Adaptive anti-predatory responses of European rabbits exposed to different predation pressure
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Prey species develop anti-predatory strategies as a response to minimising the risk of being predated. However, how the European rabbit ( Oryctolagus cuniculus ) adapts to different predator pressure is not fully known. Here, we studied the adaptive anti-predatory responses of European rabbits exposed to different terrestrial predation pressure. To do this, we took advantage of a rabbit translocation programme in the Sierra Norte Natural Park of Sevilla (SW Spain), where rabbits from the same donor population were translocated in plots with and without terrestrial predator exclusion fences (aerial predation was not excluded in any of the plots). This presented an ideal opportunity to observe whether the behaviour of individuals from the same population adapts to situations with different predator pressure; thus, their behaviour was evaluated through direct observations. Although most rabbits were observed close to cover, differences in distance to cover, group size and behaviour were observed between fenced and unfenced plots. Overall, both adult and juvenile rabbits moved further from cover in the unfenced plot than in the fenced plot. Most of the observations in the unfenced plot corresponded to rabbits in pairs or alone; whereas in the fenced plot, rabbits were primarily in pairs or in larger groups. Our findings suggest that in the unfenced plot, rabbits that moved further from cover were often part of larger groups (≥ 4 rabbits); whereas in the fenced plot, it was rabbits in smaller groups (< 4 rabbits). Rabbits in the unfenced plot were alert and running more frequently than rabbits in the fenced one; in the latter, these rabbits were mostly feeding. Other relaxed behaviours such us grooming or resting were more frequent close to cover. In summary, our results highlight rabbits' capacity to promptly adjust behaviour in response to predation risk, exhibiting adaptive anti-predatory responses tailored to different predation pressures. These insights contribute to understanding the nuanced dynamics of prey species' responses to diverse predation scenarios.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it