can be used to guide AVIs in zoos which aim to connect people with nature and drive pro-conservation behaviour in visitors.

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1971
Author(s):  
Marina Salas ◽  
Daan W. Laméris ◽  
Arno Depoortere ◽  
Lise Plessers ◽  
Jonas Verspeek

Decisions on environmental enrichment programmes are sometimes based on the assumption that non-natural or artificial looking items negatively affect visitor experiences. In this study, we developed a questionnaire to assess zoo visitor attitudes towards enrichment appearance in an outdoor walk-through enclosure for ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta). Naturalistic and artificial looking enrichment items were alternately provided in the enclosure. A total of 371 visitors filled out the questionnaire: 174 in the naturalistic and 197 in the artificial conditions. Both researchers and visitors conducted behavioural observations of the lemurs. Our results suggest that the appearance of the items did not have an effect on visitor attitudes and that visitors recognised both naturalistic and artificial items as enriching for the animals. Moreover, the behaviour and visibility of the lemurs had a greater effect on the visitors’ attitudes. We suggest that during the design of enrichment items, less concern should be placed on the appearance of the items and more on their effect on animal behaviour. Ultimately, this would improve both animal welfare in captivity and the visitor experience.


Genes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 618
Author(s):  
Yue Jin ◽  
Shihao Li ◽  
Yang Yu ◽  
Chengsong Zhang ◽  
Xiaojun Zhang ◽  
...  

A mutant of the ridgetail white prawn, which exhibited rare orange-red body color with a higher level of free astaxanthin (ASTX) concentration than that in the wild-type prawn, was obtained in our lab. In order to understand the underlying mechanism for the existence of a high level of free astaxanthin, transcriptome analysis was performed to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the mutant and wild-type prawns. A total of 78,224 unigenes were obtained, and 1863 were identified as DEGs, in which 902 unigenes showed higher expression levels, while 961 unigenes presented lower expression levels in the mutant in comparison with the wild-type prawns. Based on Gene Ontology analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis, as well as further investigation of annotated DEGs, we found that the biological processes related to astaxanthin binding, transport, and metabolism presented significant differences between the mutant and the wild-type prawns. Some genes related to these processes, including crustacyanin, apolipoprotein D (ApoD), cathepsin, and cuticle proteins, were identified as DEGs between the two types of prawns. These data may provide important information for us to understand the molecular mechanism of the existence of a high level of free astaxanthin in the prawn.


Geomatics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-49
Author(s):  
Mael Moreni ◽  
Jerome Theau ◽  
Samuel Foucher

The combination of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) with deep learning models has the capacity to replace manned aircrafts for wildlife surveys. However, the scarcity of animals in the wild often leads to highly unbalanced, large datasets for which even a good detection method can return a large amount of false detections. Our objectives in this paper were to design a training method that would reduce training time, decrease the number of false positives and alleviate the fine-tuning effort of an image classifier in a context of animal surveys. We acquired two highly unbalanced datasets of deer images with a UAV and trained a Resnet-18 classifier using hard-negative mining and a series of recent techniques. Our method achieved sub-decimal false positive rates on two test sets (1 false positive per 19,162 and 213,312 negatives respectively), while training on small but relevant fractions of the data. The resulting training times were therefore significantly shorter than they would have been using the whole datasets. This high level of efficiency was achieved with little tuning effort and using simple techniques. We believe this parsimonious approach to dealing with highly unbalanced, large datasets could be particularly useful to projects with either limited resources or extremely large datasets.


Oryx ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abishek Harihar ◽  
Mousumi Ghosh-Harihar ◽  
Douglas C. MacMillan

AbstractMeeting global and regional environmental targets is challenging, given the multiplicity of stakeholders and their diverse and often competing policy agendas and objectives. Relatively few studies have sought to systematically analyse the progress, or lack thereof, of institutionally complex and diffuse projects. Here we analyse one such project, which aims to protect and restore a critical landscape corridor for tigers Panthera tigris in north-western India, using a temporal–analytic framework that integrates ecological information on species population status and spatial connectivity modelling with a systematic examination of the decision-making process. We find that even with adequate ecological knowledge the tiger population is on the verge of local extinction because of weak institutional support, poor adaptive planning and ineffective leadership in a complex political arena, which has led to delays in conservation action. From the outset the conservation agencies and NGOs that were the primary drivers of the project lacked awareness of the political idiosyncrasies of coordinating the actions of disparate agencies within the decision-making process. To secure better future environmental outcomes we recommend the adoption of an improved project appraisal methodology that explicitly encompasses an evaluation of organizational incentives, to determine political buy-in, including alignment with organizational objectives and funding availability.


2006 ◽  
Vol 72 (6) ◽  
pp. 3924-3932 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Lys�e ◽  
Sonja S. Klemsdal ◽  
Karen R. Bone ◽  
Rasmus J. N. Frandsen ◽  
Thomas Johansen ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Zearalenones are produced by several Fusarium species and can cause reproductive problems in animals. Some aurofusarin mutants of Fusarium pseudograminearum produce elevated levels of zearalenone (ZON), one of the estrogenic mycotoxins comprising the zearalenones. An analysis of transcripts from polyketide synthase genes identified in the Fusarium graminearum database was carried out for these mutants. PKS4 was the only gene with an enoyl reductase domain that had a higher level of transcription in the aurofusarin mutants than in the wild type. An Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation protocol was used to replace the central part of the PKS4 gene with a hygB resistance gene through double homologous recombination in an F. graminearum strain producing a high level of ZON. PCR and Southern analysis of transformants were used to identify isolates with single insertional replacements of PKS4. High-performance liquid chromatography analysis showed that the PKS4 replacement mutant did not produce ZON. Thus, PKS4 encodes an enzyme required for the production of ZON in F. graminearum. Barley root infection studies revealed no alteration in the pathogenicity of the PKS4 mutant compared to the pathogenicity of the wild type. The expression of PKS13, which is located in the same cluster as PKS4, decreased dramatically in the mutant, while transcription of PKS4 was unchanged. This differential expression may indicate that ZON or its derivatives do not regulate expression of PKS4 and that the PKS4-encoded protein or its product stimulates expression of PKS13. Furthermore, both the lack of aurofusarin and ZON influenced the expression of other polyketide synthases, demonstrating that one polyketide can influence the expression of others.


Author(s):  
Oksana Yakymchuk

The formation of a powerful, active, and dynamic axiological foundation of personality is one of the essential tasks of the competency approach because even a high level of knowledge and skills acquired in the process of learning and education cannot ensure the integrity and progressively oriented unity of personal and professional competencies for future successful life, socio-cultural and professional self-realization. Given this, within the competence paradigm of education, qualitatively new content is the unity of learning and education. If before a significant amount of theoretical knowledge, detached from real life, had a shallow educational potential, now any pedagogical action, even focused on the cognitive assimilation of basic scientific knowledge, will have a worldview. An essential characteristic of the competency approach in education is that it can ensure each student’s unique structure the unity of knowledge, competencies, and values.


Author(s):  
M. Pirie ◽  
W. J. Coetsee

The primary objective of this study was to assess whether there is a relationship between increasing levels of knowledge about HIV/AIDS and perceptions of discriminatory attitudes and behaviour towards people with HIV/AIDS. Employees (3662) from a large accounting firm were exposed to a survey and a response rate of 41% or 1532 was received. The secondary objective of the study was to determine whether there were any statistically significant differences in the mean difference of knowledge scores of groups created in terms of the different biographical variables. ANOVA’S (to determine the significance of differences between the means), t-tests (two groups only) and F-statistics were used for the analysis. Given the large sample size an F-test is not conclusive and the effect of the difference in sample size needs to be taken into account. For this reason it was also necessary to look at the Partial Eta Squared. Results indicate that respondents are generally knowledgeable about the prevention and transmission of HIV/AIDS and that respondents’ level of knowledge correlates negatively with discriminatory practices.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Duan ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Minghui Tang ◽  
Feng Gao ◽  
Xudong Lin

Identifying the phenotypes and interactions of various cells is the primary objective in cellular heterogeneity dissection. A key step of this methodology is to perform unsupervised clustering, which, however, often suffers challenges of the high level of noise, as well as redundant information. To overcome the limitations, we proposed self-diffusion on local scaling affinity (LSSD) to enhance cell similarities’ metric learning for dissecting cellular heterogeneity. Local scaling infers the self-tuning of cell-to-cell distances that are used to construct cell affinity. Our approach implements the self-diffusion process by propagating the affinity matrices to further improve the cell similarities for the downstream clustering analysis. To demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness, we applied LSSD on two simulated and four real scRNA-seq datasets. Comparing with other single-cell clustering methods, our approach demonstrates much better clustering performance, and cell types identified on colorectal tumors reveal strongly biological interpretability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (Volume 1 No 1) ◽  
pp. 71-79
Author(s):  
Sri Sarwendah ◽  
Syarif Suwondo ◽  
Irena Nisa Harliani

ABSTRACT Universal precautions are one way to prevent the transmission of disease, which is transmitted by blood and all body fluids, including saliva, either from the patient to health worker and from patient to another patient. Patients should be treated as infected with the disease and potentially infectious every time. This action should be done by all health care staff in the risk of cross-infection between patients, and health workers can be minimized. Basic universal precautions include immunization, hand washing, personal protective equipment, medical equipment management, and hospital waste management. This study aims to describe the level of knowledge about universal precautions in postgraduate students Faculty of Dentistry Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani Cimahi (Unjani). This study used a descriptive design by cross-sectional. Collection data for research using a questionnaire containing 20 questions tested for validity and reliability, then a questionnaire filled out by respondents as many as 40 people. Presentation of research data is processed and presented to illustrate the level of knowledge in postgraduate students of frequency distribution table. The results showed that most of postgraduate students has a high knowledge (60%), postgraduate students with a moderate level of knowledge (27.5%), and postgraduate students with the knowledge that a low level (12.5%). Conclusions of the research showed that the majority postgraduate students about universal precaution is at a high level.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Budi Herminto ◽  
Risa Setia Ismandani

AbstractWater represent compound which is the necessary for all living. Consumption behaviorirrigate society not yet altogether goodness, society consume water when feel thirsty anddo not so pay attention drinking water and amount matching with requirement. Purpose ofthe study to determine the relationship between the knowledge level about fluid bodyrequirement with pattern consume drinking water at student in Academy of Nursing PantiKosala Surakarta.The subject was used as population in the study was all the first year students. The totalpopulation were 139 students, and the sample were 103 students. The samplingtechnique was simple random sampling.This research method represent analytic research with design research of corelasional toknow relationship between knowledge level about fluid body requirement with patternconsume drinking water of student.The results was the high level of knowledge about the fluid body requirment were 74(72%), moderate level of knowledge about the fluid body requirment were 29 (28%), whilethe behavior of consuming appropiate water were 69 (67%), and the behavior ofconsuming inappropiate water were 34 (33%) with a p-value 0.003 <0.05 significant 95%.There was a significant relationship between the knowledge level about fluid bodyrequirement with pattern consume drinking water at student in Academy of Nursing PantiKosala Surakarta.Keywords: knowlegde level, fluid body requirement, pattern consume drinking water.


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