Individual Preferences and Social Interactions Determine the Aggregation of Woodlice

n°e17389.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Signatures of self-organized criticality in spontaneous walking behavior of Porcellio scaber

The 11th International Symposium on Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines. Kobe University, Japan. 2023-06-06/09. Adaptive Motion of Animals and Machines Organizing Committee.Poster Session P6

Inter‐ and intracolonial conflicts in societies of honey bees and stingless bees

Introduction – Insect societies are well known for cooperation. However, there is a high potential for conflict both over resources (intercolonial) and over reproduction (intracolonial). Here I present the key results of my thesis in these two areas. 1. – In our first study we show that T. angustula possesses two types of entrance guards, hovering and standing guards, and that they have different tasks. Standing guards, however, can switch to hovering if needed. 2. – Honey bee, A. m. mellifera, guards recognise allospecific intruders via “different odours” not “harmful intruder odours”. 3. – Following up on project 1 we demonstrated a relatively clear division of labour in guarding of T. angustula where guards either act as standing or hovering guards. This study also adds descriptive data on the natural history at the nest entrances of T. angustula. 4. – In our fourth project we found that worker policing in the honey bee (A. m. mellifera and A. m. carnica) has a low cost because few recognition errors are made, 9.6% and 4.1% of eggs in male and female cells were removed in error, and because these errors are easily rectified. 5. – Virgin queens of M. quadrifasciata were only elected in queenless colonies and generally only shortly after the removal of the resident queen. The virgin queens’ behaviour did affect their survival or their life time, respectively. Finally, we described the election process of virgin queens by their colony. Conclusion – Mainly the finding of two different entrance guards in T. angustula generated a series of new questions. In addition, this thesis helped clarifying how social insects recognise each other, it provided the first study that did not measure the benefit but the cost of worker policing, and it shed some light on the bizarre behaviour of queen replacement and execution in Melipona

E-Science in the classroom - Towards viability

E-Science has the potential to transform school science by enabling learners, teachers and research scientists to engage together in authentic scientific enquiry, collaboration and learning. However, if we are to reap the benefits of this potential as part of everyday teaching and learning, we need to explicitly think about and support the work required to set up and run e-Science experiences within any particular educational context. In this paper, we present a framework for identifying and describing the resources, tools and services necessary to move e-Science into the classroom together with examples of these. This framework is derived from previous experiences conducting educational e-Science projects and systematic analysis of the categories of ‘hidden work’ needed to run these projects (Smith, Underwood, Fitzpatrick, & Luckin, forthcoming). The articulation of resources, tools and services based on these categories provides a starting point for more methodical design and deployment of future educational e- Science projects, reflection on which can also help further develop the framework. It also points to the technological infrastructure from which such tools and services could be built. As such it provides an agenda of work to develop both processes and technologies that would make it practical for teachers to deliver active, and collaborative e-Science learning experiences on a larger scale within and across schools. Routine school e- Science will only be possible if such support is specified, implemented and made available to teachers within their work contexts in an appropriate and usable form

Garry Barker: tree listening: a ceramic installation

Tree listening is a ceramic installation that is designed to provide an entry point for conversations with museum visitors. Based on the idea that art can become a focal point for conversations, this body of work (19 ceramic pieces, located at various points within a garden) was designed with the York city art gallery garden in mind. The ears were made from local clay sources, including the same terracotta clay source that was used for the bricks that line the edges of the museum’s garden. The work furthers the artist Garry Barker’s concern to use conversations with people to both instigate new work and to provide starting points for new audiences to engage with art as a way to extend their appreciation of the world and how issues such as politics, global warming and emigration impact on everyday experiences. This installation was installed twice, the second time in spring 2017 because of the popularity with which it was received the year before. A planned walk was added to the piece in 2017 and the artist led a walking tour that was scripted in response to conversations with the museum head gardener

Functional diversity and habitat preferences of native grassland plants and ground-dwelling invertebrates in private gardens along an urbanization gradient

Urbanization is occurring around the globe, changing environmental conditions and influencing biodiversity and ecosystem functions. Urban domestic gardens represent a small-grained mosaic of diverse habitats for numerous species. The challenging conditions in urban gardens support species possessing certain traits, and exclude other species. Functional diversity is therefore often altered in urban gardens. By using a multi-taxa approach focused on native grassland plants and ground-dwelling invertebrates with overall low mobility (snails, slugs, spiders, millipedes, woodlice, ants, rove beetles), we examined the effects of urbanization (distance to city center, percentage of sealed area) and garden characteristics on functional dispersion, functional evenness, habitat preferences and body size. We conducted a field survey in 35 domestic gardens along a rural-urban gradient in Basel, Switzerland. The various groups showed different responses to urbanization. Functional dispersion of native grassland plants decreased with increasing distance to the city center, while functional dispersion of ants decreased with increasing percentage of sealed area. Functional evenness of ants increased with increasing distance to the city center and that of rove beetles decreased with increasing percentage of sealed area. Contrary to our expectation, in rove beetles, the proportion of generalists decreased with increasing percentage of sealed area in the surroundings, and the proportion of species preferring dry conditions increased with increasing distance to the city center. Body size of species increased with distance to city center for slugs, spiders, millipedes, ants, and rove beetles. Local garden characteristics had few effects on functional diversity and habitat preferences of the groups examined. Our study supports the importance of using multi-taxa approaches when examining effects of environmental change on biodiversity. Considering only a single group may result in misleading findings for overall biodiversity. The ground-dwelling invertebrates investigated may be affected in different ways from the more often-studied flying pollinators or birds

User needs for interactive identification tools to organisms employed in the EU-Project KeyToNature

The EU-funded project KeyToNature is developing and optimising interactive tools for identifying organisms, making them suitable for being usable in the field of formal education across Europe. To define the requirements of the target audience, research was conducted in 11 partner countries during an initial project phase. Teachers and lecturers from primary schools to university level were asked to express their views about selected existing identification tools in a qualitative survey. The target audience was asked about perception, strengths and optimisation options, output channels and pedagogical application fields. The results showed that the adaption of the tools to the range of local organisms and the native language of the audience represents a fundamental step

Froebelian Pedagogy as Everyday Activism in Support of a Sustainability Agenda

A contemporary concern about children’s loss of contact with the natural world accompanies an ongoing urbanization and their reduced independent mobility. Children are becoming increasingly reliant on adults in accessing outdoor play and this is giving rise to more such experiences being shared. This research has explored the contemporary contribution of Froebelian holistic pedagogy through which child, adult and natural environment relations are understood as mutually beneficial. An exploration has been undertaken through preschool organized family trips to nature sites in a suburban English context. Sensory ethnography (Pink, 2009) has framed use of child-worn Go-Pros™ on trips by ten children between two and four-years old. This footage has then formed the basis for sensory elicitation interviews with parents in which we revisit shared experience from their child’s point-of-view.  These parallel perspectives have been analyzed through use of a vocabulary of holistic relations drawn from the theory of the evolution of human consciousness (Gebser, 1949) The potential is highlighted for children to draw adults into sensory experiences, big questions and storied relations with surroundings which can balance the potential for adults to draw children into abstract relations with a global context. Each is equally significant in forming rich, continuous connections between individuals and whole and can highlight the potential offered by Froebel’s pedagogy in support of a sustainability agenda. This is through its orientation to a vision of the whole and significance of our own holistic capacities as everyday activism within this

Parasitism of British terrestrial Isopoda by Diptera

Imperial Users onl

Space use following restricted space availability in two mammals and two arthropods

Captive environments can provide a variety of sources of stress for animals with space limitation being one of the primary contributors. Spatial restrictions may result in psychological stress by which the memory and learning of animals can become impaired. One solution to spatial stress has been to increase the size of the enclosure for captive animals. In my dissertation, I questioned the rationale of providing increased space by investigating whether more space leads to greater use of space. My study had 2 aims. Firstly, I tested whether the previous experience of an individual, or of a group of individuals in a small area, would influence the subsequent use of space when they were introduced into larger enclosures. I used 4 different species (chimpanzees, striped mice, woodlice and cockroaches). Secondly, I tested whether the spatial perceptions were dependent on neuronal complexity in terms of cognitive ability, i.e. is space use of a species related to neuronal complexity. Chimpanzees and striped mice were considered to have greater neuronal complexity than woodlice and cockroaches since mammals display more complex cognition compared to arthropods. The chimpanzees comprised of 8 individuals at the Johannesburg Zoo, 7 of which were transferred from a 10 m x 10 m enclosure, in which they were housed for 2 (second youngest individual) to 25 years (oldest chimpanzee), to a 2500 m2 enclosure (in which the youngest chimpanzee was born), and their space use was evaluated in terms of subgroup space use in the enlarged enclosure. Chimpanzees are naturally social and thus I examined group instead of individual spacing. Chimpanzee subgroups, which comprised 2 or more chimpanzees, consistently restricted their space use in the enlarged enclosure to the size of their old enclosure, choosing their positions within the enclosure based on the presence of shade availability. Striped mouse space use was evaluated in terms of individual space use because striped mice from the mesic grasslands of South Africa are solitary living. Individual striped mice were placed into an enlarged arena (200 cm x 15 cm x 100 cm; L x H x B) after being restricted in a smaller cage (36.5 cm x 20.5 cm x 15 cm) for 60 days and their space use and distance travelled were measured against the area of their old housing. The space use of restricted striped mice was evaluated against a control group. The striped mice from the restricted group restricted their space use to the size of their original housing, with those having a shy personality showing more restricted space use than bold individuals. Woodlouse and cockroach space use was evaluated in same sex pairs, as woodlice and cockroaches tend to form aggregations naturally. Both species were originally housed in an 8 cm2 area for 14 days and their space use in an enlarged arena of 154 cm2 was evaluated and compared against control groups of both species. Woodlice restricted their movements within the size of their original housing, with previously restricted males restricting the area used and previously restricted females restricting the distances travelled. While male cockroaches travelled shorter distances than females, the cockroaches did not spatially restrict their movements in the enlarged arena, indicating that they may be displaying a rebound effect. My study demonstrated that previous experience in restricted housing does have an effect on subsequent space use in an enlarged area. This notion of previous experiences influencing later experiences is the foundation of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is the passive response to mostly aversive stimuli in which an organism has no control over the outcome of the situation and thus gives up after repeated failure. Learned helplessness appears to be a plausible explanation for the space restriction in chimpanzees, striped mice and woodlice, as these three species restricted their space use based on the previous experience of less available space. Chimpanzees and striped mice had higher occurrences of restricted movements compared to woodlice, indicating that learned helplessness with respect of space use maybe graded according to neuronal complexity. I conclude that providing additional space may not address the welfare concerns of captive animals, because more space did not disrupt earlier spatial restriction. However, the implications of exposure to restricted space needs to be considered for all species in captive environments, especially animals in release programs, as exposure to restricted space may contribute to the expression of learned helplessness, with space use in an enlarged area being influenced by previous restrictions