1,720,993 research outputs found
Long-Term Field Studies of Primates
No full textSome primate field studies have been on-going for decades, covering significant portions of individual life cycles or even multiple generations. In this volume, leading field workers report on the history and infrastructure of their projects in Madagascar, Africa, Asia and South America. More importantly, they provide summaries of their long-term research efforts on primate behaviour, ecology and life history, highlighting insights that were only possible because of the long-term nature of the study. The chapters of this volume collectively outline the many scientific reasons for studying primate behaviour, ecology and demography over multiple generations. This kind of research is typically necessitated by the relatively slow life histories of primates. Moreover, a complete understanding of social organization and behaviour, factors often influenced by rare but important events, requires long-term data collection. Finally, long-term field projects are also becoming increasingly important foci of local conservation activities
A 15-Year Perspective on the Social Organization and Life History of Sifaka in Kirindy Forest
No full textIn this chapter, we summarize some fundamental demographic and morphometric data from the first 15 years of a long-term study of Verreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) at Kirindy Forest in Western Madagascar. We first describe this research site, its history, and infrastructure, as well as the methods employed to study a local sifaka population. Regular censuses, behavioral observations, and systematic captures of members of up to 11 groups began in 1995 and yielded a data set on demography and life history that can contribute comparative insights about sifaka life history. Our analyses revealed that average group size fluctuated very little around a mean of six individuals across years. Group composition was modified by dispersal (mostly male transfers) or disappearances, births, and deaths. Predation and female transfer were the main mechanisms triggering group extinctions and foundation of new groups (N=5 cases in 149 group years). These exceptional cases of female transfer were most likely motivated by female competition or inbreeding avoidance. One female was a member of at least four different groups. Median age at first birth was 5 years. All females gave birth to single infants, but the proportion of adult females reproducing varied between 25 and 85% across years. The mean interval between 112 births was 15.1 months. Loss of an infant before weaning reduced the subsequent inter-birth interval only by about 1 month. The probability that individual females reproduced successfully decreased as the number of adult females per group increased, implying that subtle forms of female competition limit group size. Mortality is especially high (62%) in the first 2 years of life. Predation by the fossa (Cryptoprocta ferox) is the main cause of death. Maximum female reproductive lifespan is at least 15 years, but longevity is still impossible to estimate. These analyses revealed new insights into female reproductive strategies and their interaction with social organization that were only possible because of the long-term nature of the study, but problems of small sample size still limit the analysis of many vital statistics
The Values and Challenges of Long-Term Field Studies
No full textIn this chapter, we review some of the benefits and challenges of long-term primate field studies. We define long-term studies as those that cover a significant part of the study species’ life cycle; in reality, many studies have already extended over multiple generations. We first provide a brief overview of the historical beginnings of modern primate field studies, most of which lay in the 1950s and early 1960s. Next, we identify a number of biological constraints and scientific questions that necessitate and justify a long-term approach to studying wild primate populations. Most research questions in this context are related to fitness determinants and outcomes and can be broadly classified as addressing either aspects of behavior, life history and demography, or the possible interactions among them. Positive side effects of long-term field projects on the conservation of the study site or the study species have recently become additional important reasons for the continuation of these projects. Studying individually known primates over years and decades also poses some unique challenges, however, especially with respect to data management and funding. We close this chapter by summarizing some of the unique insights about primate social systems and life history only made possible by the long-term nature of the studies, focusing on the chapters making up the remainder of this volume
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
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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