What Are Sheep Doing? Tri-Axial Accelerometer Sensor Data Identify the Diel Activity Pattern of Ewe Lambs on Pasture

Monitoring activity patterns of animals offers the opportunity to assess individual health and welfare in support of precision livestock farming. The purpose of this study was to use a triaxial accelerometer sensor to determine the diel activity of sheep on pasture. Six Perendale ewe lambs, each fitted with a neck collar mounting a triaxial accelerometer, were filmed during targeted periods of sheep activities: grazing, lying, walking, and standing. The corresponding acceleration data were fitted using a Random Forest algorithm to classify activity (=classifier). This classifier was then applied to accelerometer data from an additional 10 ewe lambs to determine their activity budgets. Each of these was fitted with a neck collar mounting an accelerometer as well as two additional accelerometers placed on a head halter and a body harness over the shoulders of the animal. These were monitored continuously for three days. A classification accuracy of 89.6% was achieved for the grazing, walking and resting activities (i.e., a new class combining lying and standing activity). Triaxial accelerometer data showed that sheep spent 64% (95% CI 55% to 74%) of daylight time grazing, with grazing at night reduced to 14% (95% CI 8% to 20%). Similar activity budgets were achieved from the halter mounted sensors, but not those on a body harness. These results are consistent with previous studies directly observing daily activity of pasture-based sheep and can be applied in a variety of contexts to investigate animal health and welfare metrics e.g., to better understand the impact that young sheep can suffer when carrying even modest burdens of parasitic nematodes.

Movement of Rehabilitated African Elephant Calves Following Soft Release Into a Wildlife Sanctuary

The ability to locate essential resources is a critical step for wildlife translocated into novel environments. Understanding this process of exploration is highly desirable for management that seeks to resettle wildlife, particularly as translocation projects tend to be expensive and have a high potential for failure. African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) are very mobile and rely on large areas especially in arid environments, and are translocated for differing management and conservation objectives. Thus, research into how translocated elephants use the landscape when released may both guide elephant managers and be useful for translocations of other species that adjust their movement to social and ecological conditions. In this study, we investigated the movement of eight GPS tracked calves (translocated in three cohorts) following their soft release into a 107 km2 fenced wildlife sanctuary in northern Kenya and compared their movement with that of five tracked wild elephants in the sanctuary. We describe their exploration of the sanctuary, discovery of water points, and activity budgets during the first seven, 14, and 20 months after release. We explored how patterns are affected by time since release, ecological conditions, and social factors. We found that calves visited new areas of the sanctuary and water points during greener periods and earlier post-release. Social context was associated with exploration, with later release and association with wild elephants predictive of visits to new areas. Wild elephants tended to use a greater number of sites per 14-day period than the released calves. Activity budgets determined from hidden Markov models (including the states directed walk, encamped, and meandering) suggested that released calves differed from wild elephants. The first two cohorts of calves spent a significantly greater proportion of time in the directed walk state and a significantly lower proportion of time in the encamped state relative to the wild elephants. Our results represent a step forward in describing the movements of elephant orphan calves released to the wild following a period of profound social disruption when they lost their natal family and were rehabilitated with other orphan calves under human care. We discuss the implications of the elephant behavior we observed for improving release procedures and for defining success benchmarks for translocation projects.

Animal-borne acoustic data alone can provide high accuracy classification of activity budgets

Background Studies on animal behaviour often involve the quantification of the occurrence and duration of various activities. When direct observations are challenging (e.g., at night, in a burrow, at sea), animal-borne devices can be used to remotely record the movement and behaviour of an animal (e.g., changing body posture and movement, geographical position) and/or its immediate surrounding environment (e.g., wet or dry, pressure, temperature, light). Changes in these recorded variables are related to different activities undertaken by the animal. Here we explored the use of animal-borne acoustic recorders to automatically infer activities in seabirds. Results We deployed acoustic recorders on Cape gannets and analysed sound data from 10 foraging trips. The different activities (flying, floating on water and diving) were associated with clearly distinguishable acoustic features. We developed a method to automatically identify the activities of equipped individuals, exclusively from animal-borne acoustic data. A random subset of four foraging trips was manually labelled and used to train a classification algorithm (k-nearest neighbour model). The algorithm correctly classified activities with a global accuracy of 98.46%. The model was then used to automatically assess the activity budgets on the remaining non-labelled data, as an illustrative example. In addition, we conducted a systematic review of studies that have previously used data from animal-borne devices to automatically classify animal behaviour (n = 61 classifications from 54 articles). The majority of studies (82%) used accelerometers (alone or in combination with other sensors, such as gyroscopes or magnetometers) for classifying activities, and to a lesser extent GPS, acoustic recorders or pressure sensors, all potentially providing a good accuracy of classification (> 90%). Conclusion This article demonstrates that acoustic data alone can be used to reconstruct activity budgets with very good accuracy. In addition to the animal’s activity, acoustic devices record the environment of equipped animals (biophony, geophony, anthropophony) that can be essential to contextualise the behaviour of animals. They hence provide a valuable alternative to the set of tools available to assess animals’ behaviours and activities in the wild.

Akuntabilitas Kinerja Bidang Pertamanan DISPERKIM Kota Malang dalam Mewujudkan Good Governance

The purpose of this paper is to describe the embodiment of performance accountability in DISPERKIM Parks Sector, Malang City. This paper is also based on the development concept of performance measurement from Speklé & Verbeeten (2014) through three indicators of operational use, incentive use, and explanatory use. The results of this study are: a) Operational use: in organizational operational planning and preparation of budget allocations is strongly influenced by institutional restructuring and the influence of regional heads in determining bureaucratic efficiency; b) Incentive use: the number of employees namely 214 people can only reach the target of 78.45%, so it’s not surprising that Malang City still receives accountability reports in the BB category; and c) Explanatory use: in the formulation of strategy and communication’s goal, the head of the department and the chief of sector are only limited to reviewing every quarter only, meaning there is no subordinate involvement in the formulation of strategy. For strategy and learning management it’s known that Parks Sector minimizes program and activity budgets, so that it’s used as a reference in observing budget absorption

Size is not everything: differing activity and foraging patterns between the sexes in a monomorphic mammal

Animals balance foraging with other activities, and activity patterns may differ between sexes due to differing physical requirements and reproductive investments. Sex-specific behavioural differences are common in sexually dimorphic mammals, but have received limited research attention in monomorphic mammals where the sexes are similar in body size. Eurasian beavers (Castor fiber) are obligate monogamous and monomorphic mammals and a good model species to study sex-specific differences. As females increase energy expenditure during reproduction, we hypothesized differing seasonal activity budgets, circadian activity rhythms and foraging patterns between male and reproducing female beavers. To test this hypothesis, we equipped adult beavers with VHF transmitters (N=41; 16 female, 25 male) and observed them throughout their active period at night from spring to late summer. Occurrence of their main activities (foraging, travelling and being in lodge) and use of food items (trees/shrubs, aquatic vegetation and herbs/grasses) were modelled to investigate sex-specific seasonal activity budgets and circadian activity rhythms. The sexes did not differ in time spent foraging across the season or night, but during spring, females resided more in the lodge and travelled less. Males and females both foraged on aquatic vegetation during spring, but females used this food source also during late summer, whereas males mostly foraged on trees/shrubs throughout the year. We conclude that seasonal activity budgets and foraging differ subtly between the sexes, which may relate to different energy budgets associated with reproduction and nutritional requirements. Such subtle seasonal behavioural adaptions may be vital for survival and reproduction of monomorphic species. Significance statement Activity budgets and foraging patterns of animals are key to their survival and may differ between males and females with different body sizes and physical requirements. In monomorphic species, where males and females have similar body sizes, fewer differences are expected, but may still be pronounced during certain times of the year. We modelled sex-specific seasonal activity budgets and circadian activity rhythms and use of food items in a monomorphic mammal, the Eurasian beaver. By treating season and time of day as a continuous variable rather than modelling differences within distinct predefined periods, we identified subtle sex-specific seasonal trends in activity budgets and use of food items.

Life on the edge: behavioural and physiological responses of Verreaux's sifakas (<i>Propithecus verreauxi</i>) to forest edges

Forest edges change micro-environmental conditions, thereby affecting the ecology of many forest-dwelling species. Understanding such edge effects is particularly important for Malagasy primates because many of them live in highly fragmented forests today. The aim of our study was to assess the influence of forest edge effects on activity budgets, feeding ecology, and stress hormone output (measured as faecal glucocorticoid metabolite – fGCM – levels) in wild Verreaux's sifakas (Propithecus verreauxi), a group living, arboreal lemur. We observed five habituated groups: three living in the forest interior and two at an established forest edge. There was no difference in average daily temperatures between edge and interior habitats; however, within the edge site, the average daily temperature incrementally increased over 450 m from the forest edge towards the interior forest of the edge habitat, and the population density was lower at the edge site. Activity budgets differed between groups living in the two microhabitats, with individuals living near the edge spending more time travelling and less time feeding. Groups living near the edge also tended to have smaller home ranges and core areas than groups in the forest interior. In addition, edge groups had elevated average fGCM concentrations, and birth rates were lower for females living in the edge habitat. Combined with lower levels of fruit consumption at the edge, these results suggest that nutritional stress might be a limiting factor for Verreaux's sifakas when living near a forest edge. Hence, Verreaux's sifakas appear to be sensitive to microhabitat characteristics linked to forest edges; a result with implications for the conservation of this critically endangered lemurid species.