A Primer of Conservation Behavior

Conservation behavior is defined here as studying animal behavior in order to solve wildlife conservation problems. Blumstein (ecology and evolutionary biology, U. of California-Los Angeles) and Fernandez-Juricic (biological sciences, Purdue U.) offer biologists an introduction to its concepts and practices so they can apply it to particular biological conservation and wildlife management problems. Their topics include why behavioral mechanisms matter, habitat selection for conservation and management, forage behavior, antipredator behavior, acoustic communication, demographic consequences of sociability, and using behavior to set aside areas for wildlife protection. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Daniel T. Blumstein is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his undergraduate degrees in Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology, and in Environmental Conservation, at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in Animal Behavior at the University of California Davis, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Marburg (Germany), the University of Kansas, and Macquarie University (Australia). He has studied behavior and conservation in Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Germany, Kenya, New Zealand, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States. He has served on endangered species recovery teams, and is a member of the IUCN Reintroduction Specialist Group and the Conservation Behavior Committee of the Animal Behavior Society. He is a coauthor of Quantifying Behavior the JWatcher Way (published by Sinauer) and An Ecotourist's Guide to Khunjerab National Park (published by the World Wide Fund for Nature-Pakistan). He is a past editor of the journal Animal Behaviour, and is presently an associate editor of The Quarterly Review of Biology. He is on the editorial boards of Behavioral Ecology and Biology Letters. He spends his summers studying marmot behavior and ecology at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Gothic, Colorado.

Esteban Fernandez-Juricic is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University. He got his undergraduate degree at Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Argentina. He received his Ph.D. in animal ecology at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford (United Kingdom), and the University of Minnesota (USA). Before his current position, he was an Assistant Professor at California State University, Long Beach for almost six years. He has studied behavior and conservation in Argentina, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Applied Ecology and Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. He is a member of the Conservation Behavior Committee of the Animal Behavior Society. He is currently interested in the integration of sensory ecology, behavioral ecology, and conservation biology.