Serious games to study the influence of wildlife devaluation strategies on hunter behaviour

<p>The international illegal wildlife trade (IWT) threatens countless species globally. Many solutions to the IWT have been proposed and implemented, the most common being increased security. However, security on its own has been ineffective at protecting all wildlife. Wildlife commodity devaluation strategies have also been proposed and trialled as a complement or substitute to security. The strategy has primarily been applied to protect rhinoceros populations by, for example, dehorning them. The apparently logical expectation is that reducing the value of rhinos’ horns will discourage hunters and protect rhino. Either hunters will choose not to hunt a population with devalued animals or choose not to kill one when it is found. Unexpectedly, however, theory and anecdotal evidence suggest that devaluation might fail, and may even encourage hunting and the killing of devalued animals. This apparently illogical outcome is the subject of this thesis. Games and choice-based surveying were used to study the behaviour of people hunting a commodity for financial gain. These methods were used to understand why devaluation strategies might fail to protect wildlife and to understand when they might be beneficial. Two games and a choice-based survey posing different hunting scenarios were developed to measure hunter behaviour and test hunters’ responses to risk, value and devaluation. Lucky-dip games were rapid, highly replicated games used to test the impact of variation in devaluation and security strategies across multiple populations. Thirty-three lucky-dip games were conducted, each with ten members of the public participating. They were conducted at community events (e.g. fairs and galas) across Wellington Region in February and March of 2018. Scavenger-hunt games, to elicit more complex behaviours and interactions among participants, were conducted over a longer time and larger area but were, therefore, also less replicated. Four of these games were conducted with between 8-20 members of outdoor recreation clubs. They were conducted at public parks across Wellington Region throughout 2018. And lastly, an online scenario choice-based survey presented members of recreational hunting clubs with hypothetical scenarios where the value and likelihood of a successful hunt varied. The survey was distributed through hunting organisations and received 333 responses. The three research methods presented similar scenarios but used different formats to test my ideas among a diverse population of people. Each method involved participants hunting protected items that varied in value with some items having been devalued. Measuring for the trade-offs that people make between risk and reward when making hunting decisions, including choices about where to hunt, whether to kill and, if they did, whether to harvest a commodity, was of particular interest. Devaluation failed to protect commodities and increase commodity survival. In both games, hunters chose to ‘kill’ devalued commodities. Of the devalued items located by hunters, 74% and 100% were ‘killed’ in the lucky-dip and scavenger-hunt games, respectively. This appears to be because risk increased people’s perceived value of partially devalued commodities. Low-risk lucky-dip games resulted in 44% more devalued items being kept by participants compared to high-risk games. Additionally, devaluation reduced people’s perceptions of risk. Compared to lucky-dip games with just risk, games that included devaluation caused a 10% drop in survival at the highest-risk treatment. Moreover, when devalued commodities were worthless in the lucky-dip games, 27% more were ‘killed’ compared to when devalued commodities were worth 25% of the full-value commodity. Therefore, contrary to expectations, partial devaluation may be more successful than complete devaluation. Greater rates of devaluation were also met with greater variation in commodity survival between games. Coefficients of variation for commodity survival increased from 12% to 41% as devaluation rates increased from zero to 100%. Moreover, respondents to the survey ranked the most devalued population (90%) highest 36% of the time, but also lowest 35% of the time. Thus, peoples’ responses to devaluation vary. Risk was a more effective and consistent regulator of hunting behaviour. Average commodity survival was 88% at maximum security treatments but was only 65% at maximum devaluation treatments. My experimental games and surveys do not support the expectation that reducing the value of rhinos’ horns will discourage hunters and protect rhino. The IWT is a complex socio-economic system, and human behaviour is varied in response to risk and reward. Devaluation introduces a complex interaction between the two, rendering risk and devaluation less effective in some circumstances. Every population and situation is unique, and the effectiveness of devaluation will be context-specific. Finally, the research demonstrates that serious games can be applied to the study of criminal hunting behaviour. Other difficult-to-study human subjects and systems could benefit from greater use of similar methodologies.</p>

Serious games to study the influence of wildlife devaluation strategies on hunter behaviour

<p>The international illegal wildlife trade (IWT) threatens countless species globally. Many solutions to the IWT have been proposed and implemented, the most common being increased security. However, security on its own has been ineffective at protecting all wildlife. Wildlife commodity devaluation strategies have also been proposed and trialled as a complement or substitute to security. The strategy has primarily been applied to protect rhinoceros populations by, for example, dehorning them. The apparently logical expectation is that reducing the value of rhinos’ horns will discourage hunters and protect rhino. Either hunters will choose not to hunt a population with devalued animals or choose not to kill one when it is found. Unexpectedly, however, theory and anecdotal evidence suggest that devaluation might fail, and may even encourage hunting and the killing of devalued animals. This apparently illogical outcome is the subject of this thesis. Games and choice-based surveying were used to study the behaviour of people hunting a commodity for financial gain. These methods were used to understand why devaluation strategies might fail to protect wildlife and to understand when they might be beneficial. Two games and a choice-based survey posing different hunting scenarios were developed to measure hunter behaviour and test hunters’ responses to risk, value and devaluation. Lucky-dip games were rapid, highly replicated games used to test the impact of variation in devaluation and security strategies across multiple populations. Thirty-three lucky-dip games were conducted, each with ten members of the public participating. They were conducted at community events (e.g. fairs and galas) across Wellington Region in February and March of 2018. Scavenger-hunt games, to elicit more complex behaviours and interactions among participants, were conducted over a longer time and larger area but were, therefore, also less replicated. Four of these games were conducted with between 8-20 members of outdoor recreation clubs. They were conducted at public parks across Wellington Region throughout 2018. And lastly, an online scenario choice-based survey presented members of recreational hunting clubs with hypothetical scenarios where the value and likelihood of a successful hunt varied. The survey was distributed through hunting organisations and received 333 responses. The three research methods presented similar scenarios but used different formats to test my ideas among a diverse population of people. Each method involved participants hunting protected items that varied in value with some items having been devalued. Measuring for the trade-offs that people make between risk and reward when making hunting decisions, including choices about where to hunt, whether to kill and, if they did, whether to harvest a commodity, was of particular interest. Devaluation failed to protect commodities and increase commodity survival. In both games, hunters chose to ‘kill’ devalued commodities. Of the devalued items located by hunters, 74% and 100% were ‘killed’ in the lucky-dip and scavenger-hunt games, respectively. This appears to be because risk increased people’s perceived value of partially devalued commodities. Low-risk lucky-dip games resulted in 44% more devalued items being kept by participants compared to high-risk games. Additionally, devaluation reduced people’s perceptions of risk. Compared to lucky-dip games with just risk, games that included devaluation caused a 10% drop in survival at the highest-risk treatment. Moreover, when devalued commodities were worthless in the lucky-dip games, 27% more were ‘killed’ compared to when devalued commodities were worth 25% of the full-value commodity. Therefore, contrary to expectations, partial devaluation may be more successful than complete devaluation. Greater rates of devaluation were also met with greater variation in commodity survival between games. Coefficients of variation for commodity survival increased from 12% to 41% as devaluation rates increased from zero to 100%. Moreover, respondents to the survey ranked the most devalued population (90%) highest 36% of the time, but also lowest 35% of the time. Thus, peoples’ responses to devaluation vary. Risk was a more effective and consistent regulator of hunting behaviour. Average commodity survival was 88% at maximum security treatments but was only 65% at maximum devaluation treatments. My experimental games and surveys do not support the expectation that reducing the value of rhinos’ horns will discourage hunters and protect rhino. The IWT is a complex socio-economic system, and human behaviour is varied in response to risk and reward. Devaluation introduces a complex interaction between the two, rendering risk and devaluation less effective in some circumstances. Every population and situation is unique, and the effectiveness of devaluation will be context-specific. Finally, the research demonstrates that serious games can be applied to the study of criminal hunting behaviour. Other difficult-to-study human subjects and systems could benefit from greater use of similar methodologies.</p>

Topographically localised modulation of tectal cell spatial tuning by natural scenes

Visual neurons can have their tuning properties contextually modulated by the presence of visual stimuli in the area surrounding their receptive field, especially when that stimuli contains natural features. However, stimuli presented in specific egocentric locations may have greater behavioural relevance, raising the possibility that the extent of contextual modulation may vary with position in visual space. To explore this possibility we utilised the small size and optical transparency of the larval zebrafish to describe the form and spatial arrangement of contextually modulated cells throughout an entire tectal hemisphere. We found that the spatial tuning of tectal neurons to a prey-like stimulus sharpens when the stimulus is presented in the context of a naturalistic visual scene. These neurons are confined to a spatially restricted region of the tectum and have receptive fields centred within a region of visual space in which the presence of prey preferentially triggers hunting behaviour. Our results demonstrate that circuits that support behaviourally relevant modulation of tectal neurons are not uniformly distributed. These findings add to the growing body of evidence that the tectum shows regional adaptations for behaviour.

Hunting behaviour in arvicoline rodents

In laboratory experiments, purposeful predatory inter-relations with moving insects have been revealed and described in three species of herbivorous voles: the East European vole, the narrow-headed vole, and the Tuva silver vole. The appearance of the full hunting stereotype in these species does not require preliminary experience, which indicates its innate nature. The hunting behaviour of the Tuva silver vole differed from that of the East European vole and narrow-headed vole, which probably reflects the phylogenetic relationships between these species.

Past thermal conditions affect hunting behaviour in larval antlions

Some sit-and-wait predators, such as antlion larvae, construct traps to capture passing prey. The location of these traps depends on many abiotic and biotic factors, including temperature and the presence of conspecifics, which probably stimulate behaviours that minimize the costs and maximize the benefits of trap building. Here, we exposed second instar antlion larvae to elevated temperatures of 25°C (mild treatment) or 31°C (harsh treatment) for one month and then transferred them to common conditions (20°C) to examine the effects of previous thermal treatment on aggregation tendency and trap size. We predicted that antlions that experienced harsh conditions would subsequently increase the neighbouring distance and trap diameter to reduce competition with conspecifics and improve prey capture success, compensating for past conditions. In contrast with these predictions, antlions exposed to harsh conditions displayed a trend in the opposite direction, towards the decreased neighbouring distance. Furthermore, some of these antlions also built smaller traps. We discuss possible reasons for our results. The effects of previous thermal exposure have rarely been considered in terms of trap construction in antlions. Described effects may possibly apply to other sit-and-wait predators and are significant considering that many of these predators are long-lived.

Improvement of transient and small signal stability in micro grid by hybrid technique with virtual synchronous generator control scheme

In this article, a hybrid technique is proposed for improving the transient and small signal response in micro grid using virtual inertia. The proposed hybrid technique is the combined execution of both the emperor penguin optimizer (EPO) and butterfly optimization algorithm (BOA), and hence it is called EPOBOA technique. The major objective of the EPOBOA technique is to “optimize the control parameters to regulate the changes occurred in the grid parameter such as voltage and frequency based on the variations of inertia”. Here, the EPO is executed to modify the parameters of virtual synchronous generator units to achieve the objective function. The searching behaviour of the EPO is adapted by using the hunting behaviour of BOA. The proposed technique is executed in MATLAB/Simulink work site, and the experimental results are analyzed under three test cases: normal condition, irradiation change condition, and load change condition. The performance of the proposed technique is compared with different existing techniques and the calculated frequency deviation index of the proposed technique in all the cases is 0.0051, 0.0045, and 0.0047 and found to be very optimal compared with existing methods. Overall, the experimental outcomes show that the proposed EPOBOA method is more efficient and confirm its ability to solve the issues.

On the Binarization of Grey Wolf Optimizer‎: ‎A Novel Binary Optimizer Algorithm

‎Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) is a population-based evolutionary algorithm inspired by the hunting behaviour of grey wolves‎. ‎GWO‎, ‎in its basic form‎, ‎is a real coded algorithm‎, ‎therefore‎, ‎it needs modifications to deal with binary optimization problems‎. ‎In this paper‎, ‎we review previous works on binarization of GWO‎, ‎and classify them with respect to their encoding scheme‎, ‎updating strategy‎, ‎and transfer function‎. ‎Then‎, ‎we propose a novel binary GWO algorithm (named SetGWO)‎, ‎which is based on set encoding and uses set operations in its updating strategy‎. ‎Experimental results on different real-world combinatorial optimization problems and different datasets‎, ‎show that SetGWO outperforms other existing binary GWO algorithms in terms of quality of solutions‎, ‎running time‎, ‎and scalability‎.

History of canids in Chile and impacts on prey adaptations

Artiodactyl prey species of Chile, especially guanacos (Lama guanicoe) are reported to be very susceptible to predation by pack hunting feral dogs. It has been previously suggested that guanacos and endemic South American deer may have evolved in the absence of pack-hunting cursorial predators. However, the paleoecology of canid presence in southern South America and Chile is unclear. Here, we review the literature on South American and Chilean canids, their distributions, ecologies and hunting behaviour. We consider both wild and domestic canids, including Canis familiaris breeds. We establish two known antipredator defense behaviours of guanacos: predator inspection of ambush predators, e.g. Puma concolor, and rushing at and kicking smaller cursorial predators, e.g. Lycalopex culpaeus. We propose that since the late Pleistocene extinction of hypercarnivorous group-hunting canids east of the Andes, there were no native species creating group-hunting predation pressures on guanacos. Endemic deer of Chile may have never experienced group hunting selection pressure from native predators. Even hunting dogs (or other canids) used by indigenous groups in the far north and extreme south of Chile (and presumably the center as well) appear to have been used primarily within ambush hunting strategies. This may account for the susceptibility of guanacos and other prey species to feral dog attacks. We detail seven separate hypotheses that require further investigation in order to assess how best to respond to the threat posed by feral dogs to the conservation of native deer and camelids in Chile and other parts of South America.