Concepts

Method for estimating demographic parameters by marking individuals and tracking recapture histories over time

Time allocation to scanning for predators versus other activities like foraging, measured through specific postures and head orientations

Quantifiable aspects of social behavior and social structure that can be subject to natural selection

Demographic models that project population dynamics using continuous size or stage distributions

The movement away from your place of birth and onto another location involving decision to depart, displacement, and settlement

Process by which animals become less responsive to repeated non-threatening stimuli over time

Human activities that impose novel challenges on a wide range of species, which can negatively influence individuals, populations, and communities as well as ecosystems

Network statistics that quantify the importance or influence of individuals within social networks, including degree, closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality

Natural selection that favors behaviors that benefit relatives, even at a cost to the individual performing the behavior

Experimental technique using recorded sounds played back to animals to test behavioral or physiological responses to acoustic stimuli

Random environmental variation that affects demographic parameters across all individuals in a population simultaneously

Social systems where individuals have flexibility in their social behaviors and group membership rather than being obligately social

tendency of an organism to stay in or habitually return to a particular area

Correlations between multiple repeatable, individually distinct behaviors that form consistent behavioral patterns across situations

Measure of an animal's physical state, often assessed through body mass relative to size

Cortisol and glucocorticoids that help regulate energy balance in animals and could determine dispersal behavior under stressful conditions

The degree to which individuals can be discriminated from one another based on their vocalizations, quantified using information theory

Directed aggression toward conspecifics, increasing spatial distancing from or decreasing huddling with unfamiliar conspecifics

Reduction in reproductive output of individuals due to presence of other conspecifics, particularly older or dominant individuals

Probability of surviving the summer active season, measured by last sighting dates relative to seasonal cutoffs

Statistical approach that includes individual identity as a random effect linked to a pedigree to estimate additive genetic variance

Metabolites of stress hormones measured in fecal samples as a proxy for physiological stress levels

Behavioral observation method where a single individual is observed continuously for a fixed time period

The hypothesis that animals allocate less time to antipredator vigilance as a function of increasing numbers of animals foraging together

A method to test for phylogenetic signal by comparing empirical data variance to variance from randomly reshuffled species identities across trait data sets

Mating system where males compete with one another over access to matelines consisting of groups of related females

A within-individual process caused by deterioration in molecular and physiological function resulting in a decrease in survival probability and reproductive output with age

Reduced fitness in inbred individuals compared to outbred individuals due to expression of deleterious recessive alleles

Social organization where related females remain together and males typically disperse

Effects of human recreational activities on wildlife communities through habitat alteration, disturbance, and behavioral changes

The allocation of time among different activities that determines overall energy expenditure patterns

Positive social interactions and bonds between individuals including behaviors like grooming, playing, and proximity maintenance

Individual's reaction to being trapped and handled, measured on behavioral scale from aggressive to passive responses

Social ranking system based on agonistic interactions where some individuals consistently dominate others

Statistical measure of repeatability that tests individual consistency of a continuous variable by comparing within-subject and between-subject variation

A method to partition variance in population growth rate into contributions arising from temporal covariances of demographic parameters at different time lags

Individuals in more tightly connected social groups perceive greater security from predators and allocate less time to antipredator vigilance while foraging

Variation in behavioral expression within individuals across time or contexts

Ratio of neutrophil to lymphocyte white blood cell counts used as a measure of immune response activity

Scaled measure of how population growth rate responds to changes in environmental drivers

The average number of offspring produced by a typical individual during its life, calculated as the product of offspring number and survival probability

The likelihood that an individual survives from one time period to the next

The age at which females first reproduce, an important component of vertebrate life histories with effects on individual fitness and population dynamics