13. The Cultural Ecology of Hunting Behavior among Mbuti Pygmies in the Ituri Forest, Zaire

The field of optimization science is proliferating that has made complex real-world problems easy to solve. Metaheuristics based algorithms inspired by nature or physical phenomena based methods have made its way in providing near-ideal (optimal) solutions to several complex real-world problems. Ant lion Optimization (ALO) has inspired by the hunting behavior of antlions for searching for food. Even with a unique idea, it has some limitations like a slower rate of convergence and sometimes confines itself into local solutions (optima). Therefore, to enhance its performance of classical ALO, quantum information theory is hybridized with classical ALO and named as QALO or quantum theory based ALO. It can escape from the limitations of basic ALO and also produces stability between processes of explorations followed by exploitation. CEC2017 benchmark set is adopted to estimate the performance of QALO compared with state-of-the-art algorithms. Experimental and statistical results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to the original ALO. The proposed QALO extends further to solve the model order reduction (MOR) problem. The QALO based MOR method performs preferably better than other compared techniques. The results from the simulation study illustrate that the proposed method effectively utilized for global optimization and model order reduction.

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Quantifying Southern Pacific Rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus helleri) Hunting Behavior through Community Science

Diversity ◽

10.3390/d13080349 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (8) ◽

pp. 349

Author(s):

Emily R. Urquidi ◽

Breanna J. Putman

Keyword(s):

Habitat Loss ◽

Human Activity ◽

Age Differences ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

Microhabitat Use ◽

Ontogenetic Shift ◽

Community Members ◽

Hunting Behavior ◽

Crotalus Oreganus ◽

Community Science

It is increasingly important to study animal behaviors as these are the first responses organisms mount against environmental changes. Rattlesnakes, in particular, are threatened by habitat loss and human activity, and require costly tracking by researchers to quantify the behaviors of wild individuals. Here, we show how photo-vouchered observations submitted by community members can be used to study cryptic predators like rattlesnakes. We utilized two platforms, iNaturalist and HerpMapper, to study the hunting behaviors of wild Southern Pacific Rattlesnakes. From 220 observation photos, we quantified the direction of the hunting coil (i.e., “handedness”), microhabitat use, timing of observations, and age of the snake. With these data, we looked at whether snakes exhibited an ontogenetic shift in behaviors. We found no age differences in coil direction. However, there was a difference in the microhabitats used by juveniles and adults while hunting. We also found that juveniles were most commonly observed during the spring, while adults were more consistently observed throughout the year. Overall, our study shows the potential of using community science to study the behaviors of cryptic predators.

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