Animal Vigilance

Animal Vigilance builds on the author’s previous publication with Academic Press (Social Predation: How Group Living Benefits Predators and Prey) by developing several other themes including the development and mechanisms underlying vigilance, as well as developing more fully the evolution and function of vigilance.

Animal vigilance has been at the forefront of research on animal behavior for many years, but no comprehensive review of this topic has existed. Students of animal behavior have focused on many aspects of animal vigilance, from models of its adaptive value to empirical research in the laboratory and in the field. The vast literature on vigilance is widely dispersed with often little contact between models and empirical work and between researchers focusing on different taxa such as birds and mammals. Animal Vigilance fills this gap in the available material.

• Tackles vigilance from all angles, theoretical and empirical, while including the broadest range of species to underscore unifying themes
• Discusses several newer developments in the area, such as vigilance copying and effect of food density
• Highlights recent challenges to assumptions of traditional models of vigilance, such as the assumption that vigilance is independent among group members, which is reviewed during discussion of synchronization and coordination of vigilance in a group
• Written by a top expert in animal vigilance

advanced undergraduates and graduate students in animal behavior, biology and behavioral ecology, and faculty and researchers interested in vigilance

• Preface
• Chapter 1: Overview of Animal Vigilance
  • Abstract
  • 1.1. Introduction
  • 1.2. Definition and measurements
  • 1.3. A history of vigilance
  • 1.4. Research themes
  • 1.5. Conclusions
• Chapter 2: Function of Animal Vigilance
  • Abstract
  • 2.1. Introduction
  • 2.2. Types of threats
  • 2.3. Monitoring competitors
  • 2.4. Monitoring predators
  • 2.5. Advertising to predators
  • 2.6. Conclusions
• Chapter 3: Causation, Development and Evolution of Animal Vigilance
  • Abstract
  • 3.1. Introduction
  • 3.2. Causation
  • 3.3. Development of animal vigilance
  • 3.4. Evolutionary origin of animal vigilance
  • 3.5. Conclusions
• Chapter 4: Drivers of Animal Vigilance
  • Abstract
  • 4.1. Introduction
  • 4.2. Drivers associated with social risk
  • 4.3. Drivers associated with predation risk
  • 4.4. Drivers of vigilance associated with food or state
  • 4.5. Individual differences
  • 4.6. Conclusions
• Chapter 5: Animal Vigilance and Group Size: Theory
  • Abstract
  • 5.1. Introduction
  • 5.2. Predation risk and group size
  • 5.3. Models of animal vigilance in groups
  • 5.4. Validity of the assumptions
  • 5.5. Conclusions
• Chapter 6: Animal Vigilance and Group Size: Empirical Findings
  • Abstract
  • 6.1. Introduction
  • 6.2. Meta-analysis
  • 6.3. Why vigilance fails to decrease with group size?
  • 6.4. Why the magnitude of the group-size effect varies?
  • 6.5. Alternative hypotheses to explain the group-size effect on vigilance
  • 6.6. Conclusions
• Chapter 7: Synchronization and Coordination of Animal Vigilance
  • Abstract
  • 7.1. Introduction
  • 7.2. Synchronization of vigilance
  • 7.3. Coordination of vigilance
  • 7.4. Sentinel behaviour
  • 7.5. Conclusions
• Chapter 8: Applied Vigilance
  • Abstract
  • 8.1. Introduction
  • 8.2. Vigilance and flight initiation distance
  • 8.3. Vigilance in disturbed habitats
  • 8.4. Vigilance when predation risk is relaxed
  • 8.5. Vigilance at night
  • 8.6. Vigilance in mixed-species groups
  • 8.7. Conclusions
• Conclusions
• References
• Subject Index