Diet may be fundamental to the extensive paternal care and reduced maternal care seen in bat-eared foxes (Otocyon megalotis). This termite-specialist would struggle to increase its energy intake by hunting large prey or provisioning such items to mates or pups. Consequently, lactating, physiologically challenged females need to invest more time in foraging, while males spend time with pups. However, there is little empirical evidence of the impacts of parental care on foraging behavior and stress-related hormone levels in free-living bat-eared foxes. We studied foraging behavior in 20 wild bat-eared foxes for 2 years, investigating how foraging behavior and fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) levels varied with austral season in the study population. Thereafter, we evaluated how parental status may affect foraging rates, food sizes consumed, and fGCM levels as a proxy for physiological stress. We examined these changes in parents (n = 3) and non-parents (n = 17) as seasonal "activity" changed-that is, breeding season (pregnant phase), denning season (pup-rearing and guarding phase), and non-breeding season (independent adult phase). Small item consumption patterns mirrored overall foraging rates, which were lowest for all foxes in winter. Males increased foraging rates in spring, while all individuals ate more large items in summer. Mean fGCM levels in the population (0.41 µg g-1 organic content) were not affected by sex or austral season, but changed with seasonal activities, for parents in particular: parents had significantly lower fGCM levels in the breeding season. This may reflect reduced stress in these foxes, who successfully paired and increased their within-family socialization during the breeding season. Our findings suggest that behavioral adaptations, including foraging adaptations, are sufficient for bat-eared foxes to meet the physiological challenges of parenting. This is the first study to start unravelling the relationship between foraging rates, parenting behavior, and stress-related hormone levels in the Bat-eared Fox.

Social animals often face a trade-off between the costs of foraging competition among group members and the benefits of protection from predators offered by group living. The spatial position of an individual in relation to the other group members during foraging can mediate the effects of this trade-off as individuals at the front or edge may have better access to food resources, but also higher predation risk than individuals near the centre of the group. Using meerkats, Suricata suricatta, as a model species, we investigated the effect of individual spatial position within a group on foraging success. We determined the spatial position of individuals in a meerkat group by fitting the animals with high-resolution GPS loggers. As a proxy of foraging success, we used meerkats' individual body weight differences between the start and the end of daily data collection over foraging periods (3 h). We found significant individual differences in meerkats' spatial positions within the group. In addition, age-dependent differences in spatial position became obvious, with older meerkats spending less time in the centre of the group and more time in side positions, subordinate females spending less time in the front, and subordinate males spending more time in the back. Younger meerkats who spent more time in the front of the group relative to older meerkats had decreased daily weight gain, indicating less successful foraging. We also found that the dominant females tended to spend more time towards the front of the group, but gained less weight in this position, contrary to the predicted association between front edge of the group and better access to food resources. Our results suggest that the relationship between weight gain and spatial position is highly nuanced and likely to be dependent on more than just trade-offs between foraging success and predation risk. (c) 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/).

Many bird species take part in a dawn chorus, the phenomenon in which the community of songbirds in a particular habitat, show a peak of vocal activity around dawn. Understanding the species-specific extrinsic factors affecting this intensive singing activity is important for us to predict and understand activity patterns of local species for long-term monitoring purposes. This study investigated the effects of air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, rainfall and moon phase on vocal activity during the dawn chorus in a suite of related songbirds, the African Yellow Warbler (Iduna natalensis Smith A, 1847), Little Rush Warbler (Bradypterus baboecala Vieillot, 1817) and Lesser Swamp Warbler (Acrocephalus gracilirostris Hartlaub, 1864), in a high-elevation wetland in Golden Gate Highlands National Park, South Africa. We deployed acoustic recorders in a rolling-grid layout in the similar to 6 km-long wetland from August 2019 to February 2020, recording daily acoustic data from 04:00 to 07:00 Central African Time. Temperature significantly affected the dawn chorus onset of all three species: on cooler days, the dawn chorus started later compared to days with warm temperatures. On days with high relative humidity, the dawn chorus onset of two of the three focal species shifted in opposite directions: one species began singing earlier, while another delayed its onset. Wind speed and rainfall had varied effects on the timing of the dawn chorus across species. Our results demonstrate that meteorological conditions influence the dawn singing of these three birds differently in a shared habitat.

The acoustic structure of nonhuman primate vocalizations can vary substantially within a call type and may converge between social partners. Examining which social partners share call structure can inform our understanding of the function of vocal learning and communication in nonhuman animals. We assessed vocal convergence of female gelada contact grunts within multiple levels of gelada society: small female-philopatric reproductive units that maintain close proximity and larger bands of units that preferentially associate while foraging. We also measured the extent to which grunt acoustic structure varied by caller identity and behavioural state at the time of the call, as well as genetic relatedness, when assessing acoustic similarity between females' grunts. The acoustic structure of female gelada grunts differed between individuals as well as between foraging, travelling and socializing behavioural states. Female gelada grunts were more similar between pairs living in the same band than between pairs living in different bands. This effect was not found for pairs living in the same unit compared to pairs living in different units within the same band. As genetic relatedness did not predict similarity in grunt acoustic structure, we propose that vocal convergence within bands is the result of vocal learning. Vocal convergence at the higher level of gelada society suggests this vocal learning is selective and not simply the result of auditory exposure to conspecific calls. Vocal convergence in geladas may function to maintain spatial cohesion, which is a more critical challenge for bands than for units.

Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species’ population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate ‘intactness scores’: the remaining proportion of an ‘intact’ reference population of a species group in a particular land use, on a scale from 0 (no remaining individuals) to 1 (same abundance as the reference) and, in rare cases, to 2 (populations that thrive in human-modified landscapes). The resulting bii4africa dataset contains intactness scores representing terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods: ±5,400 amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and vascular plants (±45,000 forbs, graminoids, trees, shrubs) in sub-Saharan Africa across the region’s major land uses (urban, cropland, rangeland, plantation, protected, etc.) and intensities (e.g., large-scale vs smallholder cropland). This dataset was co-produced as part of the Biodiversity Intactness Index for Africa Project. Additional uses include assessing ecosystem condition; rectifying geographic/taxonomic biases in global biodiversity indicators and maps; and informing the Red List of Ecosystems.

Globally, career development is a challenge for women academics at higher education institutions. In South African higher education institutions, Black women academics still lag in terms of career progression and their representation in leadership positions compared to their male counterparts. While structural and systemic challenges contribute to this, a lack of formal mentorship support for Black women academics is among the underlying reasons. Against this background, using various mentorship models applied in higher education institutions as the theoretical lens, this book chapter explores a conceptual framework for mentorship support to early-career Black women academics, which will often happen in a cross-cultural context due to historical imbalances. Through a qualitative research approach, a narrative literature review is provided based on content analysis of literature, both peer-reviewed and non-reviewed. Through a conceptual framework, this chapter provides insight regarding the type of mentorship support that is required to advance the career development trajectory of early-career Black women academics in South Africa, considering the paucity of women’s mentorship programs at most of our higher education institutions. Recommendations propose how mentorships can be integrated into the formal career development trajectory of these academics.

Innovation - the ability to solve problems in a novel way - is not only associated with cognitive abilities and relative brain size, but also by noncognitive traits, such as personality and motivation. We used a novel foraging task with three access options to determine how neophobia, exploration, and persistence influence innovation in 12 habituated bat-eared foxes (Otocyon megalotis) in the Kalahari Desert. Bat-eared foxes offer a unique system to understand cognition as they have the smallest relative brain size of measured canids and a specialized, termite-based diet, yet have displayed foraging innovations. Interestingly, most of our individuals solved the task at least once and six individuals solved the task in every trial. Neophobia did not influence success on the first trial, but both exploration and persistence influenced success across all trials. Those individuals that solved the puzzle over multiple trials became faster over time, suggesting that they learned how to open the box more efficiently. We found some variation in the method to open the puzzle box with six individuals solving the puzzle using two methods and one individual using all three methods. This is the first study to show innovation in a novel foraging task in wild bat-eared foxes.

Foraging animals must contend with fluctuating environmental variables that affect foraging success, including conditions like wind noise, which could diminish the usefulness of particular sensory modes. Although the documented impact of anthropogenic noise on animal behavior has become clear, there is limited research on natural noise and its potential influence on mammalian behavior. We investigated foraging behavior in the myrmecophagous bat-eared fox ( Otocyon megalotis ), a species known to rely predominantly on hearing for prey detection. For a year, we monitored the foraging behavior of 18 bat-eared foxes from a habituated population in South Africa, amidst varying wind speeds (0–15.5 km/h). In contrast to expectations, foraging rates did not generally decline with increasing wind speed, except for foraging rate outside termite patches in fall. Furthermore, wind speed had little correlation with time spent in patches. In winter, however, we observed an increase in foraging rate with increasing wind speed both within and outside patches. At the observed wind speeds, these acoustically driven insectivores continue to forage effectively despite potentially distracting or masking noises. With anthropogenic noise producing sound across a broader frequency range, it is important to examine the responses of these canids to artificial sources of acoustic disturbance as well.

AbstractThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent global development ambitions, but achieving these goals depends on local-level application. Many local governments, especially in countries with emerging economies, lack the capacity and resources to integrate SDGs into municipal planning. The feasibility of local implementation is particularly challenging in areas with rugged topography and international borders, such as the Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality, South Africa, into which the city of Phuthaditjhaba falls. Here we explore the suitability of existing spatial biodiversity plans for local application in the six local municipalities within Thabo Mofutsanyana District. We considered four plans related to biodiversity and ecosystem services, including international maps of (1) Key Biodiversity Areas and (2) Strategic Water Source Areas; a national (3) Protected Area Expansion Strategy; and a provincial map of (4) Critical Biodiversity Areas. Although these plans were not designed specifically to meet the SDGs, we show that they can be repurposed to address seven of the 17 SDGs. Next, we summarised the spatial coverage of each plan across the six local municipalities and evaluated the opportunities and shortcomings of using these plans for local application. Our findings guide local officials on the most efficient way to plan for the SDGs using currently available spatial products.

Summary Wetlands act as islands of high biodiversity within the ecological landscape and provide crucial ecosystem services to society. Anthropogenic activities are driving wetland degradation and it has become increasingly rare to find wetlands that do not show signs of biodiversity loss or alteration. The exacerbated loss of biodiversity in wetlands has a negative impact on the local economy and ecosystem services provided by these systems. We responded to the South African National Biodiversity Assessment (NBA) call to document wetland biodiversity against the backdrop of sustained wetland degradation in southern Africa. We monitored the soundscape of a high-elevation wetland in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park (GGHNP) from June 2019 to December 2020 across 24 localities using a rolling grid layout. We detected 35.9% of the avian species previously recorded from ad hoc sightings in the GGHNP of which 68.1% are wetland obligate species. We contributed an additional 10.2% new species records to the avian diversity of the GGHNP, including 24 species that are considered threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Our remote monitoring technique enabled the first ever continuous monitoring using remote acoustic equipment for a high-elevation wetland in South Africa, thus providing a valuable contribution to the NBA call.

Wildlife and livestock farms around the world have eradicated large predators, leaving an empty niche for mesopredators to occupy. In South Africa, black-backed jackals (Canis mesomelas) are a widely distributed mesopredator that actively prey on wildlife and livestock. Despite the documented economic losses often associated with livestock predation in South Africa and abroad, research in many areas of canid ecology has received little attention. Using standard isotopic analysis (SIA), we conducted inter-population and jackal–prey isotopic comparisons by analyzing the δ13C and δ15N signals of jackal scat and prey hair samples (livestock and rodents) collected in sites of varied human exposure across multiple seasons. C3 signals dominated our results despite the C4 grasslands that are characteristic of the study sites. Our results indicated inter-population variation with a C3/C4 mixed diet in reserve and livestock farm samples, and a C3 orientated diet in wildlife farm samples. There were significant differences in the δ13C between seasons in the livestock and wildlife farm populations but not in the reserve population. δ15N had strong support for inter-population differences and no support for seasonal variation. Jackal isotopic niche breadths differed between populations, overlapped moderately with rodent prey and indicated almost no overlap with livestock. Our results highlight the feeding plasticity of jackals and the impact of human activities on resource availability and the subsequent feeding choices in canids. Using SIA, we accurately determined that livestock form a limited, if not completely absent, constituent of certain jackal populations. We strongly encourage the complementary use of SIA in dietary studies and wildlife management practices.

Microsatellite data for "Genetic variation between and within two populations of bat-eared foxes (Otocyon megalotis Desmarest, 1822) in South Africa" African Zoology doi:10.1080/15627020.2021.1942204

An animal's ability to traverse a landscape and utilise available resources is vital for its survival. The movement patterns of an animal provide insight into space use, activity patterns and ecological requirements that are imperative for successful farming and wildlife management practices. Home ranges are often used as a measurement of space use, which provides a quantitative value of an animal's movement patterns in relation to various biological factors. A factor that is often overlooked in the analysis of movement patterns is the effect of moon phase, despite its known impact on the activity and hunting success of nocturnal predators. We live-trapped, radio-collared and monitored five black-backed jackals (Canis mesomelas) in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, South Africa, between 2018 and 2019 to determine the impact of various environmental factors on movement patterns. Annual home ranges varied between individuals, were larger in subadults and overlapped between three jackals. Space use and travel velocity suggested a crepuscular activity pattern with a reliance on nocturnal activity and limited diurnal activity. Individual space use suggested variation between moon phases, although overall variation was negligible. Jackals travelled farther during new moon, compared with full moon, with the most notable difference between 23:00 and 04:00. Our results suggest that jackal behaviour does not align with the predation risk hypothesis. Space use and travel velocities varied between seasons, possibly because of differences in activity during mating and pupping periods. Our study confirms the flexibility in jackal space use and suggests a possible relationship with moon phase. To properly understand movement patterns at an individual and population level, we encourage additional research about jackals and various environmental factors via multidisciplinary collaborations.

AFFILIATIONS: 1Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), Pretoria, South Africa 2Howard College School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa 3Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 4Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of the Free State, Phuthaditjhaba, South Africa 5Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa 6Institute of Natural Resources, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Despite the increased availability of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), the adoption of such information technology remains poor in developing countries. Free reference management software such as Zotero can significantly improve academic workflow and thus its adoption by academics in peripheral nations could be a cost-effective method of supporting and boosting research output. Guided by the Technology Acceptance Model, we assessed the effectiveness of a workshop as intervention to introduce Zotero (a novel FOSS in this particular community) to staff members and students at a rural university campus in South Africa. A series of questionnaires assessed how this intervention affected attitude towards, and use of, Zotero. While participants had positive attitudes towards the software at the start of the intervention, the workshop improved the perceived usefulness and ease of use of FOSS. For all participants, the main predictor of eventual regular use was its perceived ease of use. This study suggests that brief training workshops could significantly improve usage of novel open-source software, even with a lack of prior exposure to similar technologies. For students, it becomes important to emphasise the usefulness of the software, while academic staff may benefit from an emphasis on hands-on technical training.

A recommendation of: Logan CJ, McCune KB, MacPherson M, Johnson-Ulrich Z, Rowney C, Seitz B, Blaisdell AP, Deffner D, Wascher CAF Are the more flexible great-tailed grackles also better at behavioral inhibition? https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vpc39

Information on genetic variation within and among populations is relevant for a broad range of topics in biology. We use a combination of mitochondrial and nuclear microsatellite markers to evaluate genetic variation within and between two populations of bat-eared foxes (Otocyon megalotis Desmarest, 1822) in South Africa. The bat-eared fox is a small canid occurring in southern and eastern Africa. The species is currently not threatened with extinction, but a lack of information on genetic diversity has been identified as a deficit for its future conservation. We observed low to moderate genetic differentiation between the two geographically separated populations, but neither mitochondrial nor nuclear microsatellite markers suggested that there have been dispersal barriers between them. Similar genetic diversity within both populations was contrasted by interpopulational differences in relatedness variation among males and females. A high genetic relatedness within both populations, indicated by mitochondrial data, is likely caused by a common historical origin or a combination of species-specific social organization and environmental dispersal constraints. We call for further research on the genetic divergence of bat-eared fox populations as well as on the genetic consequences of interactions between environmental characteristics and social organization in this species.

Research to inform a sustainable future for southern African mountains as social–ecological systems requires major investment. This is needed to strengthen existing relationships, build new relationships among academia, policy, and practice, and drive a robust research capacity program. This is particularly important in disciplines where there is currently limited capacity for mountain-related research in the region. For many pertinent issues in southern African mountains, the urgent need for foundational research is a reality; without this, it is impossible to build toward multidisciplinary outcomes and to drive transdisciplinary efforts. Keys to strengthening solution-oriented research are improved coordination between actors in similar disciplines (eg water security), strong relationships to achieve maximum synergy instead of competition, and major investment in emerging young researchers. The Afromontane Research Unit is leading the way for southern African mountains.