Datasets from which wildlife contact networks of epidemiological importance can be inferred are becoming increasingly common. A largely unexplored facet of these data is finding evidence of spatial constraints on who has contact with whom, despite theoretical epidemiologists having long realized spatial constraints can play a critical role in infectious disease dynamics. A graph dissimilarity m...

The goal of this study was to examine the effects of early life experiences on the subsequent expression of traits characteristic of social monogamy in prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster). During cage changes parents and their offspring were either transferred between cages in a cup (zero manipulation, MAN0) or with a gloved hand (one manipulation, MAN1). Following weaning the offspring were t...

Male prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) form a pair bond with a female partner after mating, and this behavior is regulated by the neuropeptide vasopressin (AVP). The authors report that AVP in the lateral septum is important for pair bond formation. Administration of an AVP V1a receptor antagonist in the lateral septum blocked mating-induced pair bonding, whereas administration of AVP induce...

Incorporating uncertainty in the investigation of ecological studies has been the topic of an increasing body of research. In particular, mark-recapture methodology has shown that incorporating uncertainty in the probability of detecting individuals in populations enables accurate estimation of population-level processes such as survival, reproduction, and dispersal. Recent advances in mark-rec...

We tested whether continuous cohabitation in monogamous voles affects the mated male's attentiveness to his breeding partner versus another female. Each male was housed in a 3-chamber apparatus with a Focal female (FF) and a Control female (CF) for 13 days then placed in a T-maze to assess his attentiveness to and memory of those females. The Distal male remained physically separated from both ...

Department of Animal Biology, University of Illinois, 505 S Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA (LLG) Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, 110 Newins-Ziegler Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA (MKO) Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 E Peabody Drive, Champaign, IL 81820, USA (JEH) Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Corson Hall, Cornell Universit...

Approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) is a highly flexible technique that allows the estimation of parameters under demographic models that are too complex to be handled by full-likelihood methods. We assess the utility of this method to estimate the parameters of range expansion in a two-dimensional stepping-stone model, using samples from either a single deme or multiple demes. A minor modif...