University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, United States
Ecologists have long sought to understand population and community dynamics and abundance, species interactions, and species-environment interactions. Conservation biologists and wildlife managers are also interested in the where and why of wild animals. Often the animal itself is treated as a black box, however, recent understandings of individual state have led to better insights into many ecological and conservation questions. An individual’s affective state, or it’s welfare, is a measure of the subjective and perceived experiences that individual has, which can result in individual states including fear, anxiety, depression, hunger, etc. For example, the exposure to a predator may increase an individual’s fear, which in-turn may alter it’s behaviour and physiology. Reduced food availability may increase individual hunger and promote foraging behaviour but may also alter an individual’s physiology to reduce energy expenditure and promote energy storage. Such changes to an individual’s welfare may thus be adaptive in the short-term, however, if such changes are chronic they may lead to compromised fitness, altered species interactions, and ultimately changes in population and community dynamics. Much of my own research is focused on the ecology of fear, and within this talk I will discuss how the fear of being eaten can influence an individual’s affective state leading to changes in individual reproductive output, population and community dynamics, and ecosystem processes. I will also discuss how an individual’s affective state may influence its response and perception of predation risk. Finally, I will discuss how human disturbance may alter an individual’s perception of the environment and thus it’s state of fear, with potentially unforeseen consequences
