Zhongqiu Li

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Full) at Nanjing University

Throughout much of the world, growing populations of free-ranging domestic cats pose an increasingly serious threat to biodiversity. However, no study has estimated the magnitude of wildlife mortality caused by cats in China, one of the largest and most biodiverse nations on earth. We used a novel, survey questionnaire-based approach to estimate an...

Behavioral responses to novelty, including fear and subsequent avoidance of novel stimuli, i.e., neophobia, determine how animals interact with their environment. Neophobia aids in navigating risk and impacts on adaptability and survival. There is variation within and between individuals and species; however, lack of large-scale, comparative studie...

Few studies have looked at variation in male mating strategies in relation to phenotypic quality perhaps because males are not traditionally thought to be choosy. Recent theoretical models, however, predict that body condition should affect mating preferences. In crayfish, chelae are important weapons and may be reliable indicators of quality in bo...

It is no doubt that the reciprocal altruism of humans is unparalleled in the animal world. However, how strong altruistic behavior in the non-human animal is still very controversial. Almost all previous researches allowed only one individual in the dyad for action or dyad to accomplish tasks and obtain rewards simultaneously. Here, we designed cur...

Because global anthropogenic activities cause vast biodiversity loss, human dimensions research is essential to forming management plans applicable to biodiversity conservation outside wilderness areas. Engaging public participation is crucial in this context to achieve social and environmental benefits. However, knowledge gaps remain in understand...

Shared leadership in consensus decision making has been observed in the collective movements of various mammalian species. While multiple social interactions influence this decision-making pattern, the link between social tolerance and the characteristics of collective movement remains underexplored. In this study, we propose a new ‘social toleranc...

Passerine mimics often imitate various vocalizations from other bird species and incorporate these sounds into their song repertoires. While a few anecdotes reported that wild songbirds imitated human-associated sounds, besides captive parrots and songbirds, systemic and quantitative studies on human-made sound mimicry in wild birds remain scarce....

Evidence‐based interventions designed to reduce wildlife‐caused losses are essential for human–wildlife coexistence. The lack of systematic summarization of research effort and evidence makes it challenging for researchers, managers and policymakers to prioritize interventions for evaluation and implementation. Here, we compiled experimental case s...

Global biodiversity faces profound threats. Efforts to slow biodiversity loss remain inadequate without greater public engagement. With challenges in the biases of species knowledge across taxa and regions, many endemic or threatened species receive insufficient attention. Birds, with their ecological importance and cultural visibility, present an...

Eyespots have been shown to perform an anti-predator function by intimidating predators. But whether predators are deterred by the eyespots’ mimicking eyes of higher-order predators, or by the conspicuousness of the spots, is still being debated. The anti-predator mechanism of eyespots, which involved the predator’s visual perception and cognition,...

Global biodiversity faces profound threats. Efforts to slow biodiversity loss remain inadequate without greater public engagement. With challenges in the biases of species knowledge across taxa and regions, many endemic or threatened species receive insufficient attention. Birds, with their ecological importance and cultural visibility, present an...

This study aims to reveal the nature and motivation of human cooperation. By adopting the public goods game paradigm of competition and repetition, and introducing factors such as punishment and heterogeneous contributions, an experiment was conducted at Nanjing University in China, where 224 undergraduate students participated in seven games, incl...

Understanding a species' mating strategies is essential for elucidating their social structures and comprehending the trade-offs involved in optimizing fitness. Our study focuses on the Black-necked Crane (Grus nigricollis), an elusive species native to the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, which has remained largely mysterious in terms of its mating strate...

Some oscine passerines incorporate heterospecific sounds into their repertoires, including vocalizations of other bird species, sounds of other fauna, and even anthropogenic sounds, through vocal mimicry. However, few studies have investigated whether mimics learn heterospecific sounds from model species or from conspecific tutors. Here, we investi...

随着道路网络的快速扩张, 交通发展和生态保护的矛盾日益严重, 并逐渐受到生态学家的关注。道路网络的扩张导致动物栖息地破碎化和种群间的交流减少, 严重威胁生物多样性; 而道路交通所造成的动物道路死亡(即路杀), 是道路对动物最直接且最重要的影响。本研究以华东地区的特大城市南京市为例, 于2020年11月至2021年10月, 采用样线法对其不同行政 等级道路的动物路杀情况进行调查, 使用回归分析探究路杀事件的发生概率, 并建立动物路杀探究模型, 以进一步明确道路及其周边环境因素对动物路杀发生概率的影响。结果表明: (1)调查期间共记录到21种293只路杀动物。其中兽类136只, 占比46.42%, 以猫(Felis catus)和狗(Canis lupus familiaris)最为常见; 鸟类...

Group-living is widespread across diverse taxa, the mechanisms underlying collective decision-making in contexts of variable role division are critical for understanding the dynamics of group stability. While studies on collective behaviour in small animals such as fish and insects are well-established, similar research on large wild animals remain...

Group-living is widespread across diverse taxa, the mechanisms underlying collective decision-making in contexts of variable role division are critical for understanding the dynamics of group stability. While studies on collective behaviour in small animals such as fish and insects are well-established, similar research on large wild animals remain...

The free-ranging cat is a significant threat to global biodiversity, yet there is a dearth of research on the fundamental biology of these non-domesticated felines within China. Between 2018 and 2022, we undertook a comprehensive study focusing on the population dynamics and reproductive biology of free-ranging cats on the Xianlin Campus of Nanjing...

An assessment of animal roadkill can help develop road mitigation measures. This article is the first to report data on animal-vehicle collisions (AVCs) in Nanjing, a supercity in eastern China. The research was conducted on a 224.27 km stretch of nine roads in Nanjing. In the period, between November 2020 and October 2021, 26 fortnightly monitorin...

Extensive research has consistently underscored the significance of visual information, particularly facial cues, in primates’ establishment and maintenance of social relationships within their communities. This study aims to delve into the cross-species face recognition capacities of gibbons through exposure to a diverse array of two-dimensional f...

In predator–prey interactions, various factors affect the prey’s perception of risk and decision to flee. Gaze sensitivity, the ability to react to the presence, direction, or movement of the head and eyes, has been reported in many birds. However, few studies have focussed on variation in sensitivity to human gaze in relation to other risks and po...

Signals within animals’ vocal communication are considered functional referential and context-specific. Even in the absence of the context, receivers are expected to acquire the information of calls and respond specifically. Whereas the framework was supported by plenty of evidence, its exhaustivity in describing all animal vocalisations has been q...

Group living animals form striking aggregation patterns and display synchronization, polarization, and collective intelligence. Though many collective behavioural studies have been conducted on small animals like insects and fish, research on large animals is still rare due to the limited availability of field collective data. We used drones to rec...

In predator-prey interactions, various factors affect the prey's perception of risk and decision to ee. Gaze sensitivity, the ability to react to the presence, direction, or movement of the head and eyes, has been reported in many birds and they could recognise not only the head direction but the subtle difference in eye direction. But few studies...

In estuarine systems, salinity changes by freshwater inflows and tides affect the survival and behaviour of euryhaline species. Juvenile Chinese mitten crabs, Eriocheir sinensis, are considered to live in fresh water during their complex life history, whilst some are found in coastal wetlands. To understand how juveniles disperse in estuarine resid...

Climate exerts a dominant control over the distribution of species. Generally, species migrate to higher elevations to track thermal niches, but variations in morphological traits can result in trait-specific responses to climate change. Here we attempted to explore how three sympatrically distributed raptor species (the Upland Buzzard Buteo hemila...

Brain lateralization, a trait ubiquitous in vertebrates and invertebrates, refers to structural differences between the left and right sides of the brain or to the left and right sides controlling different functions or processing information in different ways. Many studies have looked into the advantages of lateralized brains and discovered that c...

Behaviour affects an individual’s life in all aspects, e.g., enhancing fitness, leveraging predation risk, and reducing competition with conspecifics. However, the sequential distribution of behaviours received less attention and is unclear what the function of displacement behaviour is. Displacement activities can be found in vertebrate species bu...

Human activities and the available resources influence the home range and activity patterns of free-ranging cats. Our objective in this study was to determine sex and breeding season vs. non-breeding season home range size, as well as activity patterns for unowned free-ranging cats at a university campus in China. Twenty-nine adult cats (fifteen ma...

The construction of hydropower projects discharges effluents to aquatic bodies. The effluents consist of different chemicals including heavy metals. The current study assessed the effects of effluents discharged from an under-construction hydropower project on the bioaccumulation of heavy metals in the tissues of critically endangered Tor putitora...

Lateral asymmetry is observed widely among vertebrates and invertebrates. It appears in various aspects, such as morphological structure, or the preferential use of body parts. Many studies have focused on animal handedness and its developmental process. This is especially true in crabs with asymmetrical claws (heterochelate), while there are few s...

Air pollution is associated with several severe physical, behavioral, and psychological health risks and glitches. Air pollution has been linked to 11 million premature deaths in Pakistan, out of the total 153 million premature deaths worldwide. Air pollution is ontinuously growing as a threatening challenge for Pakistan. Keeping this in view, the...

Behavioural responses to novelty, including fear and subsequent avoidance of novel stimuli, behaviours referred to as neophobia, determine how animals interact with their environment. Neophobia aids in navigating risk and impacts on adaptability and survival. There is variation within and between individuals and species, however, lack of large-scal...

Since there are few local cat studies in China, we need much more empirical and experimental works on free-ranging cats in the future to help us understand the actual threats these cats pose to China biodiversity and better manage the cat population. At least the following research suggestions are worth considering. 1. Population census. This is...

Group-size effects, whereby antipredator vigilance decreases as group size increases, are widely reported in mammals and birds but a meta-analysis has only been conducted in birds. We systematically reviewed the literature on mammalian group-size effects, estimated the effect sizes in each study, and conducted a phylogenetic meta-analysis. We obtai...

Conspicuous coloration in animals serves many functions such as anti-predation. Anti-predation strategies include motion dazzle and flash behavior. Motion dazzle markings can reduce the probability of being preyed on because the predators misjudge their movement. In flash behavior, prey demonstrate conspicuous cue while fleeing; the predators follo...

空气污染作为一种有害的环境因素，对人类及动物的生理、心理均有影响。在鸟类中，信鸽（ Columba livia）是研究空气污染影响的理想模型。 为探究空气污染的行为学效应， 通过收集并筛选 2018和 2019 年成都市信鸽协会春秋两个季节举办的 64 场赛事共 285 羽参赛 5 场及以上的信鸽不同空距等级下的归巢速度，利用混合线性模型分析了 6 种大气污染物（ CO、 NO2、 O3、 PM2.5、 PM10、 SO2）及气温、季节、天气等环境因子对信鸽归巢速度的影响。结果表明， PM10、 SO2、 NO2、 O3 浓度与归巢速度间有显著正相关关系，即这些空气污染物浓度越高，信鸽归巢速度越快；而 CO 浓度与归巢速度显著负相关，即 CO 浓度越高，信鸽归巢速度越慢。通过模型评估及比较，...

Object permanence is an important skill for cognitive development and is widely employed in comparative psychology. Developing full object permanence by animals is a dilemma to researchers. Similarly, the reasons for the A-not-B error sparked heated debate. To answer these questions, we tested eight hand-raised Azure-winged Magpies (Cyanopica cyanu...

In this study, the improved Aesop’s fable paradigm—a series of experiments originally used to test whether some animals understand the causality associated with water replacement—was used to explore the cognitive ability of Azure-winged magpies ( Cyanopica cyanus ). Experimental results on causal cue tasks showed that the Azure-winged magpies prefe...

Air pollution is a global environmental problem, and its effects on human behavior, psychology, and health have been well studied. However, very few studies were done on if and how air pollution affects animal behavior, for example, social conflict. Many physiological and psychological evidences suggest a possible positive relationship between air...

Simple Summary: Living space is an important aspect of animal welfare. Understanding the effects of welfare on experimental animals would help in drawing a precise conclusion. In this work, zebrafish in different tank sizes were studied through behavioral and physiology tests. Results showed that changes in the tank size affected zebrafish behavior...

The level of cognitive ability and the evolution of cognition in animals are difficult problems in the field of animal research. Corvids are as good as apes in tool use, episodic memory, inhibition and inhibitory control, etc. This paper summarized the major cognitive studies on corvids in the past 3 to 4 decades, and classified these cognitive stu...

This study was undertaken to investigate the diversity, abundance ratio, and distribution of the fish species and to record the water quality of Konhaye Stream, district Dir Lower, Pakistan. A total of 16 fish species were recorded, belonging to 4 orders (Cypriniformes, Channiformes, Siluriformes and Mastacebilformes), and 5 families including Cypr...

Olkhon region in East Siberia has abundant and unique vegetation and animal resource for its peculiar geographic location, including ants. Ant, recognized as ecosystem engineers, has an important role in ecosystem. In order to investigate the ecological role of mound-building ants in this region, we focused our attention on the correlation between...

The growing population of outdoor free-ranging cats poses increasing threats to biodiversity. While those threats are now well recognized, how human-cat interactions contribute to shape population dynamics have been overlooked. In this study, we explore major variables associated with the distribution of free-ranging cat density in 30 universities...

Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is considered a crucial step in the emergence of self-cognition. The MSR paradigm has become a standard method for evaluating self-cognition in several species. For example, Eurasian magpies and Indian house crows have passed the mark test for self-cognition, whereas efforts to find MSR in other corvid species have fai...

Vigilance behavior is considered as an effective strategy for prey species to detect predators. An individual benefits from living in a group by reducing the time spent being vigilant without affecting the probability of detecting a predator. However, the mechanism producing a decrease in vigilance with increasing group size is unclear. Many models...

Vigilance is important for anti-predation, and different animals adopt different vigilance strategies. Instantaneous and sequential randomness in vigilance behavior are two main principles for the classic Pulliam model (1973). Given this context, we studied the vigilance behaviors in two wild cloven-hoofed animals, the Tibetan antelope (Pantholops...

Through history, the habitats of wild mammals have changed greatly in China. Habitat changes may reflect changes in the environment and human-wildlife conflicts. This study focused on how the habitat changed for six taxa of rare wild mammals (one family, one genus, and four species) in mainland China. Their historical and current habitats were esti...

Use of solid fuel for cooking is one of the major sources of household indoor air pollution, especially in developing countries. Around 3 billion people still cook and heat their homes using open fires and leaky stoves, burning biomass fuel, i.e., wood, crop residues, animal dung, wood charcoal and coal as their primary source of domestic energy. T...

The growing population of outdoor free-ranging cats poses an increasingly serious threat to biodiversity. Identifying the strategies that outdoor free-ranging cats apply to live with humans is an interesting research topic. In this study, we provided robust estimates of free-ranging cat density in 30 universities in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China...

Air pollution has negative short- and long-term impacts on humans, particularly in terms of health, mood, cognition, and behavior. Air pollution may affect driving behavior through psychological and physiological pathways and cause the haze to Reduce visibility of road. Our objective here is to explore whether daily traffic accident is related to t...

家养有蹄类动物的反刍行为已有大量研究，而受限于野外条件，野生有蹄类动物反刍行为的研究有限。以往研究认为，体型可能是影响动物反刍行为的重要因素。本研究以日本奈良公园日本梅花鹿Cervus nippon nippon和中国江苏大丰麋鹿Elaphurus davidianus为研究对象，观察记录并比较分析了发情期的日本梅花鹿与发情期的麋鹿在卧息时反刍行为的种内及种间差异。按照年龄性别差异，分5种类型（成年雄性、成年雌性、亚成雄性、亚成雌性和幼鹿）研究两物种食团咀嚼时间、咀嚼频率和咀嚼速率的差异。结果表明，1）日本梅花鹿的咀嚼速率和食团咀嚼时间受性别-年龄的显著影响：咀嚼速率为幼体 > 亚成雌性 > 亚成雄性 > 成年雌性 > 成年雄性，而食团咀嚼时间为成年雄性 > 亚成雄性 > 成年雌性 > 亚成...

Vigilance is an important antipredation technique that can be affected by many factors, such as body size and group size. Small animals are more vulnerable than large ones, so the former are expected to behave more vigilantly than the latter. This effect of body size on vigilance may occur inter-or intraspecifically. We studied the vigilance behavi...

Pesticides contribute to human welfare by reducing vector-borne diseases and protecting crops against pests. Insecticides are the most widely employed pesticides for agricultural, domestic, and industrial pest control. However, some insecticides such as synthetic pyrethroids, analogs of the natural pyrethrin, persist in the environment and result i...

Rest contributes a large part of animals’ daily life, and animals usually rest in two ways, standing or in recumbence. Small or medium sized ungulates bed to rest in most cases, and standing rest is very rare and hardly seen. Here we described a standing rest behavior of Tibetan antelopes (Pantholops hodgsonii) living on the Tibet Plateau which has...

Display Puppet behavior together. (AVI)

Puppet behavior with rumination. (AVI)

Grooming is an important behavioral defense against tick infestation for ungulates. The ‘programmed grooming model' explains the endogenous regulation of tick‐defense grooming and predicts different inter‐ and intra‐specific grooming patterns owing to the body size principle. Here, we studied the summer grooming behaviors of two sympatric Tibetan u...

Background: Vigilance refers to the behavior of animals scanning their surroundings with a main purpose of anti-predation. Whether vigilance can serve the function of anti-predation depends on its unpredictability, meaning instantaneous randomness, sequential randomness, and independence, the three assumptions from Pulliam model (J Theor Biol 38:41...

Organophosphorus pesticides form a diverse group of chemicals, having a wide range of physicochemical properties with crucial toxicological actions and endpoints. These are extensively used to control pests of different food (fruits, vegetables, tea, etc.) and non-food (tobacco, cotton, etc.) crops. Malathion is an important widely used organophosp...

This study was undertaken to investigate the diversity, abundance ratio, and distribution of the fish species and to record the water quality of Konhaye Stream, district Dir Lower, Pakistan. A total of 16 fish species were recorded, belonging to 4 orders (Cypriniformes, Channiformes, Siluriformes and Mastacebilformes), and 5 families including Cypr...

String-pulling is one of the most widely used paradigms in animal cognition research. We investigated how azure-winged magpies Cyanopica cyanus solve multiple-string problems that they have never encountered before. In Experiment 1, the strings were arranged in parallel, slanted, or crossed to investigate what rules azure-winged magpies use to solv...

Rest contributes to a large part of animals’ daily life, and animals usually rest in two ways, standing or in recumbence. For small or medium sized ungulates, they bed to rest in most cases, and standing rest is very rare and hardly seen. Here we described a standing rest behaviour of medium sized Tibetan antelopes (Pantholops hodgsonii) living on...

: Social play is one of the common behaviors in primates. Social play, therefore, is an important part in life of Rhesus Macaque (Macaca mulatta). The main objective of this study is to describe basic characteristics of social play of Rhesus Macaques by infrared cameras in Hongshan forest zoo of Nanjing in the winter of 2017. We recorded the behavi...

Air pollution causes severe physical and psychological health complications. Considering China’s continuously-deteriorating air quality, this study aimed to assess the self-reported effects of air pollution on the behavior and physical health of the students of 13 densely populated cities, and their awareness, practices, and perception of air pollu...

Supplementary Materials (Tables). Table A. Bonferroni Adjustments to remove family wise error inflation. Table B. Interquartile ranges for the air pollutants across the sampled cities (Oct 2016—March 2016). Table C. Reported gender & city-dependent behavioral and psychological effects of air pollution. Table D. Age-dependent behavioral and psycholo...

The questionnaire administered/used in the current study. (DOC)

以往关于动物警戒行为的研究多以经典随机独立模型为基础，然而，近期一些理论和实证研究则向该模型发出了挑战。根据警戒行为同步性程度的不同，集体警戒可能存在基于模仿的同步警戒和避免重复的协调警戒两种模式。 研究了中国雅鲁藏布江自然保护区越冬黑颈鹤家庭群的警戒行为，通过独立样本 ｔ 检验验证由于年龄和是否携幼所导致的个体警戒水平的差异，通过单因素方差分析比较不同类型家庭群的集体警戒水平，通过配对 ｔ 检验比较集体警戒的实际观测值和独立假设下的预期值从而确定越冬黑颈鹤家庭群的警戒同步性。 结果表明家庭群中的幼年黑颈鹤警戒行为时间显著低于成年黑颈鹤，但幼鹤的存在对成鹤的警戒水平没有显著影响。 不同类型黑颈鹤家庭群的集体警戒水平没有差异，但并未如预期表现为同步警戒。警戒行为模式是动物在特定环境中的适应性表...

Sequential randomness is one of the three important assumptions for Pulliam's vigilance model (1973). Here we tested the sequential randomness in Black-necked cranes Grus nigricollis, to see if the vigilance sequence can be predicted. Not similar to other recent studies, we found that most vigilance sequences (44/46) passed runs randomness test, an...

The outcome success of animals competing for food resources may be influenced by their differences in resource holding potential and motivation to acquire these resources. This study investigated the naturally occurring aggressive interactions during ritualized fights of the cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) foraging with Père David's deer (Elaphurus da...

Previous studies have shown that several factors including sex, age, tick density, and season affect oral grooming behavior of reintroduced Père David's deer in Dafeng Nature Reserve, China, and reintroduction of wild animals should consider if they retain regular grooming patterns thus to control ectoparasites especially the ticks. In this study w...

Cover image of the paper: Ritualized fights among foraging cattle egrets following Père David's deer in Dafeng Nature Reserve, doi.org/10.1111/jzo.12435

The Oriental Scops Owl (Otus sunia) is wide spread in South and East Asia but little was known about its reproductive feeding behaviour, particularly in China. The main objective of this study is to assess and evaluate the diet and feeding activity of the owls during reproductive season. The work was conducted in an experimental wood of Nanjing Uni...

Vigilance is a behavior in birds that is used to detect predators and monitor rivals, and it can be affected by several environmental and social factors, including group size. Here, Black-necked Cranes (Grus nigricollis) were observed in winter in the Yarlung Zangbo Nature Reserve, Tibet, China, to examine the effect of group size on vigilance beha...

Air pollution, especially haze pollution, is creating health issues for both humans and other animals. However, remarkably little is known about how animals behaviourally respond to air pollution. We used multiple linear regression to analyse 415 pigeon races in the North China Plain, an area with considerable air pollution, and found that while th...

警戒行为是动物对群体内部或外部刺激的行为反应，主要表现为抬头环视周围环境，具有反捕食和社会性监视功能，有利于个体适合度的增加。诸多研究表明，多种因素可以影响到动物警戒行为的强度和模式， 内部因素主要包括个体的年龄'性别'所处空间位置和群体大小等，外部因素主要是捕食风险和人类活动的干扰。 近年来$动物警戒同步性研究引起了广泛关注， 同步警戒和协调警戒对立于独立警戒而存在，强调个体能够受到周围个体警戒状态的影响，继而表现出相同或相反的行为，并且其强度与群体大小等因素有关。在今后的研究中$可以在警戒行为影响因素和同步性方面进行更加深入而全面的探索，此外，警戒行为的个体差异和时空变化等也将是重要的研究方向。

Extensive studies have been conducted on the rumination behavior of domestic herbivores. However, studies on wild animals are limited, particularly wild animals with specific ruminating parameters. In this study, Père David's deer, a previously extirpated species, was observed to analyze the effects of sex-age, feeding habitat, and rainfall on rumi...

To understand the population status and behavioural features of wintering common cranes in the Yancheng Nature Reserve, two transects were established and population trends were monitored every month over five recent winters from 2008 to 2013. Wintering behaviours were also observed in order to explore the possible effects of family size and age on...

The red-crowned crane (Grus japonensis) is an endangered species only found in East Asia. Due to wetland loss and degradation, many cranes have changed their wintering feeding habitats from natural grasslands to artificial wetlands, such as rice fields. Thus we want to know whether cranes relocate the time budgets with respect to habitat, and also...

After being kept in captivity and isolated from natural predators for more than 1,200 years, Père David’s deer has been reintroduced in China and now occurs in a reserve where human activity is the only potential threat. Antipredator vigilance is an important component of survival for many prey animals in their natural habitat. Do deer still adjust...

The Silky Starling (Sturnus sericeus) is endemic to East Asia and little is know about its’ breeding ecology. We found intraspecific nest parasitism (INP) by this species in a reproductive study conducted from March to June 2011. We found three nests were parasitized using the obvious morphological differences or partition of egg-laying. One egg ap...