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Red deer Cervus elaphus blink more in larger groups

View ORCID ProfileZeke W. Rowe, View ORCID ProfileJoseph H. Robins, View ORCID ProfileSean A. Rands
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.11.245837
Zeke W. Rowe
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Life Sciences Building, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TQ, United Kingdom
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Joseph H. Robins
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Life Sciences Building, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TQ, United Kingdom
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Sean A. Rands
School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Life Sciences Building, Tyndall Avenue, Bristol BS8 1TQ, United Kingdom
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  • For correspondence: sean.rands@bristol.ac.uk
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ABSTRACT

Most animals need to spend time being vigilant for predators, at the expense of other activities such as foraging. Group-living animals can benefit from the shared vigilance effort of other group members, with individuals reducing personal vigilance effort as group size increases. Behaviours like active scanning or head lifting are usually used to quantify vigilance, but may not be accurate measures as the individual could be conducting them for other purposes. We suggest that measuring an animal’s blinking rate gives a meaningful measure of vigilance: increased blinking implies reduced vigilance, as the animal cannot detect predators when its eyes are closed. We demonstrate that as group size increases in red deer, individuals increase their blink rate, confirming the prediction that vigilance should decrease. Blinking is a simple non-invasive measure, and offers a useful metric for assessing the welfare of animals experiencing an increase in perceived predation risk or other stressors.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • ↵* JR and ZR are considered as joint first authors

  • Revision in response to further reviewers' comments: changes in the introduction and discussion, and edits throughout. Details about pseudoreplication analysis moved back into the main text.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted June 29, 2021.
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Red deer Cervus elaphus blink more in larger groups
Zeke W. Rowe, Joseph H. Robins, Sean A. Rands
bioRxiv 2020.08.11.245837; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.11.245837
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Red deer Cervus elaphus blink more in larger groups
Zeke W. Rowe, Joseph H. Robins, Sean A. Rands
bioRxiv 2020.08.11.245837; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.08.11.245837

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