1,720,958 research outputs found
Tiger attacks on humans in and around Dudhwa-Pilibhit Tiger Reserves (2003-2018)
No full textThe data describes the case details of individual incidents of attacks on humans by wild tigers, recorded around the Dudhwa & Pilibhit Tiger Reserves and adjoining contiguous forest patches, in the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India, between 2003 and 2018. The data has been collected, by various field data collectors through interviews of surviving victims or their next of kin or eyewitnesses to the incident, if the victim had died. The data collectors were part of the Rapid Response Teams that the Wildlife Trust of India runs in the landscape to address human-big cat situations
Characteristics of Human-Tiger Conflicts in Indian Sundarban
No full textThe Sundarban, spread across India and Bangladesh constitutes the world’s largest and only mangrove habitat of the Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris). Together, harbouring around 202 tigers, it is also infamous as the worlds most severe human-tiger conflict hotspot. Despite this, very fragmentary and inconsistent information exists on the nature and extent of human-tiger conflicts (HTC) in this landscape. To fill this lacuna, a pan landscape survey was undertaken with the aim to mine information on HTC and explore various facets of HTC occurrence in this landscape. The survey was conducted across 76 villages distributed in the eight administrative blocks on the entire fringe of the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve in India between August 2018 to November 2019.
On the whole, human-tiger conflicts (HTC) were reported far more commonly than cases pertaining to conflicts with crocodiles and sharks (species unidentified). The number of cases of human-wildlife conflicts (HWC) recorded were highest in the Gosaba administrative block, followed by Kultali and Patharpratima, which together account for 74% of the recorded cases. This is interesting as in earlier published records almost no consolidated information exists for the south-24-Parganas Forest Division, although it appears that the two administrative blocks here experience the second highest level of HTC in this landscape after Goasba, in north 24 Parganas.
Across the forty-year period span of the recorded information, the overall conflicts between humans and tigers appeared to have witnessed a significant increase after 1987. However, this is most likely a result of poor documentation and relatively low probability of people recalling older incidents accurately. The time series change also shows a significant lowering of human-tiger conflicts post year 2000 (Ref. Figure 1.3), which is suggestive of changes brought about by stronger enforcement as well as the beginning of the arrangements for barricading the fringes with nylon nets (Tiger Conservation Plan, STR, 2012; also see, Mukherjee et al., 2012). The level of conflict between humans and crocodiles and humans and sharks, however, did not show significant changes across the same period. The significant lowering of HTC cases held statistically, even when the data was compared across decadal periods. Post completion of the survey, between 1st December 2019 and 31st October 2020, another 22 cases have been recorded, 21 of which resulted in the death of the victims involved. However, these could not be included in the analysis due to the absence of detailed information, which could not be collected due to the paucity of time (and subsequent Covid-19 driven restrictions).
Most victims of HTC were males (92%), across all age categories of victims, and the majority of the victims belonged to the working age-class, i.e. 19 to 60 years. On average, HTC victims had at least 5 dependent family members, with majority below the poverty line (BPL, as per classification of Govt. of India), earning on average Rs. 25000 (~ USD 336) per annum. Majority of the victims belonged to classified Schedule Caste groups (~69%) and Other Backward Classes (~13%), while only about ~8% belonged to classified Scheduled Tribal groups (indigenous people). This, however, could simply be reflective of the proportional distribution of the various categories in the region. However, a deeper analysis suggests that across the villages surveyed, those with a higher population of Scheduled Tribes experienced a lowered level of HTC, probably indicating that Scheduled Tribes’ are not engaged extensively in natural resource collection compared to other ethnic populations.
90.14% of the victims were Hindus, and only 9.9% of the victims were Muslim and Christian. Compared to the distribution of different religious groups, where Muslims constitute around 30% of the population of south 24 Parganas, their representation in the sample of victims was relatively low at 9.5% of the total number of victims recorded. Irrespective of the religious background of victims, the majority of HTC victims were illiterate (64 – 77.8%), and around 79% of the victims were dependent on forest-based livelihoods, primarily fishing, crab and prawn collection and honey collection as the primary source of their income.
Although around 52.4% of the victims/victim’s family, reported to be owning tillable agriculture land, the average land holding was 0.2 acres, which is extremely small to provide sustainable income from traditional agricultural practices. Further, during interviews, several people reported an increased salinity in their lands due to the inundation of bunds/dykes during natural calamities, leading to saline water inflow into their lands. Such increased salinity of land often renders the land unfit for agriculture. Only 15.6% of the victims or their families owned a fishing boat, indicating that even the majority who were forest-based resource dependent, relied on borrowing or renting boats locally.
An independent analysis using the survey data and the populations statistics data from the Census of India, 2011, suggested some interesting trends. Illiteracy, and marginal occupations such as agricultural wage labour, impacted the level of conflicts that people of surveyed villages experienced. It is intuitive that such populations will be forced to depend extensively on natural resource collections to supplement their livelihoods, and thus become an economic section that is specifically vulnerable to HTC.
Further, it is not surprising that most of the victims were dependent on forest-based livelihoods, and majority of the HTC cases (~91%) were reported to have occurred either in the core area, or in the buffer areas (reserve forests). About 62% of the cases that recorded to have occurred in village lands (n = 42), were from 1980 to 2000, while the remaining were reported between 2001 and 2012, with only 10 cases (23.8%) after 2001. It must be noted that by 2012, the nylon net barrier establishment was complete across an exceptionally large section of the fringe forests, effectively preventing tigers from moving out of forests and into villages. However, a few tigers occasionally still manage to come out of the forests each year, even to this day. Since 2010, the West Bengal Forest Department has also been effectively managing to either drive tigers back, or in capturing them from villages and releasing them back into the forests. Nevertheless, the data is supportive of the fact that in Sundarban, unlike some other Tiger Reserves of India, majority of the cases occur when people enter forests for various purposes. It was also observed that the majority of the cases that were reported to have occurred inside the forests (core or buffer) or even in open waters, most resulted in the death of the victims, when compared to the incidents reported to have occurred in the village areas (See figure 1.5). This is understandable, as in village areas help is closer at hand, than compared to when victims encounter tigers away from human habitations. This was further corroborated by the observation that during the HTC incidents occurring in the villages, the average number of people present near the victim was around ~16 people. Comparatively, the average number of people present with the victim in incidents that occurred away from village areas was 4.9 ± 2.7 people.
The average group size of people also appeared to be correlated to the occupation that victims were pursuing. Besides, farming, which due to its locational specificity ensures a larger mass of people around any potential victim at any given point of time, different predominant forest-based livelihoods pursuits entailed varying sizes of aggregation of people (see figure 1.10). By far, honey collection seemed to accrue larger aggregations, as the number of eyewitnesses present around HTC victims who had reportedly gone into forests to collect honey were significantly higher than number of people present with victims who went into forests to fish, collect prawns or crabs. People venturing into forests to collect crabs also had relatively smaller aggregations compared to the victims who went to forests to collect prawns, honey or for fishing. This is understandable as most forest-based livelihoods are undertaken in groups, rather than by people individually. This is especially true for honey collection, as the period of honey collection is confined to 3-4 months a year, witnessing a larger number of collectors entering the forest, often camping for several days and nights, and hauling large caches of honey collected from natural Apis Dorsata hives. On the other hand, crab collection requires less people compared to all the other forest resources to increase catch sizes. Crab collection is typically carried out by groups of 3-4 people who venture into suitable areas in the forest, usually narrow creeks, positioning themselves over burrow openings inside natural pools to lift crabs out by attaching baits at the end of handheld fishing lines (Pers. Obs.). Crabs being extremely sensitive to vibrations, a minimal group size of people is required to optimise catch sizes in single hauls. Prawn fishing on the other hand is usually done sitting atop boats while shrimp fry are caught by wading through relatively shallow waters using a fine fish net. Fishing is also popularly carried out using cast nets and is carried with fewer people. Added to the increased vulnerability that smaller groups face, the commercial demand for certain resources such as tiger prawns, crabs, certain species of fish, forces people dependent on these resources for livelihoods, to put in more time trying to harvest them. Consequently, many resource collectors today often spend multiple days inside forests in attempts to collect large catches and thus bring lucrative returns, despite the entailing higher risks of tiger attacks.
Thus, most victims died due to HTC incidents when involved in the collection of forest-based resources, compared to when farming in the village lands (See figure 1.5), and most of the victims attacked when they were either on the ground or on boats. Rarely were they attacked when in the water (Figure 1.6). Interestingly, most victims were also attacked by tigers when they were walking or standing erect on the ground, or in the water. This is contrary to findings from other places, such as the Terai belt, where majority of victims were attacked by tigers when in a crouching position (Chatterjee et al. 2017). Victims who were attacked when on their boats were in a sitting or crouching position when attacked, but the overall proportion of such cases was relatively low (see Figure 1.9). It may be noted here that the ground substrate of most of the areas of Sundarban forests is comprised of such soft clay that human feet invariably sink deep into it, making travelling an arduous task, and intuitively making people standing in, or walking appear short. It is interesting to note, that when the influence of posture (standing, squatting, lying), substrate (ground, water, boat) and the group size present with the victim during the incident, on the outcome of the incident (death or survived), was investigated, both posture and group size had a significant impact on people dying as a result of an attack. This meant that irrespective of the substrate people were situated upon, their probability of dying as a result of the attack increased with changing posture (standing < squatting < lying) and decreasing number of people resent with the victim.
Another interesting finding is that over the four decadal periods, the number of victims of HTC who ventured when fishing appeared to have significantly decreased, compared to victims venturing for crab collection, which contrarily to this observation, appeared to have increased over time (Figure 1.14). This is likely to be indicative of the changing trends, wherein crab collection in recent times has become a lucrative source of income due to an increase in demand for different edible estuarine crab species (Choudhury et al. 2008).
Thus, several aspects appeared to be responsible for increasing the probability of being attacked, the most important of these appeared to be the presence of people in the forest, being on the ground in a standing position, and in smaller group sizes. Most people who died were in smaller group sizes, or in other words, the average group size of people present with the HTC victims who were rescued and survived to tell the tale of the incident where significantly larger, compared to the average group size present with people who died on the spot or were rescued and died enroute (Figure 1.10).
Further, interestingly, 60% of the rescued and surviving victims, also received timely medical aid and treatment, while only around 37.5% of the victims who were rescued but died, had received any form of medical attention (Figure 1.16). This suggests that the availability of medical facilities plays a crucial role in determining if a victim rescued from an HTC incident will survive or not, although the severity of the injuries is also likely to play a key role in the death or survival of the victim. Lastly, most HTC incidents were recorded roughly during the early morning hours to midday, with a significant drop in cases recorded to have occurred in the afternoon, evening, or night. This is because most people venture out into forests exceedingly early, often before dawn in this region, which could be a direct implication of the sweltering heat that this region experiences almost throughout the year, or as a strategy to avoid being detected by the patrol boats of the forest department. Nevertheless, this period of human activity in the forests, also closely coincides with the activity pattern of tigers here as suggested by Naha et al.’s study of radio-collared tigers in this landscape (Naha et al. 2016). Such overlap of activity periods may increase the chances of negative encounters between people and tigers.
While it is understood that various other ecological factors also may have an important role as ultimate drivers of HTC, it is clear from the current survey results that the socio-economic status of villagers living on the fringe, especially their low-income occupations are primary drivers of HTC in this landscape. While, posture, substrate, time of forest visit, etc., can all be key drivers of adverse outcomes of individual encounters, the sheer low number of HTC incidents that occur outside protected forest boundaries bears witness to the fact that Sundarban’s infamous image as a conflict hotspot, is primarily because people venture into the forests. Local communities’ dependence on natural resources to offset low incomes from marginal occupations such as wage labour, is the main reason for people falling prey to tiger attacks. Therefore, it is imperative that all conflict mitigation initiatives in this landscape must make a concerted approach to alleviate the lives of local people such that they can live sustainably and well, without depending on forest-based natural resources as a primary source of income
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
An uncommon performing monkey: Behavioural flexibility and social diversity in the Northern Bonnet Macaque Macaca Radiata Radiata
No full textPredominant primate socioecological theories explain observed variations in social systems (and its components) among primate species through different environmental scenarios that promote different grouping patterns, giving rise to specific social structures within which particular behavioural patterns also evolve. They also emphasise the relatively greater challenges faced by females due to changing natural and social environments as, in most primate species, females are responsible for the birth and survival of the offspring. Thus, while female reproductive success is dependent upon the availability of vital natural resources such as food, males depend more upon the availability of fertilisable females in space and time to maximize their reproductive success. Environmental changes especially in patterns of availability and distribution of food resources therefore, determine female grouping patterns around which specific male association patterns emerge.
This theoretical framework however, in explaining variations observed across different primate species, considers different social systems to represent the typical characteristics of individual primate species, and therefore a consequence of long-term evolution.
However, over the last few decades an increasing number of long-term field studies on different primate species have revealed stark variations within individual species and sometimes even within individual populations. Such observations suggest the potential for individual animals to display high levels of flexible, adaptive behaviours, i.e. behavioural flexibility.
Investigating intra-specific or intra-population variation also helps in dissecting out behaviours that are more phylogenetically rooted from those that are more responsive to the local environment, besides displaying the potential extent to which individual animals may display behavioural flexibility. It is therefore, necessary to examine how different environmental pressures can lead to within-population variation in social organisation, and further, how different social organisations may influence changes in the social structure and mating systems within individual populations and even species.
Behaviour is a dynamic phenotypic expression that can be extremely responsive to the external environment and therefore, relatively more labile than the usual hard-wired genetic traits such as morphological characteristics; behavioural traits can therefore also potentially alter the direction in which natural selection operates. This is possible because environmental changes can induce the expression of novel behaviours or behavioural patterns in a population, which may not only promote the immediate survival of individuals but also contribute to enhanced reproductive success. Moreover, behaviour can be transmitted through epigenetic means such as social learning, unlike adaptive physical modifications, and spread rapidly in the population by vertical, horizontal and diagonal transmission. Finally, when such behavioural alterations confer a selective advantage over a considerable period of time, any independent change in the genome that promotes the constitutive expression of the trait (without the requirement of individual or social learning) can be subject to natural selection.
Behavioural flexibility broadly defined here, as any reversible change in the individual behavioural phenotype (alternative behavioural phenotypes) in response to external variations, induced endogenously, exogenously or through a combination of both. Behavioural flexibility sensu lato has been observed widely across different primate taxa, at both individual- as well as group- or population-level, but has rarely been described comprehensively for a single primate species at multiple levels of the social system.
Further, given the paucity of our understanding of the contributions made by behavioural flexibility to variability in social structures under different ecological constraints, the current study attempted to investigate intra-population variation in social organisation and behavioural strategies in a cercopithecine species, the bonnet macaque, in southern India.
Of the two species of macaques endemic to peninsular India, the bonnet macaque Macaca radiata is ubiquitously distributed across a variety of ecological habitats. Its ubiquity and the consequent popularity as street performers (human-trained), has led to this species being widely referred to as the ‘common performing monkey’ of peninsular India. It is also one of the more well studied species from the Indian subcontinent, with descriptive accounts of the species dating back to 1925, besides the subsequent numerous scientific investigations on the species’ biology, ecology and demography.
Bonnet macaques are typically known to reside in multimale-multifemale social systems and unimale social organisations in this species have only been occasionally reported in the literature. The incidence of a high proportion of such rarely observed grouping patterns or social organisations within a single population in the Bandipur National Park of Karnataka state in southern India thus, provides an ideal scenario to test whether observed differences in social organisation also translate into distinct patterns of social structure and mating patterns over relatively short periods of time. Such rapid changes in behavioural strategies in response to changes in the natural and social environments, if established, could provide evidence for the capacity of individual primates to adapt to varying socioecological conditions through phenotypic behavioural flexibility.
The observed social variation in the bonnet macaque population of the Bandipur National Park in southern India has been hypothesised by Sinha and coworkers, to have possibly evolved through both genetic evolution and phenotypic flexibility, largely in response to relatively recent but rapid changes in the foraging regimes faced by the individuals. The results of this study establish three main claims of the model. First, reduced forage availability in the dry season coupled with a patchy distribution of rich human-origin food provided by tourists visiting the sanctuary induce high competition levels, as manifest through increased aggression, especially among females. Second, the formation of smaller groups of females, brought about by troop fission in response to such heightened inter-female aggression, significantly reduces this intense competition. Third, the males in these two types of social organisations adopt rather different behavioural strategies in order to increase their respective success; such flexibility may promote the continued survival and stability of these social organisations.
The study also establishes that larger aggregations of females expectedly experience higher levels of aggression, even outside the context of food, the effects of which largely impact the lower ranking females within a group. Further, it has been hypothesised that under highly competitive regimes, females who bear the maximum costs (mostly lower ranking females) will strive to cope by trading affiliative behaviours such as allogrooming for tolerance from more dominant individuals. This study, however, shows that although lower ranking females, especially in the larger multimale troops, face the larger brunt of aggression, they do not necessarily form such trading relationships. Instead, they appear to invest more in specific affiliative relationships based on reciprocal patterns of affiliation and allogrooming. Interestingly further, females who reciprocate affiliative and allogrooming behaviours seem to do so only during periods of high competition, the dry season, and when feeding and foraging on provisioned resources; another indication of how behavioural strategies may be altered across different periods of time, over variable situations. Additionally, this investigation also is possibly the first to show that, besides allogrooming, even subtle affiliative behaviours such as sitting together or huddling, may contribute substantially towards maintaining such reciprocal relationships.
Among males as well, the study revealed distinct behavioural strategies being utilized by adult males in the two different social organisations. Males in unimale troops employed behaviours such as ‘herding’ and mate guarding’ at significantly higher frequencies, than adult males in multimale troops, and especially during the mating period. Interestingly, adult males in multimale troops, showed no rank-dependent affiliative or allogrooming behavioural patterns, perhaps indicating that males, like females, may not utilise such behaviours to gain access to fertile females (by appeasing more dominant males), but may in fact be shaped through other factors such as kinship ties, thus maintaining coalitions. Females also did not preferably affiliate or allogroom more dominant males during the mating period, although more dominant males did achieve greater mating success, as inferred from successful copulations. The same females however, directed allogrooming and affiliation preferentially towards higher ranking males in the non-mating period, perhaps to buy more support that could potentially increase offspring survival. This latter observation also indicates flexibility in behaviour on the part of females.
Most important of all, the study provides empirical evidence for a more recent proposition that individual primates can potentially adopt different behavioural strategies under varying socioecological conditions, thus giving rise to different behavioural patterns at multiple levels within primate social system. The study also establishes the extent of such population-level or group-level behavioural malleability by showing that varying behavioural tactics and strategies may be exhibited not with respect to relatively stable environmental changes alone but also over much shorter time frames, as, for instance, seasonal fluctuations of food resources.
The understanding of such wide scaled behavioural flexibility displayed across various levels of the social structure has serious implications for our understanding of how social systems and indeed, social animals themselves evolve over time. Its potential for a high degree of behavioural flexibility as a response to diverse environmental and social scenarios may also go on to explain how such ‘uncommon performances’ may have led the bonnet macaque to become the common performing monkey of peninsular India
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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