Anti-Predatory Vigilance

几乎所有的动物都是捕食者，也是其他动物的潜在猎物。这一老生常谈中蕴含着行为上的“冲突”，比如主动进食与尽量减少与捕食者的接触。专注于理解这些冲突的行为研究揭示了动物决策的本质。对反捕食行为的研究也对物种间相互作用的进化和大规模生态系统的运作产生了相当大的洞察力。它还有望为人类行为提供一些启示，这是一个值得研究人员更多关注的视角。利马博士正在研究社会背景下的反掠夺性行为。具体地说，他的研究考察了用于早期发现掠夺性攻击的(非常常见的)基于群体的系统，以及它们的存在为合作行为的进化解释带来的问题。基于个体群体成员的警觉性(或警觉性)的捕食者探测系统表明，在被认为是自私的动物身上，合作的程度是不可能的。然而，这样的行为确实被观察到了。利马博士将利用一种很有特色的鸟类--黑眼金丝雀--来研究一个关键的、未经检验的假设，该假设支撑着当前解释这种合作的尝试：群体成员在某种程度上意识到了群体成员的警觉水平。检验这个简单的假设需要在受控的环境条件下进行一系列的行为实验。初步观察表明，这些鸟实际上并没有监控它们的鸟群伴侣的行为。如果这些观察结果在实验上得到证实，那么对我们目前对广泛存在的基于群体的捕食者探测系统的理解进行一次重大的重新评估很可能是正确的。

Virtually all animals are both predators and potential prey for other animals. Inherent in this truism are behavioral "conflicts" such as active feeding vs. minimizing exposure to predators. Behavioral research focused on understanding these conflicts has revealed much about the nature of decision-making by animals. Research on anti-predatory behavior has also yielded considerable insight into the evolution of interactions among species and the workings of large-scale ecological systems. It also promises to shed some light on human behavior, a perspective deserving more attention from researchers. Dr. Lima is studying anti-predatory behavior in a social context. Specifically, his research examines the (very common) group-based systems for the early detection of predatory attack, and the problems that their very existence poses for evolutionary explanations of cooperative behavior. Predator-detection systems based upon the alertness (or vigilance) of individual group members suggest levels of cooperation that would not be expected in supposedly selfish animals. Nevertheless, such behavior is indeed observed. Using a well-characterized bird species, the dark-eyed junco, Dr. Lima will investigate a key, untested assumption underlying current attempts to explain this cooperation: that group members are in some way aware of the vigilance levels of their groupmates. Examining this simple assumption will require a series of behavioral experiments performed under controlled environmental conditions. Preliminary observations suggest that these birds are actually not monitoring the behavior of their flockmates. Should these observations be confirmed experimentally, then a major reassessment of our current understanding of widespread group-based predator-detection systems may well be in order.