The African Wild Dog : Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation / Scott Creel, Nancy Marusha Creel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Creel, Scott, Author.

Creel, Nancy Marusha, Author.

Series:

Monographs in behavior and ecology.

Monographs in Behavior and Ecology ; 65

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African wild dog.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 341 pages) : illustrations, maps.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2002]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

With only 5,000 surviving, the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) is one of the world's most endangered large carnivores--and one of the most remarkable. This comprehensive portrait of wild dogs incorporates previously scattered information with important new findings from a six-year study in Tanzania's Selous Game Reserve, Africa's largest protected area. The book emphasizes ecology, concentrating on why wild dogs fare poorly in protected areas that maintain healthy populations of lions, hyenas, or other top carnivores. In addition to conservation issues, it covers fascinating aspects of wild dog behavior and social evolution. The Creels use demographic, behavioral, endocrine, and genetic approaches to examine how and why nonbreeding pack mates help breeding pairs raise their litters. They also present the largest data set ever collected on mammalian predator-prey interactions and the evolution of cooperative hunting, allowing them to account for wild dogs' prowess as hunters. By using a large sample size and sophisticated analytical tools, the authors step well beyond previous research. Their results include some surprises that will cause even specialists to rethink certain propositions, such as the idea that wild dogs are unusually vulnerable to infectious disease. Several findings apply broadly to the management of other protected areas. Of clear appeal to ecologists studying predation and cooperation in any population, this book collects and expands a cache of information useful to anyone studying conservation as well as to amateurs intrigued by the once-maligned but extraordinary wild dog.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

1. History and Natural History

2. The Selous, the Study Population, and General Methods

3. Home Ranges and Habitat Selection

4. Cooperative Hunting and the Evolution of Sociality

5. Prey Selection

6. Ungulate Herd Sizes and the Risk of Predation by Wild Dogs

7. Demography-Survival and Reproduction

8. Dispersal

9. Reproductive Suppression, Social Stress, and the Behavioral and Endocrine Correlates of Rank

10. Patterns of Relatedness and the Fitness Consequences of Dispersal, Philopatry, and Reproductive Suppression

11. Interspecific Competition with Larger Carnivores

12. Infectious Diseases

13. Extinction Risk and Conservation

References

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [311]-338) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Feb 2020)

ISBN:

9780691207001

0691207003

OCLC:

1143819947