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Vigilance and escape behaviour in ground squirrels (tribe Marmotini)
Milerová, Petra ; Vohralík, Vladimír (advisor) ; Matějů, Jan (referee)
In the ground squirrels, vigilant antipredator behaviour is frequently studied as a part of antipredator strategy. More vigilant animals have greater chances to avoid a predator attack. But it's also true, that animals allocating more time to vigilance, can allocate less time to foraging. There is obvious trade-off between vigilance and foraging. Ground squirrels, marmots and prairie dogs have to receive a lot of food to accumulate fat reserves for the hibernation period, and in case of juveniles also to ensure their growth. Therefore, they are forced to allocate time between aforementioned activities suitably. In view of the close relationship between vigilance and foraging, these two activities are often investigated together. The most important factors influencing aforementioned activities are number of simultaneously active individuals and presence of visual barriers. An affect has also age, sex and reproductive status of the individual or caloric content of the food. After the detection of a predator with the aid of vigilance, can be initiated escape response. Escape distance, escape velocity and escape behaviour in general are influenced especially by the type of predator, type of vegetation cover and individual distance from a burrow entrance. It is important that total energy costs of these...
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Integration of clonal plants in heterogeneous environment
Vinšová, Jana ; Weiser, Martin (advisor) ; Macek, Petr (referee)
Clonal plants may be able to cope with spatial and temporal heterogeneity due to the physiological integration of ramets. To begin with, I discuss basic characteristics of clonal plants and then I provide a review of theoretical and empirical work dealing with the advantages and disadvantages of clonal growth in heterogenous conditions. Three main traits - translocation of resources, division of labour and foraging - are examined in terms of their contribution to the success of clonal plants. Despite a large amount of attention which this topic has received in the past few decades, a number of issues still remain unclear.
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Foraging motivations: socioeconomic and regional conditionalities
Růžičková, Lucie ; Šiftová, Jana (advisor) ; Rypáčková, Pavla (referee)
A research of foraging represents a relatively new phenomenon abroad. In Czechia, on the other hand, this is an ordinary issue with a long-time tradition, but until recently it has not received much attention by the scientific community. For this reason, the following diploma thesis deals with this activity. It consists of two main units. The first part aims to create the theoretical framework necessary for the introduction into the foraging study. It includes a familiarization with the trend of the self-provisioning in general both in Czechia and abroad. A substantial part of the theoretical framework deals with the quantity and the typology of harvested products, the reasons for foraging, the characteristics of the harvesters, etc. It also outlines the problem of western academics' interpretation of foraging in post-communist conditions as a survival strategy. In the second part, using the mixed research methods, the thesis seeks to find out what is the tradition of foraging in Czech conditions during recent decades, who are the harvesters and what are the reasons and motivations to harvest. By statistical data analysis and by interviewing method, it is confirmed that people across a variety of demographic and socio-economic characteristics are harvesting and motivation is certainly not a bad...
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Urban foraging: a (non)traditional strategy of food privisioning in the city?
Růžičková, Lucie ; Spilková, Jana (advisor) ; Rypáčková, Pavla (referee)
A research of foraging represents a relatively new phenomenon abroad. In Czechia, on the other hand, this is an ordinary issue with a long-time tradition, but until recently it has not received much attention by the scientific community. For this reason the following diploma thesis deals with this activity. It consists of two main units. The first part aims to create the theoretical framework necessary for the introduction into the foraging study. There is a familiarization with the trend of the self-provisioning in general both in Czechia and abroad. A substantial part of the theoretical framework deals with the quantity and the typology of harvested products, the reasons for foraging, the characteristics of the harvesters, etc. It also outlines the problem of western academics' interpretation of foraging in post-communist conditions as a survival strategy. In the second part, using the mixed research methods, the thesis seeks to find out what is the tradition of foraging in Czech conditions during recent decades, who are the harvesters and what are the reasons and motivations to harvest. By statistical data analysis and by interviewing method, it is confirmed that people across a variety of demographic and socio-economic characteristics are harvesting and motivation is certainly not a bad...
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Clonal integration of Agrostis stolonifera in heterogeneous soil environment
Duchoslavová, Jana ; Weiser, Martin (advisor) ; Klimešová, Jitka (referee)
Clonal plants may be able to cope with spatial heterogeneity due to the physiological integration of ramets. Previous studies demonstrated that benefits of clonal integration increase with patch contrast between individual ramets. However, the same magnitude of contrast may be perceived differently in rich and poor environments. According to the theoretical work of Caraco and Kelly (1991), I expected these benefits to be the greatest in overall poor conditions and high between-patch contrast. To test this hypothesis, I conducted experiments with pairs of ramets of a stoloniferous grass, Agrostis stolonifera, grown in variously nutrient rich conditions. The experiment with pairs of ramet of similar developmental age showed only very weak effect of integration on growth of ramets, although integration significantly improved survival of ramets and also affected root-shoot ratio of ramets. Nevertheless, there were considerable benefits of integration in the experiment with developmentally older mother ramets and their daughter ramets. Contrary to the predictions, the benefits of integration were bigger in rich conditions and they decreased with increasing between-patch contrast. In addition, effect of integration on root-shoot ratio of ramets was opposite to the expected specialization for acquisition...
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Integration of clonal plants in heterogeneous environment
Vinšová, Jana ; Weiser, Martin (advisor) ; Macek, Petr (referee)
Clonal plants may be able to cope with spatial and temporal heterogeneity due to the physiological integration of ramets. To begin with, I discuss basic characteristics of clonal plants and then I provide a review of theoretical and empirical work dealing with the advantages and disadvantages of clonal growth in heterogenous conditions. Three main traits - translocation of resources, division of labour and foraging - are examined in terms of their contribution to the success of clonal plants. Despite a large amount of attention which this topic has received in the past few decades, a number of issues still remain unclear.
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Vigilance and escape behaviour in ground squirrels (tribe Marmotini)
Milerová, Petra ; Vohralík, Vladimír (advisor) ; Matějů, Jan (referee)
In the ground squirrels, vigilant antipredator behaviour is frequently studied as a part of antipredator strategy. More vigilant animals have greater chances to avoid a predator attack. But it's also true, that animals allocating more time to vigilance, can allocate less time to foraging. There is obvious trade-off between vigilance and foraging. Ground squirrels, marmots and prairie dogs have to receive a lot of food to accumulate fat reserves for the hibernation period, and in case of juveniles also to ensure their growth. Therefore, they are forced to allocate time between aforementioned activities suitably. In view of the close relationship between vigilance and foraging, these two activities are often investigated together. The most important factors influencing aforementioned activities are number of simultaneously active individuals and presence of visual barriers. An affect has also age, sex and reproductive status of the individual or caloric content of the food. After the detection of a predator with the aid of vigilance, can be initiated escape response. Escape distance, escape velocity and escape behaviour in general are influenced especially by the type of predator, type of vegetation cover and individual distance from a burrow entrance. It is important that total energy costs of these...
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Longterm analysis of beaver foraging - Do beavers sawing off the branch on which they are sitting?
Bartoň, Marian ; Vorel, Aleš (advisor) ; Jarmila, Jarmila (referee)
This thesis is focused on the analysis of eurasian beavers foraging behaviour and their strategy of getting food in the long-term perspective.
First part (theoretical) of the thesis contains an explanation of the theory of the central place foraging, animal selective behaviour when food is selected and central place foraging influence on trees fertility. In this part is also mentioned the predation risk or how does the beaver perceives competitive pressure from other animals, and factors that can cause the change in population density of beaver colonies. The objective of this work is to determine the effect of long-term beaver populating on the volume of comsumed biomass and expanse of the territory, and a comparison of these results with one another in terms of different times of occupated territories.
The second part describes the methodical procedure of the field survey. Data I collected from the areas of Šumava, Český les and South Moravia. I tried to find out, how the beaver´s foraging behaviour is induced depending on time inhabiting the territory and on increasing distance from the shore. This research shows that the beaver trips for food increases with age of occupation in 7-10 years and then the distance of tree cuts declined again from the shore. The volume of consumed biomass in reliance of increasing time of beaver occupation also decline and the most favoured tree species was an oak tree for which beavers were willing to walk long distances. The results of the simple analysis are presented as a measurement for both the entire region and also for each territory.
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Sensory abilities in food localization in four species of African mole-rats with diverse social organization
VITÁMVÁS, Miloš
Until recently, it was assumed that African mole-rats search for food randomly, as it is in concordance with Aridity food distribution hypothesis. However, recent studies indicate that some subterranean rodent species including mole-rats could be able to use plant chemicals (kairomones) for food localization. In my master thesis I conducted a battery of experiments on four mole-rat species to prove, that these species also posses the ability of kairomone guided foraging independently of their social organization.
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