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55 results for “MeerKAT”
Dominance loss and tenure maintenance in Kalahari meerkats
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Signalling adjustments to direct and indirect environmental effects on signal perception in meerkats
<p><span>The efficiency of communication between animals is determined by the perception range of signals. With changes in the environment, signal transmission between a sender and a receiver can be affected both directly, where the signal's propagation quality itself is affected, and indirectly, where for example the spacing between signaller and receiver is impacted. Here we investigated how meerkats (<i>Suricata suricatta</i>) in the Kalahari Desert adjust to these challenges in the context of maintaining group cohesion through contact calls. We found that meerkats changed their calling rate when signal transmission was affected indirectly due to increased dispersion of group members as during a drought, but not under typical wet conditions, when signal transmission was directly affected due to higher vegetation density. Instead under these wetter conditions, meerkats remained within proximity to each other. Overall, both direct and indirect environmental effects on signal perception resulted in an increased probability of groups splitting. In conclusion, we provide evidence that social animals can flexibly adjust their vocal coordination behaviour to cope with direct and indirect effects of the environment on signal perception, but that these adjustments have limitations. </span></p>
Effects of climate change on pup growth and survival in a cooperative mammal, the meerkat
<p>1. Breeding systems in which group members help to raise the offspring of co-members are associated with arid, unpredictable environments. Cooperative rearing may mitigate the effects of adverse environmental conditions on pup growth and survival. However, few studies have explored the relationship between environmental variation and breeding success, and the role of helpers. <br> 2. Here we show that increases in daily maximum air temperatures (T<sub>max</sub>) in the southern Kalahari over the last twenty years have been associated with reductions in the growth and survival of meerkat (<em>Suricata suricatta</em>) pups. <br> 3. On days when T<sub>max</sub> was high, meerkat pups gained less body mass than on cooler days. Reductions in the diurnal body mass gain (ΔM<sub>b</sub>) of pups on hotter days were not a consequence of reductions in the frequency with which pups were fed by adults as feeding rate increased with T<sub>max</sub>, suggesting that the reductions in ΔM<sub>b</sub> by pups on hot days reflected a decrease in water content of the food items or an increased water and energy cost of thermoregulation. <br> 4. Reductions in pup ΔM<sub>b</sub> on hot days were smaller in larger groups, in which helper-to-pup ratios were relatively high.<br> 5. As further increases in air temperature are predicted with climate change, further reductions in meerkat pup growth and survival seem inevitable.</p>
Data from: Group size and social status affect scent marking in dispersing female meerkats
Many animal species use scent marks such as faeces, urine, and glandular secretions to find mates, advertise their reproductive status, and defend an exclusive territory. Scent marking may be particularly important during dispersal, when individuals emigrate from their natal territory searching for mates and a new territory to settle and reproduce. In this study, we investigated the scent marking behaviour of 30 dispersing female meerkats (Suricata suricatta) during the three consecutive stages of dispersal – emigration, transience, and settlement. We expected marking patterns to differ between dispersal stages and depending on social circumstances such as presence of unrelated mates and social status of the individuals within each dispersing coalition; but also to be influenced by water and food availability. We showed that defecation probability increased with group size during the settlement stage, when newly formed groups are expected to signal their presence to other resident groups. Urination probability was higher in subordinate than in dominant individuals during each of the three dispersal stages, and it overall decreased as the dispersal process progressed. Urine may thus be linked to advertisement of the social status within a coalition. Anal marking probability did not change across dispersal stages, but increased with the presence of unrelated males and was higher in dominants than in subordinates. We did not detect any effect of rain or foraging success on defecation and urination probability. Our results suggest that faeces, urine, and anal markings serve different communication purposes (e.g. within and between group communication) during the dispersal process.
Data from: The development of individual differences in cooperative behaviour: maternal glucocorticoid hormones alter helping behaviour of offspring in wild meerkats
The phenotype of parents can have long-lasting effects on the development of offspring as well as on their behaviour, physiology and morphology as adults. In some cases, these changes may increase offspring fitness but, in others, they can elevate parental fitness at a cost to the fitness of their offspring. We show that in Kalahari meerkats (Suricata suricatta), the circulating glucocorticoid (GC) hormones of pregnant females affect the growth and cooperative behaviour of their offspring. We performed a 3-year experiment in wild meerkats to test the hypothesis that GC-mediated maternal effects reduce the potential for offspring to reproduce directly and therefore cause them to exhibit more cooperative behaviour. Daughters (but not sons) born to mothers treated with cortisol during pregnancy grew more slowly early in life and exhibited significantly more of two types of cooperative behaviour (pup rearing and feeding) once they were adults compared to offspring from control mothers. They also had lower measures of GCs as they aged, which could explain the observed increases in cooperative behaviour. Because early life growth is a crucial determinant of fitness in female meerkats, our results indicate that GC-mediated maternal effects may reduce the fitness of offspring, but may elevate parental fitness as a consequence of increasing the cooperative behaviour of their daughters.
Intergroup aggression in meerkats
Violent conflicts between groups have been observed among many species of group living mammals and can have important fitness consequences, with individuals being injured or killed and with losing groups surrendering territory. Here, we explore between-group conflict among meerkats (Suricata suricatta), a highly social and cooperatively breeding mongoose. We show that interactions between meerkat groups are frequently 18 aggressive and sometimes escalate to fighting and lethal violence and that these interactions have consequences for group territories, with losing groups moving to sleeping burrows closer to the centre of their territories following an intergroup interaction and with winning groups moving further away. We find that larger groups and groups with pups are significantly more likely to win contests but that the location of the contest, adult sex ratio, and mean within-group genetic relatedness do not predict contest outcome. Our results suggest that intergroup competition may be a major selective force among meerkats, reinforcing the success of large groups and increasing the vulnerability of small groups to extinction. The presence of both within-group cooperation and between-group hostility in meerkats make them a valuable point of comparison in attempts to understand the ecological and evolutionary roots of human warfare.
MariaPaniw/meerkats: meerkat_population_viability
<p>Code and data to replicate analyses in Paniw et al. 2019 Science 363: 631-635.</p>
Data from: Meerkat close calling patterns are linked to sex, social category, season and wind, but not fecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations
It is well established that animal vocalizations can encode information regarding a sender's identity, sex, age, body size, social rank and group membership. However, the association between physiological parameters, particularly stress hormone levels, and vocal behavior is still not well understood. The cooperatively breeding African meerkats (Suricata suricatta) live in family groups with despotic social hierarchies. During foraging, individuals emit close calls that help maintain group cohesion. These contact calls are acoustically distinctive and variable in rate across individuals, yet, information on which factors influence close calling behavior is missing. The aim of this study was to identify proximate factors that influence variation in call rate and acoustic structure of meerkat close calls. Specifically, we investigated whether close calling behavior is associated with sex, age and rank, or stress hormone output (i.e., measured as fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) concentrations) as individual traits of the caller, as well as with environmental conditions (weather) and reproductive seasonality. To disentangle the effects of these factors on vocal behavior, we analyzed sound recordings and assessed fGCM concentrations in 64 wild but habituated meerkats from 9 groups during the reproductive and non-reproductive seasons. Dominant females and one-year old males called at significantly higher rates compared to other social categories during the reproductive season. Additionally, dominant females produced close calls with the lowest mean fundamental frequencies (F0) and the longest mean pulse durations. Windy conditions were associated with significantly higher call rates during the non-reproductive season. FGCM concentrations were unrelated to close calling behavior. Our findings suggest that meerkat close calling behavior conveys information regarding the sex and social category of the caller, but shows no association with fGCM concentrations. The change in call rate in response to variation in the social and ecological environments individuals experience indicates some degree of flexibility in vocal production.
The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT - X. Scintillation arcs of 107 pulsars
<p>Data used in the publication "The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT - X. Scintillation arcs of 107 pulsars" <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac3149">https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac3149</a>. This release includes both the raw and filtered dynamic spectra, as described in the manuscript.</p> <p>The pipeline used to process produce, filter, and analyse dynamic spectra starting from the pulsar archives is on github: https://github.com/ramain/meerkat-scintpipe</p>
10-arcmin overlays for the MeerKAT-2019 subset of the G4Jy Sample
<p>Overlays created for 140 sources in the G4Jy Sample, referred to as the MeerKAT-2019 subset. The radio contours are from MeerKAT (purple), GLEAM (red), NVSS/SUMSS (blue), and TGSS (yellow), with the background image being from WISE and having a 10-arcmin across field-of-view. The number of sigma in the filename refers to the lowest contour-level of the MeerKAT contours, and the component MeerKAT images can be accessed via the SARAO archive: https://archive-gw-1.kat.ac.za/public/repository/10.48479/wyab-t838/index.html . See Sejake et al. (2022) for further details.</p>
Data from: Pregnancy reduces concurrent pup care behaviour in meerkats, generating differences between dominant and subordinate females
<p><span>In some mammals, and particularly in cooperative breeding ones, successive bouts of reproduction can overlap so that a female is often pregnant while still nurturing dependent young from her previous litter. </span><span>Such an overlap requires females to divide their energetic budget between two reproductive activities, and pregnancy costs </span><span>would consequently be expected to reduce investment in concurrent offspring care. However, explicit evidence for such reductions is scarce, and the potential effects they may have on work division in cooperative breeders have not been explored.</span></p> <p><span>Using 25 years of data on reproduction and cooperative behaviour in wild Kalahari meerkats, supplemented with field experiments, we investigated whether pregnancy reduces contributions to cooperative pup care behaviours, including babysitting, provisioning, and raised guarding. We also explored whether pregnancy, which is more frequent in dominants than subordinates, could account for the reduced contributions of dominants to the cooperative pup care behaviours. </span></p> <p><span>We found that pregnancy, particularly at late stages of gestation, reduces contributions to cooperative pup care; that these reductions are eliminated when the food available to pregnant females is experimentally supplemented; and that pregnancy effects accounted for differences between dominants and subordinates in two of the three cooperative behaviours examined (pup provisioning and raised guarding but not babysitting). </span></p> <p><span>By linking pregnancy costs with reductions in concurrent pup care, our findings illuminate a tradeoff between investment in successive, overlapping bouts of reproduction. They also suggest that some of the differences in cooperative behaviour between dominant and subordinate females in cooperative breeding mammals can be a direct consequence of differences in their breeding frequency. </span></p>
Data from: Dispersal-induced social stress prolongs gestation in wild meerkats
<p><span>In the majority of mammals, gestation length is relatively consistent and seldom varies by more than 3%. In a few species, females can adjust gestation length by delaying the development of the embryo after implantation. Delays in embryonic development allow females to defer the rising energetic costs of gestation when conditions are unfavourable, reducing the risk of embryo loss. Dispersal in mammals that breed cooperatively is a period when food intake is likely to be suppressed and stress levels are likely to be high. Here we show that pregnant dispersing meerkats (<em>Suricata suricatta</em>), which have been aggressively evicted from their natal group and experience weight loss and extended periods of social stress, prolong their gestation by means of delayed embryonic development. Repeated ultrasound scans of wild, unanaesthetised females throughout their pregnancies showed that pregnancies of dispersers were on average 6.3% longer and more variable in length (52-65 days) than those of residents (54-56 days). The variation in dispersers shows that, unlike most mammals, meerkats can adapt to stress by adjusting their pregnancy length by up to 25%. By doing so, they potentially rearrange the costs of gestation during adverse conditions of dispersal and enhance offspring survival. </span></p>
Intergroup aggression in meerkats
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Signalling adjustments to direct and indirect environmental effects on signal perception in meerkats
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Data from: The development of individual differences in cooperative behaviour: maternal glucocorticoid hormones alter helping behaviour of offspring in wild meerkats
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Data from: Cooperative personalities and social niche specialisation in female meerkats
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Effects of climate change on pup growth and survival in a cooperative mammal, the meerkat
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Data from: Group size and social status affect scent marking in dispersing female meerkats
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Data from: Pregnancy reduces concurrent pup care behaviour in meerkats, generating differences between dominant and subordinate females
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Data from: Meerkat close calling patterns are linked to sex, social category, season and wind, but not fecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
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