Protocols

A 20-year longitudinal study tracking individually marked female marmots through live-trapping, unique marking, and behavioral observations to quantify social relationships and lifetime fitness. Uses ...

Live-trapping and marking of yellow-bellied marmots followed by systematic focal behavioral observations to quantify time allocation to different behaviors including vigilance. Uses established ethogr...

Direct observation of social interactions using binoculars and spotting scopes during peak activity periods. Interactions are classified as affiliative or agonistic and used to construct weighted dire...

Territory delineation by following singing males and recording GPS coordinates of singing locations to map territory boundaries and calculate area and perimeter.

Intensive monitoring of juvenile emergence and movements using daily visual observations and grid-based distance calculations to characterize dispersal timing, distance, and settlement patterns.

Systematic recording and quantification of animal behaviors using standardized ethogram categories and time budget analysis with JWatcher software.

Systematic predator monitoring during behavioral observations to quantify predation pressure. Creates predation index by dividing predator counts by observation time per colony site.

Assessment of female reproductive success through behavioral observation of pup emergence from natal burrows and pedigree analysis to assign offspring to mothers.

Colony sites are visited daily starting April 19th each year to record the first emergence date of individual marmots from hibernation through direct observation and sign detection.

Individual animals are uniquely marked and tracked through capture-recapture over multiple decades to estimate survival, reproduction, and productivity parameters. This generates individual life histo...

Frequent visits to wild meerkat groups to record births, deaths, emigration, and social status changes over 20 years of continuous observation.