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Between-gender differences in vigilance do not necessarily lead to differences in foraging-vigilance tradeoffs

  • Behavioral ecology – original research
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Abstract

When prey are time limited in their access to food, any trade-off involving time should ultimately affect their intake rate. In many herbivores, males and females experience different ecological pressures affecting their survival and reproduction because of differences in morphology, physiology and energy/nutrient requirements. If males and females have different vigilance strategies that affect their intake rates differently, they will suffer different foraging costs. This is particularly relevant in sexually monomorphic herbivores, where the two sexes have similar basal energy/nutrient requirements and risk of predation. We investigated how gender, reproductive status, age, group size, predation risk, and food biomass affected vigilance, intake rate, and their trade-off in a monomorphic species, the plains zebra (Equus quagga). Males were more vigilant than females, and lactating females were less vigilant than other females; the levels of vigilance were low (ca. 10 % of feeding time). The effects on time spent feeding, bite rates and intake rates were small and statistically not significant. Reproductive status did not affect the strength of the relationship between vigilance and intake rate, but intake rates increased with group size and, for adult females, were higher in tall grass. While gender and reproductive status were major drivers of vigilance, and group size and food biomass of the rate of food intake, males and females adjust their bite rates and food intake with vigilance in similar ways. Our results support the hypothesis that in monomorphic animals, males and females seem to make similar trade-offs (i.e. adjustments) between vigilance and intake rate.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the CNRS Institut Ecologie et Environnement, the Zones Ateliers Network Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) France; the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (FEAR project ANR-08-BLAN-0022), CIRAD, the French Ministère des Affaires Etrangères and the Ambassade de France au Zimbabwe. Pierrick Blanchard is at the Laboratory Evolution et Diversité Biologique, part of the Laboratoire d’Excellence TULIP (ANR-10-LABX-41). The Director General of the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority is acknowledged for providing the opportunity to carry out this research: we are particularly grateful to Dr H. Madzikanda for his long-term support and friendship and our warm thanks also go to Mr A. Musakwa, the then area manager, for his support, as well as to the then senior ecologist in HNP, Mr G. Mtare. This study is part of the Hwange Environmental Research Development (HERD) program, now Hwange LTER (Zone Atelier Hwange): we would like to thank the whole HERD team for making this study possible, Dr G. Fleurance for providing the data on horses, and finally Dr K.E. Ruckstuhl, Dr F. Ferretti and one anonymous referee for their helpful suggestions.

Author contribution statement

O. P. and H. F. conceived and designed the experiments. O. P., P. B., F. B. and P. D. conducted the fieldwork. F. B. and O. P. analysed the data. F. B., O. P. and P. D. wrote the manuscript. Other authors provided crucial editorial advice.

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Correspondence to Olivier Pays.

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Communicated by Peter Banks.

Our work complied with the current laws of Zimbabwe. It was conducted under permits from the Director General of the Zimbabwe Parks and approved by the Wildlife Management Authority [reference D/M/Gen/(T), permit 23(l)(c)(ii) 01/2010]. The long-term individual-based study on zebra population dynamics started in 2004 is supervised by Dr P. Duncan and is part of the programme of the CNRS ZA/LTER Hwange directed by Dr H. Fritz under permits from the authorities cited above.

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Barnier, F., Duncan, P., Fritz, H. et al. Between-gender differences in vigilance do not necessarily lead to differences in foraging-vigilance tradeoffs. Oecologia 181, 757–768 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3614-5

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