Lashley Marcus A, Chitwood M Colter, Biggerstaff Michael T, Morina Daniel L, Moorman Christopher E, DePerno Christopher S
Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2014 Mar 5;9(3):e90652. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0090652. eCollection 2014.
Vigilance behavior may directly affect fitness of prey animals, and understanding factors influencing vigilance may provide important insight into predator-prey interactions. We used 40,540 pictures taken withcamera traps in August 2011 and 2012to evaluate factors influencing individual vigilance behavior of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) while foraging at baited sites. We used binary logistic regression to determine if individual vigilance was affected by age, sex, and group size. Additionally, we evaluated whether the time of the day,moon phase,and presence of other non-predatorwildlife species impacted individual vigilance. Juveniles were 11% less vigilant at baited sites than adults. Females were 46% more vigilant when fawns were present. Males and females spent more time feeding as group size increased, but with each addition of 1 individual to a group, males increased feeding time by nearly double that of females. Individual vigilance fluctuated with time of day andwith moon phase but generally was least during diurnal and moonlit nocturnal hours, indicating deer have the ability to adjust vigilance behavior to changing predation risk associated with varyinglight intensity.White-tailed deer increased individual vigilance when other non-predator wildlife were present. Our data indicate that differential effects of environmental and social constraints on vigilance behavior between sexes may encourage sexual segregation in white-tailed deer.
警惕行为可能直接影响被捕食动物的健康状况，而了解影响警惕性的因素可能为捕食者与猎物之间的相互作用提供重要见解。我们使用了2011年8月和2012年用相机陷阱拍摄的40540张照片，来评估影响白尾鹿（弗吉尼亚鹿）在诱饵地点觅食时个体警惕行为的因素。我们使用二元逻辑回归来确定个体警惕性是否受到年龄、性别和群体大小的影响。此外，我们评估了一天中的时间、月相以及其他非捕食性野生动物物种的存在是否会影响个体警惕性。幼鹿在诱饵地点的警惕性比成年鹿低11%。当有幼鹿在场时，雌性的警惕性高出46%。随着群体大小的增加，雄性和雌性花费更多时间进食，但每增加一个个体，雄性进食时间的增加幅度几乎是雌性的两倍。个体警惕性随一天中的时间和月相而波动，但通常在白天和月光照耀的夜间时段最低，这表明鹿有能力根据与不同光照强度相关的不断变化的捕食风险来调整警惕行为。当有其他非捕食性野生动物在场时，白尾鹿会提高个体警惕性。我们的数据表明，环境和社会限制对两性警惕行为的不同影响可能会促使白尾鹿出现性别隔离。
