Group size is an important variable describing behavioural ecology of animals. A variety of factors such as habitat characteristics, life history, spatio-temporal resource dynamics, population density, predation risk, competition with kin, and social learning often determine group size in large mammals. We studied temporal dynamics of group size in Siberian Ibex (Capra sibirica) in a protected ...

Abstract Rangelands are increasingly being affected by climatic variations, fragmentation and changes in livestock management practices. Along with resource competition between wildlife, disease transmission has implications for people wildlife these shared landscapes. We worked two pastoral communities the Western Indian Himalayas: migratory Kinnaura s that travel to Trans-Himalayan Pin valley...

In prey species, vigilance is an important behavioural trait with regard to antipredator strategies. It has been studied intensely in animals. However, liŠle is known about vigilance in animal kids. In this study, I investigated the inƒuence of various environmental and social factors on Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) and Alpine chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) kid vigilance behaviour. In the Gran Parad...

BACKGROUND In 2010, an Iberian ibex (Capra pyrenaica hispanica) stock reservoir was established for conservation purposes in north-eastern Spain. Eighteen ibexes were captured in the wild and housed in a 17 hectare enclosure. Once in captivity, a caseous lymphadenitis (CLA) outbreak occurred and ibex handlings were carried out at six-month intervals between 2010 and 2013 to perform health exami...

Seasonal patterns of climate and vegetation growth are expected to be altered by global warming. In alpine environments, the reproduction of birds and mammals is tightly linked to seasonality; therefore such alterations may have strong repercussions on recruitment. We used the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), a satellite-based measurement that correlates strongly with aboveground ...

Infectious keratoconjunctivitis (IKC) caused by Mycoplasma conjunctivae is a highly contagious ocular infection which is common in domestic sheep and goats. In the European Alps, IKC is often observed in Alpine chamois (Rupicapra r. rupicapra) and in Alpine ibex (Capra i. ibex), but the disease has also been described in other wild Caprinae in the Pyrenees and in New Zealand. The infection is c...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND In the frame of an eradication program for bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) in Swiss livestock, the question was raised whether free-ranging wildlife could threaten the success of this sanitary measure. Therefore, we conducted serological and virological investigations on BVD virus (BVDV) infections in the four indigenous wild ruminant species (roe deer, red deer, Alpine cha...

An ongoing objective in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) systems is improvement power coupling to plasma. During last decade, this goal has been mainly pursued through study resistance, either by optimizing antenna layout or tailoring scrape-off layer profile with gas puffing. Another approach increase voltage handling capability ICRF system, limited breakdown launchers transmissio...

Voyager 2 observations throughout the heliosheath from termination shock to heliopause are used normalize and constrain model pickup ion (PUI) fluxes. Integrating normalized PUI fluxes along trajectory through heliosheath, combining these integral with energy-dependent charge-exchange cross section neutral hydrogen density, produces semi-empirical estimates of energetic atom (ENA) heliosheath. ...