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Responses of naive primates to snakes: experiments with selected species kept in Prague zoo
Kutinová, Lucie ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Fuchs, Roman (referee)
In the wild, snakes are known to elicit strong antipredator responses in primates. Primates often mob the snakes, which is also accompanied by loud calls. In evolution, the deadly threat posed by snakes goes as far as to the origin of placental mammals. In this study, the reactions of naïve individuals to snakes were tested. Naïve pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina) and mouse lemurs (Microcebus murinus) avoided the snake stimulus. For the macaques there was a longer latency to touch the rubber snake compared to the latency to touch the rubber lizard. The mouse lemurs avoided feeding on the side of experimental box where the snake odor was presented. The reactions of macaques and mouse lemurs were not accompanied by vocalizations and they seemed to be overall mild. Nevertheless, the snake stimuli used here were strong enough for these naïve primates. For ringtail lemurs (Lemur catta), the reactions to uncovering a hidden rubber snake was tested. But the lemurs showed no avoiding reactions. A question for further research is whether the different results for lemurs were not caused by different experimental procedure. As well as in macaques and mouse lemurs, the reactions seemed to be very mild. But no deeper analysis of the behavior was performed. Thus, a reaction could have been overlooked, which...
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Parental behavior and recognition of juveniles in geckos of genus Teratoscincus
Suchomelová, Petra ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Kubička, Lukáš (referee)
4 ANNOTATION The diploma thesis deals with parental behavior and recognition of youngs by two kinds of desert geckos of genus Teratoscincus, specifically T. scincus and T. keyserlingii. The geckos inhabit a very extreme environment where it is not easy to survive, especially for the small hatchlings. Therefore, it is probable that small hatchlings live together with their parents in their territory for some time. If the parents tolerated them inside their territory, they would provide them with an indirect form of parental care. In the first part of the thesis the hypothesis that adults tolerate to the presence of juvenile conspecifics and heterospecifics (Eublepharis macularius) was tested. The main goal was to determine whether adults tolerate juveniles generally or whether they recognize juveniles conspecifics. To support the hypothesis of the adults' tolerance of juveniles the eggs of the adult geckos living in pair were left in their terrarium until the hatching of the juvenile. Further, the reaction of adult geckos to the presence of a E. macularius juvenile (small), admitted into the terrarium, was tested. The aim was to find out whether the two kinds of geckos, preying other geckoes in the nature, show predatory behavior toward the E. macularius. The standard experiment was carried out in the second...
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Aggregation behaviour of cockroaches (Blattaria: Blaberidae): intraspecific and interspecific preference
Varadínová, Zuzana ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Janda, Milan (referee)
Cockroaches (Blattaria) are considered to be nearly universally gregarious insect order. In spite of this fact most of the research effort has been devoted to the behaviour of domiciliary species. It is thus not surprising we still do not have comparable information about aggregation behaviour in common laboratory blaberid species. We have investigated aggregation behaviour of adult males and females in six blaberid species: four South American species (Blaberinae: Eublaberus posticus, Eublaberus distanti, Blaberus discoidalis, Blaberus craniifer) and two Madagascar species (Oxyhaloinae: Gromphadorhina portentosa, Princisia vanwaerebeki). Intraspecific aggregation behaviour was determined using two approaches: the binary choice tests arena and free interaction arena tests. Results obtained with both methods were largely consistent. We have found that blaberid clades clearly differed in their aggregation patterns. (1) Females of Eublaberus species aggregated while only a slight and less consistent aggregation tendency was recorded in conspecific males. (2) Both sexes of Blaberus species aggregated, especially when tested in the arena. (3) The Madagascar hissing cockroaches of the Gromphadorhina-Princisia clade are not gregarious, the aggregation tendency was entirely absent in the males of both species and...
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Behavioural patterns of heifers under intensive and extensive continuous grazing on species-rich pasture in the Czech Republic
Hejcmanová, Pavla ; Frynta, Daniel (referee)
Thesis: Behavioural patterns of heifers under intensive and extensive continuous grazing on species-rich pasture in the Czech Republic Author: doc. Mgr. Pavla Hejcmanová, Ph.D. Abstract The consumption of food is one of the most fundamental activities in all animals and takes its ultimate part in maximizing an animal's inclusive fitness. Foraging response mechanisms issue essentially from animal intrinsic characteristics, animal's cognitive abilities and environment, namely quantity and quality of available food resources. Understanding of animal's foraging decisions is not possible without the knowledge of other types of behaviour and factors they affect it. Therefore, the aim of the investigation was to evaluate heifers' behavioural pattern on species-rich semi-natural pasture under a continuous intensive (IG) and extensive (EG) grazing regime as this is currently the most extensive management system employed in central Europe. Ten or eight (IG), and six or four (EG) heifers were continuously stocked in two completely randomized blocks from June to late September in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2006 and 2007. Swards were maintained at a target height of 5 and 10 cm, respectively. Grazing, ruminating, resting, and other activities were monitored during 24-hour observations, and grazing, chewing and ruminating rates...
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How evolution of coloration in parrots (Psittaciformes) affects species conservation through human preferences
Lišková, Silvie ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Šumbera, Radim (referee)
Each year, several new species are recognized as threatened or endangered. Today's worldwide zoos and aquariums are highly concerned in their conservation and the species kept in large numbers have high chances for possible future reintroduction. However, the selection of the species kept is decided by men and as such can be affected by human aesthetic preferences. The aim of this thesis was to test the hypothesis that zoos preferentially keep species that are attractive rather than endangered, using the parrot family (Psittaciformes) as an example. We collected data from 460 human respondents who evaluated the attractiveness of parrots presented on painted illustrations. After analyzing which traits affect the perceived beauty we found that humans prefer parrots that are big, long-tailed and colourful (blue, orange and yellow). There was a considerable agreement among the respondents. We repeatedly confirmed significant positive association between the perceived beauty and the size of worldwide zoo population. In addition of perceived beauty, area of distribution and body size appeared significant predictors of zoo population size. In contrast, the effects of conservation status and taxonomic uniqueness appeared insignificant. Our results suggest that zoos preferentially keep beautiful parrots and pay less...
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Repeatability of behavioural measures of personality
Žampachová, Barbora ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Adamová, Dana (referee)
Personality is a concept enabling us to describe the systematical individual differences in behavior. It includes many behaviors, like exploration, activity, aggression, reaction to new stimuli, or sociability. The individuals differing in their exploration strategy are called fast and slow explorers, those differing in the level of aggression and the reaction to stress are called proactive and reactive individuals. If a certain group of behaviors appears together, we talk about behavioral syndromes. There are many definitions of personality, but most of them share a demand for time consistency. Repeatability is one of the tools for measuring this consistency. It's a correlation among repeated measures of the same individual. It is counted either as Spearman's or Pearson's correlation, or as an intraclass correlation coefficient, using variance components acquired from ANOVA, GLMM, or LMM. My original assumption was that the most repeatable behaviors are the ones demanding an immediate answer to the current situation. I executed a meta-analysis of the repeatability of behavior to test this hypothesis. I found the highest repeatability in aggression and the lowest in exploration. Other important factors were the identity of the source study, number of repeats, number of tested animals, and the method of...
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Effect of dizocilpine on behavioral strategies of rats in the place avoidance task
Antošová, Eliška ; Valeš, Karel (advisor) ; Frynta, Daniel (referee)
Non-competitive antagonists of NMDA receptors can induce psychomimetic effects - they can cause schizophrenia-like behavior in healthy volunteers. MK-801 is such an agent. It is often used to model schizophrenia-like behavior in experimental animals. On the other hand, non-competitive antagonists of NMDA receptors show antidepressant effects both in patients suffering from depression and in animal models. Currently, cognitive deficit is considered to be a crucial symptom of the schizophrenia. Cognitive coordination is a process distinguishing irrelevant and relevant stimuli. A disruption of this process could play a pivotal role in cognitive deficit in schizophrenia. Active Allothetic Place Avoidance task (AAPA) could be a useful tool to study this phenomenon. In this task an animal has to distinguish between two spatial (reference) frames, whereas one of them is irrelevant and the other is relevant. The aims of my diploma thesis were: to study 1) behavioral strategies of laboratory rats in AAPA task and 2) effect of MK-801 on behavioral strategies and cognitive efficiency of rats in this task. The rats demonstrated two different strategies in the AAPA task. The first strategy was an active avoidance of an aversive sector; the second one was "freezing" with minimal active movement on the arena. Application...
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