Marking Territory Research Articles

Social Behaviour of Bush Dogs, <i>Speothos Venaticus (Lund, 1842)</i> in Captivity

In the present study, we analysed the social behaviour of a family group of bush dogs, Speothos venaticus (Lund, 1842), at Moscow Zoo. A unique situation has developed at Moscow Zoo, which makes it possible to observe a family group of bush dogs, consisting of 23 individuals. The group consisted of the parent couple and five litters of cubs (10 males and 11 females). The study was carried out in the summer and autumn of 2022 by observing a focal group of animals of different sex and age, consisting of 12 individuals (5 females and 6 males). The hierarchical structure of a group of bush dogs, the ratio of various forms of social behaviour of animals, as well as the nature of their aggressive interactions were evaluated. It was shown that in the studied family group, the dominant parent couple and their off spring were distinguished, which corresponds to the data known from the literature. The predominant form of behavior in animals was group movement around the enclosure, which accounted for 47.3% of all social interactions between dogs. The level of aggression was low among older individuals. Probably, the hierarchical structure of the group of bush dogs is not based on the aggression of high-ranking individuals, but on the demonstration of submission by low-ranking ones. Other social interactions observed included play, communication, marking, parental, and sexual behaviour. There were sex differences in the way territory was marked with urine. Females marked territory by adopting a standing posture on their forelegs, while males sprayed urine. At the same time, sequential urinary marking prevailed (71.6%).

Collaborative behaviour and coalitions in male jaguars (Panthera onca)—evidence and comparison with other felids

Most large felids are classified as solitary species, with only lions (Panthera leo) and cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) exhibiting social, collaborative behaviours. Herein, we present evidence of the formation of male coalitions by jaguars (Panthera onca), based on data from five studies conducted with camera trapping, GPS telemetry, and direct observations in the Venezuelan Llanos and Brazilian Pantanal. Out of 7062 male records obtained with camera traps or visual observations, we detected 105 cases of male-male interactions, of which we classified 18 as aggression, nine as tolerance, 70 as cooperation/coalition, and eight as unidentified. In two studies, two male jaguars formed stable coalitions lasting over 7 years each. In the Llanos, each coalition male paired and mated with several females. For male jaguar coalitions, we documented similar behaviours as recorded earlier in lions or cheetahs, which included patrolling and marking territory together, invading territories of other males, collaborative chasing and killing other jaguars, and sharing prey. However, different from lions or cheetahs, associated male jaguars spent less time together, did not cooperate with females, and did not hunt cooperatively together. Our analysis of literature suggested that male jaguar coalitions were more likely to form when females had small home range size, a proxy of females’ concentration, while in lions, the male group size was directly correlated with the female group size. Similarly, locally concentrated access to females may drive formation of male coalitions in cheetahs. We conclude that high biomass and aggregation of prey are likely drivers of sociality in felids.Significance statementThe division into social and solitary species in large felids has so far seemed unambiguous, with only lions and cheetahs classified as social species, in which male coalitions also occurred. Our data show that, under certain conditions, male coalitions may also form in jaguar populations. Factors that drive formation of male coalitions in lions and cheetahs, but not in other species of large cats, have not been clear until now. Our analyses indicate that in jaguars, lions, and cheetahs, the concentration of females likely plays the most important role. In jaguars, the probability of male coalition occurrence is highest in populations with the smallest mean female home range size (and thus likely high local density of females), while in lions, male group size is most strongly correlated with female group size.

Civil Sanctuary: Clearly Marked Spaces of Civility in Divided Urban Settings

ABSTRACT Movement through spaces defined by segregation and mixing is a distinguishing feature of divided urban settings. Contributing to themes of the everyday and spatial understandings in peace research, this paper introduces civil sanctuaries. In divided urban settings these spaces of sanctuary are framed by civility, where people encounter one another across division while seemingly compartmentalising outward signs of disrespect. Through a case study of the Belfast Giants and SSE Arena, this article highlights clearly marked territory which differentiates itself from divisive norms and rhetoric, filtering who is welcome, and the notion of giving pause to routinised practices in divided settings.

Distance estimation of howling golden jackals (Canis aureus) using relative sound level

Golden jackals (Canis aureus) display a complex repertoire of calls, utilized in different communication types (e.g., marking territories, attraction of mating partners). Resident golden jackal groups can successfully be detected by active bioacoustic stimulation, as well as with passive recording devices. For monitoring, basic knowledge of the calls of the focal species and potential restrictions and strengths of the monitoring devices should be considered. We therefore tested possible applications of a low-budget autonomous recording unit for bioacoustic golden jackal monitoring and examined the following research questions: How far can group calls be detected? Can the distance to the recording device be estimated? To answer these questions, we placed 11 AudioMoth recording devices in a linear transect to record live imitated and replayed howls. For the estimation of the number of responding animals, the number of howling individuals was determined based on the maximum number of simultaneously visible fundamental frequencies in a spectrogram. To predict the distance of the playback howls to the recording devices, the relative sound level (RSL) of each call was measured and fitted in linear models. Reliable distance estimations using RSL were possible up to 400 m. Estimated number of responding animals showed a negative relationship with distance. Our results present a baseline for future studies and show that AudioMoths can be a helpful asset in distance estimation of golden jackal packs—both in passive but also active monitoring.

Late Neanderthal subsistence strategies and cultural traditions in the northern Iberia Peninsula: Insights from Prado Vargas, Burgos, Spain

In order to better understand the causes and geographic patterns of Neanderthal demise it is necessary to broaden the focus of existing Neanderthal studies to include new sites from understudied regions, particularly those containing multi-level fossil and lithic records, and to improve regional-scale Neanderthal extinction frameworks using multiple dating techniques. To this end, we present an interdisciplinary study of the stratigraphy, chronology, pollen, fauna, lithic technology and human remains of the last Neanderthal level (Level N4) of Prado Vargas – a cave in northern Iberia, whose geographic location and chronology are ideal for investigating possible socio-economic and climatic influences on Neanderthal decline. Level N4 has yielded a rich Late Mousterian palimpsest indicative of repeated seasonal occupations, as well as a deciduous Neanderthal tooth, confirming the presence of children at the site. A wide range of human activities are detected in Level 4, with subsistence strategies demonstrating knowledgeable exploitation of the natural environs around the area. The site provides evidence for a distinctive recycling economy, including bone retouchers, recycling of cores, and intense (re)use of raw materials, which may reflect recurrent occupations or the particular cultural traditions of a regional group. Level N4 is dated to between 54.7 and 39.8 thousand years ago (ka) according to our new OSL and radiocarbon study. The late Neanderthal inhabitants of Prado Vargas were cold-adapted, and may have already been living in small, separate groups with marked territories and cultural traditions prior to the arrival of Homo sapiens in the Iberia Peninsula.

Peripheral territories: Imagining common worlds differently

At the beginning of spatial struggle is separation: perception of what is in, or outside of, one’s body, one’s house, kin, neighbourhood, and polity. We all have vague or even detailed ideas of that separation—but this we often goes unnoticed, the very notion that performs the very separation we imagine. For instance, we tend to associate a territory with a nation-state and a homogenous population, while a periphery appears to lack connection and substance. Marking territory along these associations is challenging after forty years of global neoliberal politics, resulting in the displacement of millions of people and austere biopolitical measures. Against this backdrop, this paper explores the politics of place and mobility, exemplified by two case studies, one in the Mediterranean and the other in the Pacific, to raise an urgent contemporary question: how can we negotiate between the freedom of movement, on the one hand, and the protection of Indigenous land rights and self-determination, on the other?

Rethinking traditional husbandry practices – changing the lengths to which lambs’ tails are docked

Animals have tails for many reasons, such as helping with balance, providing shade, for use in defence, for dealing with skin irritations, as a means of locomotion and to aid...

Communicative Orders in Collision and Collusion with Natural Resource Management Regimes in Nepal

ABSTRACTSuccessive policy agendas in Nepal have mobilised the notion of the natural environment through crisis scenarios of deforestation and soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and latterly climate change. This article discusses ethnographic work on struggles over livelihoods and national park regulations, and examines collisions and collusions of indigenous shamanic ontologies, moral ecologies, and a hierarchical state symbolism of hunting, to tell very different storylines about languages of nature slipping into affinity with communicative orders of hierarchical purity and power distinctions. Protected areas for nature and wildlife are established in ethnically marked territories, perceived by elites as places of jangal, lacking in culture. Ethnographic research in the Langtang National Park reveals that no singular hegemonic order or ontology dominates but dialogues of power, knowledge, and relational possibility come into play. The aftermath of 2015s earthquakes notably occasioned appeals for social justice to bend the singularly proprietorial resource language of nature protection authorities.

Wolf howls encode both sender- and context-specific information

Loud, long-distance calls serve varied functions across animal species including marking territory, attracting mates and signalling one's identity. Here, we examined the types of sender- and context-specific information encoded in the howls of captive timber wolves, Canis lupus. We analysed 913 howls from nine individuals across three packs and investigated whether howl structure varied consistently as a function of phenotypic factors (age class, sex, pack and identity of the caller) in addition to the context in which the call was produced: specifically, whether the call was produced in a ‘spontaneous’ context just after sunrise or was ‘elicited’ by the absence of a group member. Calls were correctly classified by individual identity and production context, but not by any other factors. Principal components analyses indicated that individual differences were primarily associated with frequency-based measures, whereas acoustic variation between production contexts was associated with a variety of frequency-, intensity- and energy-based measures. Recognition of individual differences in vocalizations is likely to be important for navigating social relationships in wolves and further work is required to determine which life history factors may shape these individual differences. Differences resulting from production context are suggestive that these howl variants may serve different functions. The extent to which these individual and contextual differences are understood by receivers remains an open question.

Female preference for males that have exclusively marked or invaded territories depends on male presence and its identity in the subterranean rodent Ctenomys talarum

AbstractTerritorial scent‐marking provides chemical records of male competitive interactions that are available to females, who gain valuable information to assess and identify best quality partners. In this context, the solitary subterranean rodent tuco‐tuco (Ctenomys talarum) offers excellent possibilities to evaluate the effects of male exclusive scent‐marking of territories on female assessment. For evaluation, we used wild caught individuals of C. talarum, manipulated their scent marks within the territories in captive conditions and staged preference tests where females were able to choose between exclusive and invaded territories. The evaluation was performed in two scenarios considering the identity of the intruder scent mark: territories invaded by a strange male and territories invaded by a neighbour male. Females investigated the chemical cues deposited on the substrate of the exclusively marked territory more frequently. Next, females displayed equal interest to scent samples of both males presented in a Y‐maze. Finally, when females could gain access to both individually isolated males and their scent‐marked territories, they spent more time within invaded territories despite they visited them with the same frequency. Moreover, females tried to get in contact by scratching the mesh of the owner of the invaded territory more frequently. We found that females of C. talarum evaluate the homogeneity (exclusiveness) of scent marks within a male territory and then show preferences in relation to the identity of the intruder's scent –whether strange or neighbour.

Marking Territory: Modeling the Spread of Ethnic Conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992-1995

In order to study post-conflict economic development and social change in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), it is necessary to control for variation in the effect of conflict on each local community. To do this, we first explore the variation in nature, severity, and incidence of conflict during the 1992-1995 war. The conflict narrative is coded by type and date of an incident; these data are then related to indicators of pre- and post-conflict population composition, and presence of industrial, transportation, or military infrastructure. We then use OLS and IV regressions to attempt to identify the community determinants of where and when fighting will occur within a war. The results across the four sets of regressions indicate that ethnic composition is the primary initial determinant of conflict type and intensity, with more diverse communities suffering more conflict and greater intensity of fighting. We conclude that any analysis of post-conflict economic development needs to control for the variation in pre-war ethnic diversity and differences in pre- and post-conflict ethnic composition. Subsequent studies will seek to understand the effect of conflict typology, intensity, and community type on landmine placement and the effect of landmines on post-conflict social and economic development.

Conflits Autour De L’exploitation Halieutique Du Fleuve Comoé Et De Ses Affluents

The purpose of this article is to identify the conflicts arising from the exploitation of the Comoé River. Côte d'Ivoire has a dense hydrography which is distinguished by four main rivers of which the Comoé River (1160 km) is one of them. This river area, which has always been exploited by the various villages bordering it, is perceived by the latter as their property. Thus, they ensure customary management in accordance with marked territories. The immense benefits of this river to village communities sometimes give rise to tensions and conflicts. What are the causes of these different types of conflicts with regards to the Comoé River? In other words, what are the conditions for their gestation? The objective of this study is to reveal the conflicts surrounding the fisheries exploitation of the Comoé River and to propose solutions for a sustainable fishery. This study is based on desk research and land surveys. It appears from the above that the exploitation of the aquatic area of the Comoé River generates sporadic conflicts. These conflicts arise mainly because of a poor implementation of the clauses of the contract between indigenous and non-native fishers, dominated by the monthly fee and the unhealthy practices of the actors. The management of these oppositions of interests is ensured by a traditional regulation, coupled with that of the administration when the situation is of great magnitude.

Vocal Interactivity in-and-between Humans, Animals, and Robots

Almost all animals exploit vocal signals for a range of ecologically-motivated purposes: detecting predators/prey and marking territory, expressing emotions, establishing social relations and sharing information. Whether it is a bird raising an alarm, a whale calling to potential partners, a dog responding to human commands, a parent reading a story with a child, or a business-person accessing stock prices using \emph{Siri}, vocalisation provides a valuable communication channel through which behaviour may be coordinated and controlled, and information may be distributed and acquired. Indeed, the ubiquity of vocal interaction has led to research across an extremely diverse array of fields, from assessing animal welfare, to understanding the precursors of human language, to developing voice-based human-machine interaction. Opportunities for cross-fertilisation between these fields abound; for example, using artificial cognitive agents to investigate contemporary theories of language grounding, using machine learning to analyse different habitats or adding vocal expressivity to the next generation of language-enabled autonomous social agents. However, much of the research is conducted within well-defined disciplinary boundaries, and many fundamental issues remain. This paper attempts to redress the balance by presenting a comparative review of vocal interaction within-and-between humans, animals and artificial agents (such as robots), and it identifies a rich set of open research questions that may benefit from an inter-disciplinary analysis.

Late Preceramic Forager–Herders from the Copacabana Peninsula in the Titicaca Basin of Bolivia: A Bioarchaeological Analysis

AbstractThe Titicaca Basin of Peru and Bolivia has been occupied by humans for millennia and was home to one of the first major state societies in the Andes. Many foundations of state power, however, developed much earlier, during the Late Preceramic/Terminal Archaic Period (3000 – 1500 BC), when people initially began herding, marking territories, and creating new metallurgy technology. We present a skeletal analysis of 14 individuals dating between 3000 and 1500 BC from Muruqullu, an archaeological site on the Copacabana Peninsula of Bolivia. These are the first Preceramic burials documented for the peninsula and contribute to the relatively small sample of Preceramic bodies from the Andean highlands more broadly. From this sample, we suggest that highland foragers and early herders suffered little nutritional stress and had limited violent interactions, perhaps related to a relatively mobile lifestyle and utilisation of lake resources. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pax4 and Arx Represent Crucial Regulators of the Development of the Endocrine Pancreas

The development of the endocrine pancreas is under the control of highly orchestrated, cross-interacting transcription factors. Pancreas genesis is initiated by the emergence of a Pdx1/Ptf1a marked territory at the foregut/midgut junction. A small fraction of pancreatic fated cells activates the expression of the bHLH transcription factor Ngn3 triggering the endocrine cell program, thus giving rise to beta-, alpha-, delta-, PP-, and epsilon-cells, producing insulin, glucagon, somatostatin, pancreatic polypeptide, and ghrelin, respectively. Two transcription factors, Pax4 and Arx, play a crucial role in differential endocrine cell subtype specification. They were shown to be necessary and sufficient to endow endocrine progenitors with either a beta- or alpha-cell destiny. Interestingly, whereas the forced expression of Arx in beta-cells converts these into cells exhibiting alpha- and PP-cell characteristics, the sole expression of Pax4 in alpha-cells promotes alpha-cell-neogenesis and the acquisition of beta-cell features, the resulting beta-like cells being capable of counteracting chemically induced diabetes. Gaining new insights into the molecular mechanisms controlling Pax4 and Arx expression in the endocrine pancreas may therefore pave new avenues for the therapy of diabetes.

PERFORMANCE OF ENERGY BALANCED TERRITORIAL PREDATOR SCENT MARKING ALGORITHM BASED ON LEACH PROTOCOL

Sensor node is a node in wireless sensor network (WSN) that is capable of sensing information, processing and communicating with each other node in the network. As the energy available in the sensor nodes is limited. So while designing WSN, the main concentration has to be taken part in network life time by using the energy efficient sensor node placement in many network applications. So energy efficient operation is very important, as the sensor nodes are depends on battery for operation to be carry out. It is difficult or replaces charge battery, for this sensor nodes function and operation in WSN should become energy efficient. To overcome this problem new biologically inspired technique has been introduce the algorithm and called as Energy balancing Territorial Predator Scent Marking Algorithm using LEACH protocol in WSN.TPSMA is used for sensor node schemes in terms of coverage ratio, network life time by this network efficient network can be achieved. This is based on the scent marking behavior, predator will scent mark the area due to certain factors such as resources. Sensor node will identify it’s monitored location based on their marked territories that imitate the scent matching behavior in TPSMA. The performance of the proposed technique improved and compare with other Swarm Intelligence technique. At the end of this paper we highlighted the future work of this paper.

Marking Territory: Rawi Hage’s Novels and the Challenge to Postcolonial Ethics

THERE HAS BEEN A SUSTAINED INTEREST in recent years, both in academic circles and in mainstream readership, in non-Western narratives of trauma and conflict, evidenced in popularity of novels such as The Kite Runner, Half of a Yellow Sun, Beasts of No Nation, What is What, and A Sunday at Pool in Kigali, as well as non-fiction memoirs such as Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The attention afforded to texts such as these, texts that describe hardships that are too often a symptom of postcolonial condition, can certainly indicate a trend in Western readership that is concerned with questions of social justice, human rights, and cross-cultural ethics. The mainstream Western reader and scholarly Western critic seem united in a desire to bridge ethical gap between First and Third worlds, a desire that ultimately conceives of reading of postcolonial literature as a vehicle for enacting cross-cultural ethics and betterment of world. It is no surprise, then, that Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game, a novel documenting experiences of a Lebanese teenager in war-torn Beirut circa 1982, has attracted critical attention. What is significant about Hage's fiction--specifically De Niro's Game and his second novel, Cockroach--is way in which its narratives challenge conventional representations of postcolonial trauma and expose imbalances in standard models of cross-cultural ethics. (1) Syrine Hout addresses this challenge in her book-length study Post-War Anglophone Lebanese Fiction, in which she contends that postwar generation of Lebanese literature is distinctive as a genre, insofar as both Anglophone and Francophone writers are concerned primarily with the debunking of two myths: return to a golden age of a romanticized Lebanon and slavish imitation of a supposedly superior Western lifestyle (9). The protagonists in this genre, Hout suggests, neither idealise their country of origin nor shed their past to embrace unquestioningly a Western mode of living (9). As Hout argues, Hage's novels fall into a genre that is markedly diasporic, insofar as its subjects have no firm foundation in either home country or new host country, in past or in present, upon which to build a stable identity. As Salah D. Hassan suggests, Bassam, in De Niro's Game, roguishly turns his back on history and embraces figure of refugee: he harbors no thought of return and no desire to settle (1628). Similarly, Hout, in her analysis of Cockroach, describes that novel's unnamed narrator as a refugee or exile who clearly has no interest in acclimatising to mainstream Canadian culture--but nor is he keen on flaunting his origins (170). As well as offering a tangible manifestation of Hout's generic definition, however, I would argue that Hage's fiction goes further to consider how this diasporic state shines an interrogative light on standard formulations of postcolonial ethics and ultimately proposes a much more complex but potentially enriching definition of postcolonial hospitality. The fundamental question of postcolonial ethics is deceptively simple: How might citizens of First World relate, ethically and productively, to diasporic subject, to new immigrant, to refugee? Rawi Hage's second novel Cockroach begins with just such a negotiation, as Genevieve, a Montreal therapist, attempts to connect with and heal unnamed Lebanese refugee who narrates this text: Last week I confessed to her that I used to be more courageous, more carefree, and even, one might add, more violent. But here in this northern land no one gives you an excuse to hit, rob, or shoot, or even to shout from across balcony, to curse your neighbours' mothers and threaten their kids. When I said that to therapist, she told me that I have a lot of hidden anger. So when she left room for a moment, I opened her purse and stole her lipstick, and when she returned I continued my tale of growing up somewhere else. …

Images of post-conflict Belfast

In Catharsis, I explore to what degree the language of the snapshot contributes to or obscures our understanding of time and place, since the idea of knowing someone through their personal images is open to question. Bringing together three elements; family album snaps made in Belfast by my father in the 50’s and 60’s, new documentary images of post-conflict sites which are presently tourist sites made by me and GPS coordinates which serve as a reminder of Belfast's military history, I situate each image in relation to an unspoken memory. The stark contrast in scale and genre, between the personal snapshots and the conceptually driven documentary images, helps shape an understanding of the gap between the personal and the conceptual, mapping out ritual, marking territory and retracing history. While the family album references a site of personal and social identity, the documentary genre can only point to but never reveal the subtle and often absent history embedded within it. By engaging the viewer in a dialogue between the familial and the documentary against the fixity of the GPS coordinates, I open up a space to examine the multiple ways photography informs identity, personal memory and social history.

Getting on Each Other’s Nerves: Marking Territory and Policing Borders in Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion: Essays in Honor of Donald Wiebe

AbstractThis review essay assesses the continued relevance of Donald Wiebe’s diagnosis of problems with and prescriptions for the academic study of religion, critically reviews some of the contributions to a recent collection of essays in honor of Wiebe, identifies some issues or problems that are left lingering by these contributions, and offers some tentative proposals for dealing with them.

Experimental evidence that nesting ducks use mammalian urine to assess predator abundance

Nest predation is a major cause of reproductive failure for many birds; as a consequence, birds that can assess the abundance of predators and avoid nesting where they perceive predation risk to be high should be favored. For dabbling ducks, mammals are important predators on nests and incubating females. Many mammals use urine for marking territories. Because ducks may be able to detect mammalian urine either by ultraviolet light reflectance or by odor, we hypothesized that ducks may be able to assess the abundance of mammalian predators from their urine and thereby avoid nesting where mammals are abundant. We simulated increased predator abundance on experimental plots by using Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) urine to make artificial scent marks and used water in a similar fashion on control plots. On 16 pairs of plots over 2 years, fewer ducks nested on experimental plots than on control plots (97 vs. 143 nests). These results suggest that birds can assess predator abundance and use the information to choose where to nest.