We hypothesized that the call is specific to provisioning behavior in the context of parent–offspring communication, and tentatively designated it ‘provisioning call’. To test this hypothesis, we observed nesting females in the laboratory to determine if and when they emitted the call, and the response of nymphs. In every case, the call was clearly coordinated with female provisioning behaviors: females emitted the call only upon returning to their nests with a drupe. Moreover,

nymphs quickly gathered to the drupe while the female was calling. Because nymphs usually hide in crevices throughout the nest debris while the mother is foraging, we also hypothesized that the provisioning call functions to induce nymphs to gather and feed synchronously on newly provisioned drupes. A playback experiment indicated that significantly more nymphs gathered on a drupe with the playback call than without the http://www.selleckchem.com/products/ldk378.html call,

supporting this hypothesis. Furthermore, observations through nymphal development revealed that the total length of all sound bouts in a single provisioning this website call was shorter for females with older nymphs. This is consistent with the assumption that older nymphs should gather on the provisioned drupe more quickly than young, less-motile nymphs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of a parent producing sound and/or vibration signals directly to offspring at repeated progressive provisioning events in a subsocial insect. “
“Apex predators are essential for the viability of healthy ecosystems. By studying carnivoran feeding ecology, we can obtain a better understanding of the ecological limits, resilience and predator–prey dynamics that govern these populations. However, monitoring elusive predators – like the leopard Panthera pardus – is often fraught with logistical and financial constraints, particularly selleckchem in inaccessible terrain. In this study, we identified clusters of Global Positioning System (GPS) points

from four GPS-collared leopards and investigated them in the field for potential kills. Environmental data from cluster sites were gathered alongside spatial and temporal data collected via GPS cluster analysis to develop statistical models capable of predicting the occurrence of leopard predatory events. Our results demonstrate that leopard predation can be accurately modelled either by using a combination of field data (i.e. collected at cluster sites) and remote data (i.e. obtained via GPS analysis), or simply remote data alone. Kills were more likely to be present at clusters where leopards exhibited longer handling times, at sites with dense vegetation cover, when leopards were more active 12 h before the cluster than 12 h after, where more tree refugia were present, in areas of higher elevation, at sites containing low levels of shrub cover, and when clusters began during diurnal or crepuscular hours.