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With only 5,000 surviving, the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus) is one of the world's most endangered large carnivores. This book emphasises ecology, concentrating on why wild dogs fare poorly in protected areas that maintain healthy populations of lions, hyenas, or other top carnivores. In addition to conservation issues, it covers all aspects of wild dog behaviour and social evolution.
Preface xi Chapter 1: History and Natural History 1 1.1 Taxonomy and Phylogeny 3 1.2 Social Organization 4 1.3 Ecology 7 1.4 Conservation Issues 7 1.5 Issues Addressed by the Research and Organization of the Book 11 Chapter 2: The Selous, the Study Population, and General Methods 15 2.1 The Selous Game Reserve 15 2.2 The Study Area and Population 23 2.3 General Methods 25 Chapter 3: Home Ranges and Habitat Selection 36 3.1 Specific Methods 36 3.2 Description of Home Ranges 39 3.3 Exclusive Areas, Overlaps and Territorial Defense 41 3.4 Den Locations and Characteristics 50 3.5 Pack Size and Range Size 51 3.6 Habitat Selection 52 3.7 Effect of Prey Distribution on Habitat Selection and Home Range Properties 55 3.8 Comparison with Other Wild Dog Populations 59 3.9 Summary 65 Chapter 4: Cooperative Hunting and the Evolution of Sociality 67 4.1 Specific Methods 69 4.2 Hunting and Foraging Success 73 4.3 Prey Selection and Hunting Success 74 4.4 Cooperative Hunting Behavior 76 4.5 Characteristics of Kill Sites 84 4.6 Quantitative Effects of Pack Size on Hunting Benefits and Costs 84 4.7 Optimal Hunting Pack Size 88 4.8 Net Rate of Food Intake vs. Efficiency 89 4.9 Effects of Group Size Unrelated to Hunting 95 4.10 Variance in Foraging Success 96 4.11 Other Wild Dog Populations 97 4.12 Communal Hunting and Group Size: Comparisons with Other Species 98 Chapter 5: Prey Selection 103 5.1 Prey Availability and Encounter Rates 105 5.2 Encounters and Hunts 109 5.3 Hunts and Kills 111 5.4 Combined Effects of Encounter, Hunting, and Killing Probabilities on Prey Selection 112 5.5 Quantitative Models of Prey Selection 114 5.6 Summary 122 Chapter 6: Ungulate Herd Sizes and the Risk of Predation by Wild Dogs 124 6.1 Probability of Being Encountered 126 6.2 The Probability of Being Hunted upon Encounter 130 6.3 Hunting Success 130 6.4 Kills per Encounter, Dilution of Risk, and Combined Measures of Vulnerability 133 Chapter 7: Demography-Survival and Reproduction 145 7.1 Survival Rates 145 7.2 Reproduction 159 7.3 Density Dependence 173 7.4 Genetic Effective Population Size 175 7.5 Demographic Effective Population Size 176 Chapter 8: Dispersal 179 8.1 Defining Dispersal in Social Carnivores 181 8.2 Number and Size of Dispersing Groups 184 8.3 Rates of Dispersal 184 8.4 Size of Dispersing Groups 184 8.5 Linear Dispersal Distance 186 8.6 The Duration and Circumstances of Floating 187 8.7 Comparison with Dispersal in Other Wild Dog Populations 190 8.8 Mortality Risk of Dispersal 191 8.9 Dispersal and Escape from Reproductive Suppression 194 8.10 Dispersal and Escape from Inbreeding 195 8.11 Integrating Forces that Drive Dispersal 200 Chapter 9: Reproductive Suppression, Social Stress, and the Behavioral and Endocrine Correlates of Rank 201 9.1 Are Dominants More Aggressive? 205 9.2 Do Dominants Mate More Often or More Effectively? 207 9.3 Do Hormonal Differences Accompany Behavioral Differences? 210 9.4 Nonbreeder Lactation 214 9.5 Does Social Stress Mediate Reproductive Suppression of Subordinates? 215 9.6 How Effective Is Reproductive Suppression of Subordinates? 216 9.7 Similarities and Differences between the Sexes in the Correlates of Rank 217 9.8 Interspecific Comparisons 218 9.9 Dominance and Stress 218 9.10 Do the Correlates of Rank Relate to Dispersal and Social Organization? 222 Chapter 10: Patterns of Relatedness and the Fitness Consequences of Dispersal, Philopatry, and Reproductive Suppression 223 10.1 Age-specific Relatedness of Natal and Immigrant Subordinates to Breeders 226 10.2 Inclusive Fitness of Nondispersers 231 10.3 Inclusive Fitness of Dispersers 238 10.4 Incomplete Reproductive Suppression: Breeding by Subordinates 240 Chapter 11: Interspecific Competition with Larger Carnivores 245 11.1 Specific Methods 246 11.2 Carnivore Densities and Distributions in Selous 248 11.3 Correlations between Species Densities 253 11.4 Diet Overlap 257 11.5 Direct Competition at Kills 259 11.6 Interactions Away from Kills 263 11.7 Impact of Interspecific Competition 265 11.8 Adaptations to Interspecific Competition 266 Chapter 12: Infectious Diseases 269 12.1 Canine Distemper Virus 271 12.2 Rabies Virus 274 12.3 Anthrax 277 12.4 Canine Parvovirus 279 12.5 Other Pathogens 281 12.6 Behavior and Epidemiology 284 12.7 Impact of Diseases on Population Dynamics and Density 286 Chapter 13: Extinction Risk and Conservation 288 13.1 Analysis of Extinction Risk with Leslie Matrix Projections 290 13.2 Stochastic Individual-Based Modeling of Extinction Risk 295 13.3 Sensitivity Analysis and Results 298 13.4 Summary and Recommendations 308 References 311 Index 339
Scott Creel is Professor of Biology at Montana State University. Nancy Marusha Creel is a Research Associate at Montana State University. The Creels have studied wild dogs in Tanzania since 1993.
The African Wild Dog is a book about a species that is inherently fascinating for a wide variety of reasons. The authors demonstrate how different sorts of data can be collected simultaneously even under difficult field conditions, and they then bring state-of-the-art quantitative analyses to bear on theoretical issues of current interest. As a consequence, the book moves our understanding ... forward in a compelling way. The work is behavioral ecology at its best. -- Tim Caro Science A monument to much that is best in naturalistic field research... For the armchair conservationist it is easy to assume rarity is a man-made evil, but for the wild dog it is natural... The African wild dog may soon have nowhere left to run. -- David W. MacDonald Times Literary Supplement This book is essential for anyone interested in the behavior and conservation of large carnivores. The advanced statistical techniques and in-depth discussions of dispersal, hunting, and sociality should be of interest to most behavioral ecologists, and the smooth integration of behavioral observations and analytical conservation biology serves as a model for future studies of endangered species. -- Theodore Stankowich Ethnology
