Wayne L Linklater

• Ph.D.
• Chair at California State University, Sacramento

Feral horse, Equus caballus, breeding groups, called bands, usually include one but sometimes up to five stallions. We found that mares were loyal to single-stallion (SS) or multistallion (MS) bands or were social dispersers (maverick mares, Mv). The spacing and social behaviour of mares and stallions in single- and multistallion bands was measured...

Centring on South Africa's Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, this book synthesizes a century of insights from the ecology and conservation management of one of Africa's oldest protected wildlife areas. The park provides important lessons for conservation management, as it has maintained conservation values rivalling those of much larger parks sometimes throu...

Illegal hunting and trade might be reduced by devaluing the commodities of live animals. However, theory and anecdote suggest that the tactic’s success depends on the proportion devalued and may also generate unintuitive and counter-productive outcomes. Unfortunately, the difficulty of researching criminals limits empirical and experimental tests o...

Solutions to the cats‐hunting‐wildlife environmental conflict could benefit from social science approaches. Our Theory of Planned Behavior questionnaire—informed by an elicitation survey of cat owners at veterinary clinics about their attitudes, norms, and beliefs regarding bringing their cats inside at night—surveyed 158 cat owners across 20 veter...

Background Lipocalins are a large family of proteins, which possess a highly conserved eight-stranded antiparallel beta-barrel structure as distinctive trait. This family includes Major Urinary Proteins (MUPs) from rats and mouse, studied for their role in urinary protein-mediated chemosignalling. Vulpeculin has been identified as the most abundant...

Evolutionary theory expects social, communicative species to eavesdrop most on other species' alarm calls but also that solitary-living species benefit most from eavesdropping. Examples of solitary species responding to the alarm calls of other species, however, are limited and unconvincing. The indigenous Swahili name for the red-billed oxpecker (...

Among invasive mammalian predators, rats represent a major threat, endangering ecosystem functioning worldwide. After rat-control operations, detecting their continued presence or reinvasion requires more sensitive and lower cost detection technologies. Here, we develop a new sensing paradigm by using a specific rat urine biomarker (MUP13) to unamb...

Conservation issues are often complicated by sociopolitical controversies that reflect competing philosophies and values regarding natural systems, animals, and people. Effective conservation outcomes require managers to engage myriad influences (social, cultural, political, and economic, as well as ecological). The contribution of conservation sci...

Lipocalins are a family of secreted proteins. They are capable of binding small lipophilic compounds and have been extensively studied for their role in chemosignalling in rodent urine. Urine of the common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) contains a prominent glycoprotein of 20 kDa, expressed in both sexes. We have isolated this protein and...

Paper is available online as open archive at Current Biology website [https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30353-5]. Evolutionary theory expects social, communicative species to eavesdrop most on other species’ alarm calls [e.g., 1, 2] but also that solitary-living species benefit most from eavesdropping [3, 4]. Examples of s...

Wildlife-based tourism is widely promoted as a conservation tool, yet controversy surrounds its net contributions. Procedural problems are under-appreciated and originate from an under-attention to people: their interactions, values at play, and matters of special, shared, and common interests. We offer a case in Namibia of black rhinoceros conserv...

Over the past 1000 years New Zealand has lost 40–50% of its bird species, and over half of these extinctions are attributable to predation by introduced mammals. Populations of many extant forest bird species continue to be depredated by mammals, especially rats, possums, and mustelids. The management history of New Zealand's forests over the past...

Conservation science involves the collection and analysis of data. These scientific practices emerge from values that shape who and what is counted. Currently, conservation data are filtered through a value system that considers native life the only appropriate subject of conservation concern. We examined how trends in species richness, distributio...

Greaver et al. (2014) presented evidence for density dependence in the Ithala population of black rhinoceros. Finding that they did not place their regression-based evidence in a modelling context, we recast their result as an example of the ramp model of density dependence that underlies black rhinoceros meta-population management. Greaver et al....

Background: Understanding rhino movement behavior, especially their recursive movements, holds significant promise for enhancing rhino conservation efforts, and protecting their habitats and the biodiversity they support. Here we investigate the daily, biweekly, and seasonal recursion behavior of rhinos, to aid conservation applications and increa...

Wildlife-based tourism poses opportunities and challenges for species conservation. Minimizing potential negative impacts of tourism is critical to ensure business and conservation enterprises can coexist. In north-western Namibia tourism is used as a conservation tool for the Critically Endangered black rhinoceros Diceros bicornis . However, black...

Understanding what drives environmentally protective or destructive behavior is important to the design and implementation of effective public policies to encourage people's engagement in proenvironmental behavior (PEB). Research shows that a connection to nature is associated with greater engagement in PEB. However, the variety of instruments and...

Opportunities: Incentives for local communities to protect, monitor and manage biodiversity may be critical to conservation success. We are investigating the potential for incentives from tourism to secure the world's largest free-ranging black rhino population. The Challenge: Tourism, however, may also displace and impact the performance of wildli...

Behavior prioritization is underutilized but critical to the success of conservation campaigns. It provides an understanding of the target audience's values, transcending conflict, and informing the design of achievable and effective advocacy campaigns. Depredation by domestic cats may depress wildlife populations, leading to conflict between cat o...

Science denialism retards evidenced‐based policy and practice and should be challenged. It has been a particular concern for mitigating global environmental issues, such as anthropogenic climate change. But allegations of science denialism must also be well founded and evidential or they risk eroding public trust in science and scientists. Recently...

Tourism may benefit conservation, but some wildlife viewing practices threaten the sustainability of both business and conservation initiatives. In north‐west Namibia, conservation‐oriented tourism provides tourists with an opportunity to encounter the critically‐endangered black rhinoceros Diceros bicornis on foot. We used 123 tourist‐rhinoceros e...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

There is mounting evidence that single compounds can act as signals and cues for mammals and that when presented at their optimal concentration they can elicit behavioural responses that replicate those recorded for complex mixtures like gland secretions and foods. We designed a rapid bioassay to present nine compounds that we had previously identi...

New Zealand's policy to exterminate five introduced predators by 2050 is well‐meant but warrants critique and comparison against alternatives. The goal is unachievable with current or near‐future technologies and resources. Its effects on ecosystems and 26 other mammalian predators and herbivores will be complex. Some negative outcomes are likely....

Pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) may be associated with a personal relationship with nature. We conducted a quasi-experiment with 423 residents who had or had not actively participated in a tree-planting scheme and lived in 20 neighborhoods that differ in their greenness level. We tested whether exposure to nature (specified by the amount of vege...

Wildlife reintroductions to peopled landscapes pose socio-ecological opportunities and risks, and a responsibility to people as well as wildlife. Human–wildlife conflicts can escalate rapidly where anthropogenic foods and feeding cause wildlife to congregate and damage property. Those conflicts polarise attitudes to the wildlife and may cascade int...

While the role of humans in causing high rates of species extinctions worldwide is well established, philosophies and opinions as to how to mitigate the current biodiversity loss are once again hotly debated topics. At the centre of the debate are differences in opinions regarding the value and the best methods of conserving and restoring biodivers...

The history of discoveries in rodenticide development and control technology as well as current and future-focused research are explored. Traps and older poisons such as red squill, arsenic, and cyanide have been used for hundreds if not thousands of years. Between 1940 and 1980 there was a period of innovation with the discovery of new molecules,...

Live-animal commodity devaluation is proposed to demotivate illegal hunting and trade in wildlife and wildlife commodities. The idea is based on the apparently simple causation between a commodity’s value and the motivation to hunt, especially for wildlife commodities which are traded at extraordinary prices. For example, the horns or tusks on rhin...

Success of animal translocations depends on improving post-release demographic rates toward establishment and subsequent growth of released populations. Short-term metrics for evaluating translocation success and its drivers, like post-release survival and fecundity, are unlikely to represent longer-term outcomes. We used information theory to inve...

Observer impacts on animal behaviour concern conservation managers and researchers of critically endangered species, like black rhino (Diceros bicornis). Repeated observations are sometimes necessary, but may distress and displace animals. Information from more remote observations using radio-triangulation is limited and includes larger measurement...

First principles predict negative frequency-dependent sex allocation, but it is unproven in field studies and seldom considered, despite far-reaching consequences for theory and practice in population genetics and dynamics as well as animal ecology and behaviour. Twenty-four years of rhinoceros calving after 45 reintroductions across southern Afric...

Hedgehogs (Erinaceous europaeus), rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) were 93.4% of 1390 mammal carcasses counted during 92 trips along a 63.2 km route, 2009–2014, through peri-urban and farmland habitats. Pukeko (Porphyrio melanotus) and swamp harriers (Circus approximans) constituted 29% of the 466 bird road-kill....

Olfactory lures are important tools in pest-species management, being widely used to monitor and trap populations. For vertebrates like rats, lures are most commonly foods such as peanut butter. However, these are perishable and require frequent replenishment, factors that decrease control operation efficacy and increase costs. Synthetic semiochemi...

Comparisons of recent estimations of home range sizes for the critically endangered black rhinoceros in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park (HiP), South Africa, with historical estimates led reports of a substantial (54%) increase, attributed to over-stocking and habitat deterioration that has far-reaching implications for rhino conservation. Other reports, how...

Detailed comparison of methodology of black rhinoceros home range studies outside of Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park. Note that this table excludes home range studies in unpublished material e.g., Rhino Management Group (RMG) reports. The RMG reports are not publicly available, but several reports seen by the authors list average home range sizes for most b...

This presentation was given at the 27th Vertebrate Pest Conference, 7th-10th March 2016 and provided an overview of our research designed to identify semiochemicals in foods that could act as lures for rats. The presentation details the use of GC-MS to identify volatile compounds in foods and partial least squares regression to associate those comp...

As urbanization intensifies, urban ecosystems are increasingly under pressure from a range of threats. Horizon scanning has the potential to act as an early warning system, thereby initiating prompt discussion and decision making about threat mitigation. We undertook a systematic horizon scanning exercise, using a modified Delphi technique and expe...

The rate at which the poaching of rhinoceroses has escalated since 2010 poses a threat to the long-term persistence of extant rhinoceros populations. The policy response has primarily called for increased investment in military-style enforcement strategies largely based upon simple economic models of rational crime. However, effective solutions wil...

What determines the abundance of parasites is a central question within epidemiology. Epidemiological models predict that density-dependent transmission has a principal influence on parasite abundance. However, this mechanism is seldom tested in macroparasites, perhaps because multiple, comparable populations of the same host-parasite relationship...

Food-based baits and lures remain the mainstay of eradication and monitoring methodologies for invasive mammalian species. To date, however, best-practise baits and lures for rats and possums have not been systematically compared to alternative food-based products in ways that quantify their effectiveness on free-ranging, wild animals. We designed...

Plant recovery rates after herbivory are thought to be a key factor driving recursion by herbivores to sites and plants to optimise resource-use but have not been investigated as an explanation for recursion in large herbivores.We investigated the relationship between plant recovery and recursion by elephants (Elephas maximus borneensis) in the Low...

Since negative attitudes toward wildlife reduce support for biodiversity conservation, understanding the relationship between urban residents’ attitudes and their experience with wildlife problems is important. We surveyed households in Wellington City, New Zealand, and modeled the relationship between attitude toward birds, and biodiversity awaren...

The Kaka (Nestor meridionalis), a native New Zealand parrot, forages for sap by removing bark from trees, which leads to damage to trees and conflict with residents of Wellington City. There is little known about selection of trees for sap-foraging by this species. We sampled 282 trees in parks and reserves in Wellington City in order to determine...

Parasites can reduce host body condition, impair reproduction, and cause mortality. However, parasites are a major source of biodiversity, are a fundamental component of a healthy ecosystem, and could be the group most affected by the modern-day biodiversity crisis. Parasite control may cause immunological naivety, unbalance parasite-mediated appar...

Recursion by herbivores is the repeated use of the same site or plants. Recursion by wild animals is rarely investi-gated but may be ubiquitous. Optimal foraging theory predicts site recursion as a function of the quality of the site, extent of its last use, and time since its last use because these influence site resource status and recovery. We u...

The plant vigour hypothesis proposes that herbivores should favour feeding on more vigorously growing plants or plant modules. Similarly, we would expect herbivores to favour plants that regrow vigorously after herbivory. Larger animals, like elephants, may also select plant species relative to their availability and prefer species with larger grow...

Faecal egg counts (FECs) are commonly used for the non-invasive assessment of parasite load within hosts. Sources of error, however, have been identified in laboratory techniques and sample storage. Here we focus on sampling error. We test whether a delay in sample collection can affect FECs, and estimate the number of samples needed to reliably as...

Biologically meaningful and standardized definitions of life stages are essential for demographic studies, especially for endangered and intensively managed species such as rhinoceros. Focusing on the black rhinoceros Diceros bicornis, we argue that standardized biological definitions of calf, subadult, and adult, rather than age classes, provide t...

The North Island kākā (Nestor meridionalis septentrionalis), a threatened New Zealand native parrot, was successfully reintroduced to an urban sanctuary in Wellington, New Zealand. Conflict has recently begun to emerge with Wellington City residents due to tree damage caused by kākā sap foraging. Little is known about sap foraging behavior of kākā,...

http://www.scientists.org.nz/files/journal/2013-70/NZSR_70_2.pdf

Invasive weeds like Lantana camara have a range of effects on animals such as elephant. These plants are not edible by the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). They also compete for space with elephant food plants and take over large areas of elephant habitat. We tested whether the addition of L. camara to a model consisting of measured environmental...

Remnant forest fragments are critical to conserve biological diversity yet these are lost rapidly in areas under agricultural expansion. Conservation planning and policy require a deeper understanding of the psycho-social factors influencing landholders’ intentions towards conserving forest fragments. We surveyed 89 landholders in an agricultural f...

Olfactory communication may be particularly important to black rhinoceros, Diceros bicornis, because they are solitary living and have comparatively poor eyesight but their populations are structured by inter-and intrasexual relationships. Understanding olfactory functions and processes might achieve better conservation management but their study i...

Context Avian–human conflict is a growing issue in urban areas, yet studies of conflict tend to be species and situation specific and focus on landscape characteristics that generate or exacerbate the problem. Aims To determine characteristics of bird species that cause conflict in urban areas within their native range and to develop a model that...

New Zealand’s avifauna is subject to extensive predation by introduced mammals. Of these, rats, with well-developed olfactory senses, are a significant threat to native avifauna, especially nests and chicks. It is, however, still unclear what olfactory cues predators primarily use to locate prey. We sought to determine whether native North Island b...

The taxonomy of African black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) remains unresolved. Maintaining levels of genetic diversity and species rescue by reintroduction and restocking requires its resolution. We compared the sequences of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region for a total of 101 D.bicornis from three subspecies: D.b.minor, D.b.michaeli an...

Species translocations are remarkable experiments in evolutionary ecology, and increasingly critical to biodiversity conservation. Elaborate socio-ecological hypotheses for translocation success, based on theoretical fitness relationships, are untested and lead to complex uncertainty rather than parsimonious solutions. We used an extraordinary 89 r...

The “extinction of [ecological] experience” is a concern for children in urban centres. Urban environments, traditionally the refuge of exotic human-commensal species, are being increasingly colonised by native species. We used a native bird as a focal species for integrating urban biological research and environmental education (EE) in conservatio...

Sexual selection via mate choice may have influenced the evolution of women's breast morphology. We conducted an image-based questionnaire quantifying and comparing the preferences of men from Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa, and New Zealand (NZ) for images of women's breast size, breast symmetry, areola size, and areolar pigmentation. Results showed...

1. Most hypotheses for translocation success are elaborate, hierarchical, and untested combinations of socio-ecological predictors. Empirical support for those tested is vulnerable to spurious single-predictor relationships and does not account for the hierarchy amongst predictors and non-independence amongst individuals or cohorts. Testing hypothe...

Excess dietary glucose may be a factor in several captive wildlife diseases and reproductive abnormalities. The first step in understanding the health consequences of diets high in glucose is to characterize how dietary glucose concentrations change circulating glucose profiles. We adapted the glycemic index approach to detect differences in blood...

The term territorial is used in a variety of ways and is rarely defined unambiguously, or tested empirically. Nevertheless, attributing it correctly has far-reaching implications for our understanding and management of populations. Territoriality is commonly attributed retrospectively, as a convenient description of spatial pattern without an a pri...

Fighting and accidental injury commonly cause black rhinoceros (rhino; Diceros bicornis) death after release. Smaller reserves and higher conspecific density after release (release density) might increase a rhino's encounter rate with hazards like fenced boundaries and conspecifics. We conducted a science-by-management experiment on the influence o...

Eye-tracking techniques were used to measure men’s attention to back-posed and front-posed images of women varying in waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). Irrespective of body pose, men rated images with a 0.7 WHR as most attractive. For back-posed images, initial visual fixations (occurring within 200 milliseconds of commencement of the eye-tracking session)...

The tendency for females to have synchronous or asynchronous ovarian cycles has been reported in several species, including hamadryas baboons, Papio h. hamadryas. Both fitness benefits and costs have been postulated for each condition; however, these remain to be demonstrated. Moreover, uncertainty remains about whether these ovarian cycle patterns...

The Swahili name for the red-billed oxpecker, Buphagus erythrorhynchus, is "Askari wa kifaru" and means the rhino's guard. We tested the widely held, but untested, belief that oxpeckers warn rhinoceros of approaching predators. Sixty-one unconcealed approaches by a person to seven marked adult female black rhinoceros, Diceros bicornis, were monitor...

Facultative sex allocation theories predict that animals will bias their offspring's sex in response to environmental cues. Biased sex ratios can be a problem when managing small populations in the wild or captivity. Using rainfall and calving records from Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa, we compared seasonal and annual rainfall with calving...

Live-harvests from source populations for translocation are key to rapid recovery for many species. Contrary to common assumption, however, reduced density might not Immediately Improve vital rates because animal recolonization is slow creating management uncertainty about harvest adequacy or sustainability. Reports measuring animal recolonization...

Sexual selection via male mate choice has often been implicated in the evolution of permanently enlarged breasts in women. While questionnaire studies have shown that men find female breasts visually attractive, there is very little information about how they make such visual judgments. In this study, we used eye-tracking technology to test two hyp...

Concentrations of adrenal steroid metabolites in feces are routinely used to assess the welfare of animals that are the subject of conservation efforts. The assumption that low and declining corticoid concentrations indicate the absence of stress and acclimation, respectively, is often made without experimental support or wild-animal comparisons, a...

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One hundred men, living in three villages in a remote region of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea were asked to judge the attractiveness of photographs of women who had undergone micrograft surgery to reduce their waist-to-hip ratios (WHRs). Micrograft surgery involves harvesting adipose tissue from the waist and reshaping the buttocks to p...

Actual observations of black rhinoceros predation are rarely reported and are limited to two incidences involving subadults. Nevertheless, some authors attribute tail and ear deformities in up to 7.1% of some populations to predation attempts. In August 2008 we observed a mother with dependent c. 8-month-old female black rhinoceros calf in Hluhluwe...

In many mammals, females form close social bonds with members of their group, usually between kin. Studies of social bonds and their fitness benefits have not been investigated outside primates, and are confounded by the relatedness between individuals in primate groups. Bonds may arise from kin selection and inclusive fitness rather than through d...

Studies of human physical traits and mate preferences often use questionnaires asking participants to rate the attractiveness of images. Female waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), breast size, and facial appearance have all been implicated in assessments by men of female attractiveness. However, very little is known about how men make fine-grained visual ass...

We compare the number of medium‐sized animals (between rat and dog‐size) killed on repeated counts along the same 1660 km of North Island highways in 1984, 1994 and 2005 with other counts going back to 1949. Elevenmammal and 14 bird species were recorded, but Australian possums (Trichosurus vulpecula), hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) and rabbits (O...

The function of dispersal is best examined in species, such as horses, Equus caballus, where breeding groups' ranges may overlap entirely such that social and spatial dispersal are decoupled. We hypothesized that mares disperse from natal groups to avoid incest, but avoid dispersing spatially, thus revealing the importance of philopatric advantage....

Behavioral research is increasingly a part of species conservation, yet the debate over its relevance to conservation continues. We use New Zealand—a world leader in conservation management—as a case study to illustrate the integration of behavior and conservation. Advanced through adaptive management, conceptual behavioral research has been critic...

We detail the social behaviour of the quokka, a small macropod marsupial. Most of the study population were habituated to humans, and were individually marked, and weighed regularly. Males formed a dominance hierarchy and interacted regularly. Heavier males were the most dominant, and spent most time with females. There was a tendency for males to...