MOST VULNERABLE CHILDREN: A CASE STUDY OF THE GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS IN MADHYA PRADESH AND CHHATTISGARH

It still found that dropping out is a serious problem in the government schools of poor states in India. The causes may be categorized into two broad categories individual level and institutional level. Along with a host of causative factors of dropping out from the school, there are a passive segment ofchildren who suffers a lot both emotionally and cognitively in compare to other risk children owes to their inappropriate schooling behaviour. Such types of children were found to a great extent in the government schools of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh States of India. These children were categorised as ‘most vulnerable children’ who are although exist in our education system but they were omitted silently without much attention to address their problem. In such context, this paper aims to explore the nature and extent of conditions of most vulnerable children in elementary education in Indian education system.

Artificial selection for schooling behaviour and its effects on associative learning abilities

ABSTRACTThe evolution of collective behaviour has been proposed to have important effects on individual cognitive abilities. Yet, in what way they are related remains enigmatic. In this context, the ‘distributed cognition’ hypothesis suggests that reliance on other group members relaxes selection for individual cognitive abilities. Here, we tested how cognitive processes respond to evolutionary changes in collective motion using replicate lines of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) artificially selected for the degree of schooling behaviour (group polarization) with >15% difference in schooling propensity. We assessed associative learning in females of these selection lines in a series of cognitive assays: colour associative learning, reversal learning, social associative learning, and individual and collective spatial associative learning. We found that control females were faster than polarization-selected females at fulfilling a learning criterion only in the colour associative learning assay, but they were also less likely to reach a learning criterion in the individual spatial associative learning assay. Hence, although testing several cognitive domains, we found weak support for the distributed cognition hypothesis. We propose that any cognitive implications of selection for collective behaviour lie outside of the cognitive abilities included in food-motivated associative learning for visual and spatial cues.

Fisheries-induced selection against schooling behaviour in marine fishes

Group living is a common strategy used by fishes to improve their fitness. While sociality is associated with many benefits in natural environments, including predator avoidance, this behaviour may be maladaptive in the Anthropocene. Humans have become the dominant predator in many marine systems, with modern fishing gear developed to specifically target groups of schooling species. Therefore, ironically, behavioural strategies which evolved to avoid non-human predators may now actually make certain fish more vulnerable to predation by humans. Here, we use an individual-based model to explore the evolution of fish schooling behaviour in a range of environments, including natural and human-dominated predation conditions. In our model, individual fish may leave or join groups depending on their group-size preferences, but their experienced group size is also a function of the preferences of others in the population. Our model predicts that industrial fishing selects against individual-level behaviours that produce large groups. However, the relationship between fishing pressure and sociality is nonlinear, and we observe discontinuities and hysteresis as fishing pressure is increased or decreased. Our results suggest that industrial fishing practices could be altering fishes’ tendency to school, and that social behaviour should be added to the list of traits subject to fishery-induced evolution.

Presettlement schooling behaviour of a rocky fish in a shallow area. Is it related to local environmental conditions?

This study evaluates the swimming behaviour of pre-settled fish larvae of the triplefin Helcogrammoides chil­ensis (Tripterygiidae) in relation to local environmental conditions. Larval aggregations were recorded on rocky reefs off central Chile during the austral summer of 2014 and 2016 to describe their swimming behaviour (i.e. solitary, shoaling, schooling) and relate it to in situ water temperature, wind stress, wind speed and turbulence. Shoaling and solitary behaviour were influenced only by wind-induced turbulence in 2014 and by seawater temperature and wind stress in 2016. Schooling behaviour was not influenced by any of the environmental variables. In situ swimming behaviour of fish larvae has been little investigated, and this work proposes a non-invasive in situ methodology for studying fish larval behaviour.

Comparisons of day-time and night-time hydroacoustic surveys in temperate lakes

In recent years, due to an increased need for non-intrusive sampling techniques, hydroacoustics has attracted attention in fishery science and management. Efforts to promote standardisation are increasing the accuracy, efficiency, and comparability of this method. The European Water Framework Directive and the Standard Operating Procedures for Fisheries Hydroacoustic Surveys in North American Great Lakes has recommended that surveys be conducted at night. At night, fish usually disperse in the water column, thus allowing for single echo detection and subsequent accurate fish size estimation, while day-time schooling behaviour hampers the estimation of fish size. However, sampling during the day would often be safer and cheaper. This study analyses how fisheries hydroacoustic results differ between day-time and night-time surveys, using data from 14 natural temperate lakes of various size. Data collected during the day and night at two depth layers linked to thermal stratification were compared in terms of acoustic scattering strength, target strength, and biomass estimates. The results showed a significant correlation between day-time and night-time estimates, though biomass in the upper layer was biased for day-time surveys, mainly due to incorrect fish size estimates resulting from rare single echo detections and schooling behaviour. Biomass estimates for the lower depth layer did not significantly differ between the two diel periods. Thus, this study confirms that hydroacoustic sampling in temperate lakes should be performed at night for accurate fish stock biomass estimates.