Steven L. Lima's research while affiliated with Indiana State University and other places
What is this page?
This page lists the scientific contributions of an author, who either does not have a ResearchGate profile, or has not yet added these contributions to their profile.
It was automatically created by ResearchGate to create a record of this author's body of work. We create such pages to advance our goal of creating and maintaining the most comprehensive scientific repository possible. In doing so, we process publicly available (personal) data relating to the author as a member of the scientific community.
If you're a ResearchGate member, you can follow this page to keep up with this author's work.
If you are this author, and you don't want us to display this page anymore, please let us know.
It was automatically created by ResearchGate to create a record of this author's body of work. We create such pages to advance our goal of creating and maintaining the most comprehensive scientific repository possible. In doing so, we process publicly available (personal) data relating to the author as a member of the scientific community.
If you're a ResearchGate member, you can follow this page to keep up with this author's work.
If you are this author, and you don't want us to display this page anymore, please let us know.
Publications (126)
During winter hibernation, bats may become active for a variety of reasons. Such winter activity occurs at or near hibernacula, but the degree to which this activity represents long-distance travel across a wider landscape largely is unstudied. We documented patterns in landscape-wide winter activity across a west-central Indiana study site, provid...
Background
Animal–vehicle collisions represent substantial sources of mortality for a variety of taxa and can pose hazards to property and human health. But there is comparatively little information available on escape responses by free-ranging animals to vehicle approach versus predators/humans.
Methods
We examined responses (alert distance and f...
Escape from predatory attack as a socially coordinated group is observed in many social animals, including birds, especially those in more open habitats where the group itself may be the only source of protection from an attacking predator. For many social birds, however, woody vegetative cover is the main refuge from attack, but such birds might n...
Prey species use pursuit-deterrent signals to discourage an attack, by informing a predator either that the latter has been detected, or that the prey is capable of escaping if attacked. These signals tend to be conspicuous behaviors, such as bobbing, stotting, and predator inspection. Dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) show prominent tail-flashing...
Temperate-zone bats likely feed in an environment with few dangerous nocturnal predators, suggesting a life largely free of the antipredator trade-offs faced by most other animals. Such bats may, however, encounter dangerous diurnal raptors with an early start to their nightly feeding, and thus may face predation-related trade-offs in deciding when...
Birds exhibit variation in alert and flight behaviours in response to vehicles within and between species, but it is unclear how properties inherent to individuals influence variation in avoidance responses over time. We examined individual variation in avoidance behaviours of Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater (Boddaert, 1783)) in response to r...
Many hypotheses address the determinants of clutch size in birds. One of the more recent is the egg viability hypothesis, which holds that a drop in egg viability with days left unincubated acts to limit clutch size, especially in tropical birds. We provide a basic theoretical analysis of this hypothesis in the form of a simulation model that consi...
Hatching asynchrony in birds, which occurs when incubation begins before egg laying is complete, has been a topic of study for many decades. The "nest failure hypothesis" posits that the distribution of the risk of nest predation across the nesting cycle (from egg laying to the fledging of young) determines the optimal degree of hatching asynchrony...
Nest predation is a widespread demographic and evolutionary force in avian reproduction, but few studies have considered the circumstances under which birds might invest in the construction of safe nests. We examined this question using a stochastic simulation model based on a basic passerine breeding season. Nest safety functions were used to tran...
The avoidance of vehicles is a common challenge for birds in the modern world. Birds generally rely on antipredator behaviors to avoid vehicles, but modern vehicles are faster than predators. We predicted that birds may be unable to accurately estimate the speed of approaching vehicles, which could contribute to miscalculations in avoidance behavio...
Bird strikes in aviation are an increasing threat to both aircraft and human safety. Management efforts have focused largely on the immediate airport environment. Avian radar systems could potentially be useful in assessing bird strike threats at greater distances from the airport, at higher altitudes, and at night, but few studies have been conduc...
Animal-vehicle collisions cause high levels of vertebrate mortality worldwide, and what goes wrong when animals fail to escape and ultimately collide with vehicles is not well understood. We investigated alert and escape behaviours of captive brown-headed cowbirds (Molothrus ater) in response to virtual vehicle approaches of different sizes and at...
Animal-vehicle collisions (AVCs) are a substantial problem in a human-dominated world, but little is known about what goes wrong, from the animal's perspective, when a collision occurs with an automobile, boat, or aircraft. Our goal is to provide insight into reactions of animals to oncoming vehicles when collisions might be imminent. Avoiding a co...
The avoidance of motorized vehicles is a common challenge for birds in the modern world. Birds appear to rely on antipredator behaviors to avoid vehicles, but modern vehicles (automobiles and aircraft) are faster than natural predators. Thus, birds may be relatively ill-equipped, in terms of sensory capabilities and behaviors, to avoid vehicles. We...
Many birds use regulated drops in night-time body temperature (Tb) to conserve energy critical to winter survival. However, a significant degree of hypothermia may limit a bird's ability to respond to predatory attack. Despite this likely energy-predation trade-off, the behavioural costs of avian hypothermia have yet to be examined. We thus monitor...
Wintering birds can gain significant thermal benefits by foraging in direct sunlight. However, exposure to bright sunlight might make birds easier to detect by predators and may also cause visual glare that can reduce a bird's ability to monitor the environment. Thus, birds likely experience a trade-off between the thermal benefits and predation-re...
Many aspects of animal behaviour are affected by real-time changes in the risk of predation. This conclusion holds for virtually all taxa and ecological systems studied, but does it hold for bats? Bats are poorly represented in the literature on anti-predator behaviour, which may reflect a lack of nocturnal predators specialized on bats. If bats ac...
Background/Question/Methods
Consistent individual differences in behavior arrayed along a shy-bold continuum have been observed in a number of animal species. In at least some cases these behavioral differences appear to be heritable, which raises the question how such differences are maintained evolutionarily. Attempts to explain the maintenance...
1. Bird–aircraft collisions (bird strikes) represent a substantial safety concern and financial burden to civil aviation world‐wide. Despite an increase in the rate of damaging bird strikes, necessary steps to develop a mitigation method outside of the airport environment have not been empirically tested.
2. We assessed whether use of aircraft ligh...
In most animals, sleep is considered a global brain and behavioral state. However, recent intracortical recordings have shown that aspects of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep and wakefulness can occur simultaneously in different parts of the cortex in mammals, including humans. Paradoxically, however, NREM sleep still manifests as a global behav...
Wintering birds may conserve body heat by adopting postures with minimal leg exposure or significant ptiloerection. However, maximally heat-conserving postures may hinder a bird's ability to escape attack, leading to a trade-off between predation risk and thermoregulation. Such a trade-off implies that birds should use the most heat-conserving post...
We examined the spatial perception of predator targeting by prey during simulated hawk attacks on house finch, Carpodacus mexicanus, flocks, with an overall goal of gaining insight into the targeting process itself. Predator targeting of specific prey during attacks determines how danger is distributed among group members, and thereby determines ke...
The distribution of ganglion cells in the retina determines the specific regions of the visual field with high visual acuity, and thus reflects the perception of a species' visual environment. The terrain hypothesis proposes that animals living in open areas should have a horizontal visual streak across the retina with high ganglion cell density to...
Elevated plasma corticosterone during stressful events is linked to rapid changes in behavior in vertebrates and can mediate learning and memory consolidation. We tested the importance of acute corticosterone elevation in aversive learning of a novel stressor by wild male eastern fence lizards (Sceloporus undulatus). We found that inhibiting cortic...
Small foraging birds often rely on visual cues to detect the movement of potential threats. However, feeding in a high wind environment presents the challenge of interpreting the movements of many stimuli, most of which convey little information pertinent to survival. A bird that responds to each of these wind-driven movements would likely suffer t...
ABSTRACT The kernel density estimator is used commonly for estimating animal utilization distributions from location data. This technique requires estimation of a bandwidth, for which ecologists often use least-squares cross-validation (LSCV). However, LSCV has large variance and a tendency to under-smooth data, and it fails to generate a bandwidt...
Predation risk has long been known to exert a strong influence on behavior, but no study to date has determined whether predators influence offspring antipredator behavior via maternal effects. Here, we provide a unique example of a transgenerational maternal effect in antipredator behavior that takes the form of a "warning" about predators that fe...
Reclaimed surface coal mines in southwestern Indiana support many grassland and shrub/ savanna bird species of conservation concern. We examined the nesting success of birds on these reclaimed mines to assess whether such “unnatural” places represent productive breeding habitats for such species. We established eight study sites on two large, grass...
A growing body of work suggests that breeding birds have a significant capacity to assess and respond, over ecological time, to changes in the risk of predation to both themselves and their eggs or nestlings. This review investigates the nature of this flexibility in the face of predation from both behavioural and reproductive perspectives, and als...
The comparative methods of evolutionary biology are a useful tool for investigating the functions of sleep. These techniques can help determine whether experimental results, derived from a single or few species, apply broadly across a specified group of animals. In this way, comparative analysis is a powerful complement to experimentation. The vari...
In response to stressful events, most vertebrates rapidly elevate plasma glucocorticoid levels. Corticosterone release stimulates physiological and behavioral responses that can promote survival while suppressing behaviors that are not crucial to immediate survival. Corticosterone also has preparatory effects for subsequent stressors. Using male tr...
Most vertebrates respond to acute stressors with rapid plasma glucocorticoid elevations. Variation within species in this hormonal response should correlate with differences in physiological responses and behavioural tactics, yet this is rarely documented. We measured behavioural and hormonal responses of free-ranging male tree lizards (Urosaurus o...
Present methods of surface coal-mine reclamation in the Midwest produce large grasslands, some of which exceed 2,000 ha in extent. Total “mine grassland” production in southwestern Indiana alone is well in excess of 70 square miles (180 km2). Our work in 19 reclaimed coal mines in southwestern Indiana indicates that mine grasslands harbor many Hens...
Several studies in behavior have focused in some way on how groups of prey gather and use information about predation risk. Although asymmetries in information about risk exist among members of real groups, we know little about how such uneven information might affect individual or group antipredator decisions. Hence, we studied the use and transfe...
Olfaction is commonly used by a variety of aquatic and terrestrial taxa to assess predation risk. However, with a few exceptions (e.g. procellariformes and New World vultures), the evidence for the ecological relevance of olfaction in birds is sparse and inconsistent. This is the case even though birds retain the proper anatomical and neurological...
Few studies have addressed whether terrestrial insects assess predation risk via chemical cues. We exposed predator-naive fall field crickets (Gryllus pennsylvanicus Burmeister, 1838) to filter paper containing the chemical cues of three wolf spiders (Hogna helluo (Walckenaer, 1837), Rabidosa rabida (Walckenaer, 1837), Rabidosa punctulata (Hentz, 1...
The correlates of mammalian sleep have been investigated previously in at least eight comparative studies in an effort to illuminate the functions of sleep. However, all of these univariate analyses treated each species, or taxonomic Family, as a statistically independent unit, which is invalid due to the phylogenetic relationships among species. H...
Sleep is a prominent behaviour in the lives of animals, but the unresponsiveness that characterizes sleep makes it dangerous. Mammalian sleep is composed of two neurophysiological states: slow wave sleep (SWS) and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Given that the intensity of stimuli required to induce an arousal to wakefulness is highest during deep...
Sleep is a prominent behaviour in the lives of animals, but the unresponsiveness that characterizes sleep makes it dangerous. However, the vulnerability associated with sleep may depend upon the state involved, as the intensity of stimuli required to induce an arousal to wakefulness is highest during deep slow-wave sleep (SWS) or rapid eye-movemen...
Sleep appears to effect some sort of neural maintenance, but a complete theory of the function of sleep must address why such maintenance requires a behavioural shutdown (or unconsciousness) that leaves an animal vulnerable to predators. We present a simple, strategic model to determine the degree of sleep that minimizes the risk of predation. We a...
Introduction: Sleep is a prominent and widespread behavior that remains virtually unstudied from an ecological perspective. In many ways, sleep is one of the last unexplored aspects of animal behavior. It would nevertheless be inaccurate to portray sleep as a subject of little interest to science. Indeed, sleep has been a very active area of resear...
Sleep is a prominent and widespread behavior that remains virtually unstudied from an ecological perspective. In many ways, sleep is one of the last unexplored aspects of animal behavior. It would nevertheless be inaccurate to portray sleep as a subject of little interest to science. Indeed, sleep has been a very active area of research for over 60...
Studies focused on how prey trade-off predation and starvation risk are prevalent in behavioral ecology. However, our current understanding of these trade-offs is limited in one key respect: we know little about the behavior of predators. In this study, we provide some of the first detailed information on temporal patterns in the daily hunting beha...
The use of space by predators in relation to their prey is a poorly understood aspect of predator-prey interactions. Classic theory suggests that predators should focus their efforts on areas of abundant prey, that is, prey hotspots, whereas game-theoretical models of predator and prey movement suggest that the distribution of predators should matc...
There is much evidence that suggests that freshwater systems are more sensitive to introduced predators than are terrestrial or marine systems. We argue here that this dichotomy reflects widespread naiveté toward introduced predators among freshwater prey. Continental terrestrial animals are seldom naive toward novel predators owing to the homogeni...
Quantitative comparative studies of sleep have focused exclusively on mammals. Such studies have repeatedly found strong relationships between the time spent in various sleep states and constitutive variables related to morphology, physiology, and life history. These studies influenced the development of several prominent hypotheses for the functio...
Among mammalian species, the time spent in the two main "architectural" states of sleep--slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep--varies greatly. Previous comparative studies of sleep architecture found that larger mammals, those with bigger brains, and those with higher absolute basal metabolic rates (BMR) tended to engage in less...
Many comparative studies of sleep architecture exist in mammals. Such studies have found that larger mammals with bigger brains and higher absolute basal metabolic rates (BMR) tended to engage in less SWS and REM sleep. Species experiencing a greater risk of pre dation also exhibited less SWS and REM sleep. In all cases, however, published studies...
Quantitative comparative studies of sleep architecture have identified relationships between sleep and constitutive (e.g., brain mass) and ecological variables. Such results helped shape early hypotheses for the function of sleep. These studies, however, were conducted without an explicit phylogenetic or theoretic framework and focused exclusively...
The small-bird-in-winter paradigm is prominent in the field of behavioral ecology. However, our conceptual understanding of this paradigm is limited by our lack of knowledge about Accipiter hawks. Although Accipiters are the major predators of small wintering birds, we know little about their behavior during the winter. In this paper, we present th...
Asynchronous eye closure (ASEC), one eye open while the other is closed, is a behavior observed in birds, some aquatic mammals, and reptiles. In birds and aquatic mammals, ASEC is associated with unihemispheric sleep wherein the cerebral hemisphere contralateral to (i.e. neurologically connected to) the closed eye sleeps while the other cerebral he...
Every studied animal engages in sleep, and many animals spend much of their lives in this vulnerable behavioural state. We believe that an explicit description of this vulnerability will provide many insights into both the function and architecture (or organization) of sleep. Early studies of sleep recognized this idea, but it has been largely over...
Sharp-shinned Hawks (Accipiter striatus) and Cooper's Hawks (A. cooperii) are important predators of birds in North America, but little is known about their natural history during the winter. Even basic survival information is not well documented in these species and is generally unknown during the winter. Therefore, we examined survivorship and ca...
Among mammals, there is great variation in the time spent asleep. Early comparative studies, aimed at illuminating some factors responsible for maintaining such variation, identified significant correlations between sleep and various constitutive and ecological variables. These studies, however, were conducted without a formal evolutionary framewor...
The ability of animals to perceive changes in predation risk forms the foundation on which the nonlethal effects of predators are transmitted to prey populations and communities. Our goal here is to provide a wide-ranging treatment of risk perception, highlighting the many important issues that are largely unstudied. A key component of the percepti...
Among mammals, there is great variation in the time spent asleep. Early comparative studies, aimed at illuminating some factors responsible for maintaining such variation, identified significant correlations between sleep and various constitutive and ecological
variables. These studies, however, were conducted without a formal evolutionary framewor...
Previous studies showed that dark-eyed juncos, Junco hyemalis, gain only partial information when their flockmates detect threats, and that they can detect threats peripherally even when they are feeding intensely. Here, we tested how this ‘peripheral (head-down) vigilance’ interacts with overt (head-up) vigilance and the collective detection of th...
A better understanding of the behavior of dispersing animals will assist in determining the factors that limit their success and ultimately help improve the way dispersal is incorporated into population models. To that end, we used a simulation model to investigate three questions about behavioral tradeoffs that dispersing animals might face: (i) s...
The largest grasslands in Indiana and Illinois are on reclaimed surface coal mines, which are numerous in the Illinois Coal Basin. The reclamation goal of establishing a vegetation cover with inexpensive, hardy exotic grass species (e.g., tall fescue, smooth brome) inadvertently created persistent, large grassland bird refuges. We review research d...
Animals often feed more quickly when in larger groups. This group-size effect is often explained by safety advantages for groups but an alternative explanation is that animals feed faster in larger groups because of greater scramble competition for limited food. We show that predation risk enhances the group-size effect if groups vary in size. By c...
Hundreds of studies exist on predator foraging behaviour, and the same holds for anti-predator behaviour in prey. However, despite these many studies, almost nothing is known about diet choice by predators that feed on prey with anti-predator behaviour. We addressed this problem theoretically by incorporating anti-predator vigilance into two classi...
Sleep necessarily occurs at the expense of wakefulness. Consequently, animals face a situation in which sleep and wakefulness are inevitably in conflict. Some animals have
essentially side-stepped this problem by simultaneously engaging in both wakefulness and sleep; one cerebral hemisphere sleeps while the other remains awake, a unique state known...
We examined the predatory behavior of wintering urban Cooper's Hawks (Ac- cipiter cooperii). Eight Cooper's Hawks (7 female, 1 male) were radio-tracked intensively during two winter periods from 1999-2001. We observed 179 attacks, 35 of which were successful, for an overall attack success rate of 20%. We recorded an additional 44 kills resulting fr...
We examined the predatory behavior of wintering urban Cooper's Hawks (Accipiter cooperii). Eight Cooper's Hawks (7 female, 1 male) were radio-tracked intensively during two winter periods from 1999–2001. We observed 179 attacks, 35 of which were successful, for an overall attack success rate of 20%. We recorded an additional 44 kills resulting from...
Many classical models of food patch use under predation risk assume that predators impose patch-specific predation risks independent of prey behavior. These models predict that prey should leave a chosen patch only if and when the food depletes below some critical level. In nature, however, prey individuals may regularly move among food patches, ev...
Reclamation of surface coal mines in the midwestern United States has produced large grasslands, which support both obligate and facultative grassland birds. We sought to characterize vegetation and determine whether birds breeding in these habitats responded to vegetation as they do in other kinds of grasslands. We measured vegetation characterist...
We studied the breeding bird communities of 19 reclaimed surface coal-mine grasslands in southwestern Indiana in 1997–1998, using roadside point counts and off-road transects. The mine grasslands in this study were large, ranging from 110 to 3180 ha in area (median, 590 ha). Although dominated by a few Eurasian grass species, they supported diverse...
Anti-predator vigilance describes how animals scan their environments for predators. For mathematical simplicity, theories of anti-predator vigilance have generally assumed that animals initiate scans with a constant probability for each unit of time spent feeding. Initiating scans in such a fashion would produce a wide distribution of intervals be...
In the study of behavioral predator–prey interactions, predators have been treated as abstract sources of risk to which prey respond, rather than participants in a larger behavioral interaction. When predators are put back into the picture by allowing them to respond strategically to prey behavior, expectations about prey behavior can change. Somet...
The lack of a truly satisfactory sensor which can characterize the thermal environment at the spatial scale experienced by small endotherms has hindered study of their thermoregulatory behavior. We describe a general design for a rugged, easily constructed sensor to measure standard operative temperature, Tes. We present specific designs for adult...
One might expect that increased thermal stress would cause wintering birds to forage faster in order to meet the increased metabolic demand. Faster foraging should, in turn, lead to a reduction in vigilance, since feeding and vigilance are mutually antagonistic activities. We examined these intuitive behavioral expectations using newly developed st...
Visual scanning for predators is one of a bird's most basic means of avoiding predation while feeding, and the detection of an approaching predator may present a difficult visual task. If birds have a dominant hemisphere for processing visual information, then given the nearly complete optic nerve crossover in the avian brain, the eye contralateral...
Sleep necessarily occurs at the expense of wakefulness. Consequently, animals face a situation in which sleep and wakefulness are inevitably in conflict. Some animals have essentially side-stepped this problem by simultaneously engaging in both wakefulness and sleep; one cerebral hemisphere sleeps while the other remains awake, a unique state known...
Unilateral eye closure has been reported in 29 species and 13 orders of
birds, but not in ratites. This raised a question about the breadth of this behavior in birds and suggested that USWS evolved only in relatively modern birds. In our present study, we observed the sleep-wake patterns of juvenile Greater Rheas (Rhea americana), large flightless...
Present methods of surface coal-mine reclamation in the Midwest produce large grasslands, some of which exceed 2,000 ha in extent. Total “mine grassland” production in southwestern Indiana alone is well in excess of 70 square miles (180 km2). Our work in 19 reclaimed coal mines in southwestern Indiana indicates that mine grasslands harbor many Hens...
Aquatic mammals (i.e., Cetaceans, eared seals and manatees) and birds show interhemispheric asymmetries (IA) in slow-wave sleep-related electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, suggesting that the depth of sleep differs between hemispheres. In birds, an association between unilateral eye closure and IA has been reported in five species from three or...
Birds and aquatic mammals exhibit unihemispheric quiet sleep (UQS), a unique state during which one cerebral hemisphere sleeps while the other remains awake. While the evolution of UQS in aquatic mammals is probably linked to the need to maintain breathing during sleep, the evolutionary significance of avian UQS is less clear. Since the eye contral...
Several animals mitigate the fundamental conflict between sleep and wakefulness by engaging in unihemispheric sleep, a unique state during which one cerebral hemisphere sleeps while the other remains awake. Among mammals, unihemispheric sleep is restricted to aquatic species (Cetaceans, eared seals and manatees). In contrast to mammals, unihemisphe...
Birds and aquatic mammals exhibit unihemispheric slow wave sleep (USWS), a unique state during which one cerebral hemi sphere sleeps while the other remains awake. USWS in birds is associated with unilateral eye closure (UEC); closure of one eye is associated with USWS in the contralateral hemisphere, and closure of both eyes is associated with...
Birds and aquatic mammals are the only taxonomic groups known to exhibit unihemispheric slow-wave sleep (USWS). In aquatic mammals, USWS permits sleep and breathing to occur concurrently in water. However, the function of avian USWS has been unclear. Our study is based on the premise that avian USWS serves a predator detection function, since the e...
Perceptual range, or the distance at which habitat 'patches' can be perceived, constrains an animal's informational window on a given landscape. If such constraints are great, they may limit successful dispersal between distant habitat patches. On dark nights, nocturnal white-footed mice, Peromyscus leucopus, have surprisingly limited perceptual ab...
Many birds and mammals respond to a heightened risk of predation, especially that associated with smaller group sizes, with an increase in vigilance. All interpretations of the way in which vigilance responds to changes in predation risk assume that animals feeding with their heads down (i.e. animals in a nonvigilant state) cannot detect approachin...
The rapid response of animals to changes in predation risk has allowed behavioral ecologists to learn much about antipredator decision making. A largely unappreciated aspect of such decision making, however, is that it may be fundamentally driven by the very thing that allows it to be so readily studied: temporal variation in risk. We show theoreti...
Birds and aquatic mammals exhibit unihemispheric quiet sleep (UQS), a unique state during which one cerebral hemisphere sleeps while the other remains awake. UQS allows birds to detect approaching predators, and aquatic mammals to maintain breathing during sleep. UQS in birds is associated with asynchronous eye-closure (ASEC); closure of one eye is...
Asynchronous eye-closure (ASEC) in birds and aquatic mammals is correlated with unihemispheric quiet sleep. In birds, this behavior seems to serve an anti-predator function. ASEC behavior has also been observed in reptiles, although the function of this behavior is unclear. This paper presents preliminary data from an experiment designed to determ...
Ecologists need a better understanding of how animals make decisions about moving across landscapes. To this end, we developed computer simulations that contrast the effectiveness of various search strategies at finding habitat patches in idealized landscapes (uniform, random, or clumped patches), where searchers have different energy reserves and...
