Meerkat

[Flutterby]

Very nice pics ladies.

[nan]

So often with birds!

first time I saw them with birds.... maybe because of the shade

[Peter Betts]

A Family enjoying the last 5 mins of sunlight at their burrow near Mata Mata

[Lisbeth]

Lovely

Cute little creatures

[Alf]

That doesn't look good

[Peter Betts]

That doesn't look good

[Lisbeth]

Fate of meerkats tied to seasonal climate effects

Posted on 21 February 2019 by News Desk in News, Research, Wildlife and the Decoding Science post series


A meerkat (Suricata suricatta) in the Kalahari Desert © UZH

Press release by University of Zurich

scarce and subject to seasonal availability. However, the demographic mechanisms through which seasonal climate affects population persistence remains mostly unknown. Using detailed monthly life-history data collected by the Kalahari Meerkat Project between 1997 and 2016, scientists at the Universities of Zurich and Cambridge have now assessed how meerkats (Suricata suricatta) will fare in response to future changes in seasonal rainfall and temperature.

Meerkats are cooperative breeders that live in social groups. A dominant female monopolises most of the reproduction, while subordinate helpers assist in raising her offspring. Changes in the physical and social environment affect the growth, survival and reproduction of meerkats. For example, wet and warm conditions at the beginning of summer increase the growth, survival and reproduction of these animals. In contrast, high population densities and cold weather during winter decrease individual growth and survival.

Seasonal dynamics matter

The Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa is projected to become drier and warmer as a result of climate change. The new study investigates how consistently rising summer temperatures and rainfall fluctuations will affect body mass and growth of meerkats, resulting in lower rates of reproduction and offspring survival. However, this isn’t the only finding of the study.

“In addition to the common practice of modelling average annual dynamics, we took a closer look at seasonal dynamics and developed a specific climate change model,” says Maria Paniw of the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich. “We found that the picture is more complex: Seasonality matters because improving conditions in one season can partially counter the worsening conditions in the next season.”


Meerkats are cooperative breeders that live in social groups © UZH

Hotter winters can alleviate negative effects

The team linked changes observed in growth, survival and reproduction to changes in seasonal rainfall and temperature. Using these links in a population projection model, the scientists projected the population dynamics 50 years into the future, creating different scenarios based on a report on climate change issued by US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The data shows that the combined effects of hotter and drier summers in particular may threaten the persistence of the meerkat population. In the study’s projections, fewer offspring were produced, resulting in fewer helpers in the population. In this scenario, the meerkat population plummeted, increasing the risk of population collapse.

In contrast, the negative effects of less rainfall in summer would be alleviated to an extent if winters became warmer, allowing meerkats to gain weight and step up reproduction. Taking these counteracting seasonal changes into account leads to a different scenario, in which the probability of extinction is less severe and the meerkats would still persist in 50 years.

Link between seasonality and populations dynamics

“The effect of an environmental change on a population depends on how individuals interact with their biological and physical environment, and how these interactions will change over time. Our study demonstrates that we have to accurately identify these interactions, especially in terms of how these interactions vary between seasons, to predict a population’s vulnerability in the face of climate change,” says Arpat Ozgul, senior author of the study and professor of population ecology at the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich.

Professor Tim Clutton-Brock, co-author from the University of Cambridge and founder of the Kalahari Meerkat Project, adds: “Our work emphasises the importance of long-term, individual-based studies that extend over several decades. Only where data of this kind is available is it possible to assess the effects of climate change on animal populations and to understand the ecological mechanisms responsible for them.”

Full report: Maria Paniw, Nino Maag, Gabriele Cozzi, Tim Clutton-Brock, Arpat Ozgul (2019): Life history responses of meerkats to seasonal changes in extreme environments. Science. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aau5905


A dominant female monopolies most of the reproduction, while subordinate helpers assist in raising her offspring © UZH

[Lisbeth]

Meerkats: they’re just like us!

By Lucy Freeman

When a meerkat stands on a high point, scanning the horizon nervously, anxious eyes flicking from left to right, or curious heads pop up as an unusual noise is heard, like neighbours peeping out from behind a curtain, we know immediately what’s going on. It all seems very… well… us.

Could this be why meerkats frequently top many “favourite animal’ lists, because we need to see our own behaviour reflected to feel a link with a particular animal, or are we simply projecting human behaviour on to meerkats because it’s what we want to see? Let’s investigate a bit of meerkat behaviour and see what lies behind it….

Neighbourhood Watch

The meerkat’s alert expression is very familiar, largely because it looks like any one of us peering down the road waiting impatiently for the number 39 bus. It’s not curiosity though, it’s a life or death security measure. For a bird of prey or a snake, the meerkat is a perfect meal so any shadow across the desert floor or movement in the distance is enough for the sentry meerkat to sound the alarm and send the rest of the mob scurrying back to its burrow.


Photograph by nattanan726 via Shutterstock

One meerkat will act as sentry as the others forage for food, after the initial morning sunbathe; the sentry is replaced after a while by another meerkat, so the first can also feed. Now that is intelligent human behaviour — shift work so everyone can get to the canteen.

Stop squabbling!

Meerkat kittens scrapping and wrestling before being separated by an exasperated adult are all too familiar to any human parent, or indeed anyone who’s been to a supermarket on a Saturday morning. This tussling isn’t just sibling rivalry though, it’s all part of the learning experience. Fiercely territorial, meerkats often find themselves having to defend their area against a rival meerkat group, sometimes in a fight to the death, so the earlier they can deal with a bit of rough and tumble, the better.


Photograph by Yannick Vidal via Shutterstock

Babyface

Do we find pudgy meerkat kittens so appealing because they look like human babies? Very probably. Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz, in 1949, theorised that a large head, round face, podgy body and big eyes are associated in our minds with an infant human baby and triggers care-taking behaviour in us. This ‘Kindchenschema,' or baby schema, serves a vital function; we have to fall in love with our babies to ensure their survival. We talk about “melting," “going gooey” or wanting to “eat up” babies and baby animals, which is our attempt to articulate the huge dopamine rush we are programmed to get from the Kindchenschema.


Photograph by Ondrej Chvatal via Shutterstock

Parenting classes

Adult meerkats will babysit other’s children and as parents, they’re cautious and good teachers. When your favourite snack is a scorpion, introducing this to your babies as elevenses can be a pretty risky business, so mama meerkats chop the tails off before giving the scorpion to their offspring. They’ll also bring their babies live insects and teach them how to catch and eat them. Bit like the first time a child uses chopsticks, but probably not so messy.


Photograph by Henk Bentlage via Shutterstock

So the human behaviour demonstrated by meerkats turns out to have very sound environmental, and occasionally bloodthirsty, reasons behind it. Which is fair enough; meerkats don’t get much out of humans identifying with them, apart from international television careers? For domestic animals, though it’s a boon. Researchers at the University of Portsmouth have discovered that dogs produce more facial movements, including raising their eyebrows and making their eyes appear bigger (puppy dog eyes) when a human is paying attention to them. So, our need for the familiar is actually changing animal behaviour…or are we the ones being manipulated into just handing over more dog biscuits?

[Lisbeth]

As temperatures rise, meerkat pups feel the heat

by Liz Kimbrough on 5 March 2020

- Meerkat (Suricata suricatta) pups are gaining less body mass and surviving in fewer numbers as the daily maximum air temperature has risen in the Kalahari, according to a new study.

- When exposed to hot air and soil, the pups may be losing water from their bodies faster than they can replenish it.

- Researchers guessed that the cooperative child-rearing strategy of meerkat groups could buffer the effects of high temperatures, but pup growth and survival declined independently of group size.

The meerkat mobs of the Kalahari Desert fend off snakes and feast on scorpions, but a new foe is wearing them down: the slowly creeping heat of the day.

Over the past few decades, the daily maximum air temperature has risen in the Kalahari. According to a new study, meerkat (Suricata suricatta) pups are gaining less body mass and surviving in fewer numbers as the climate changes.

“Globally, there is evidence of declining body sizes of multiple species in response to the environment getting warmer,” Tanja Van de Ven, lead author of the study, told Mongabay.

“Our results confirmed that meerkats too are declining in body size over the past 22 years.”


A meerkat(Suricata suricatta) in the Southern Kalahari. Photo by Tanja Van de Ven.

So why are these high temperatures affecting the pups? Meerkats get most of their water from the food they eat and regulate their body temperature by evaporative cooling. When exposed to hot air and soil, the pups may be losing water from their bodies faster than they can replenish it. The resulting dehydration causes the breakdown of muscle and reduces growth.

Van de Ven had noticed high air temperatures affecting the growth and survival of a bird species (the southern yellow-billed hornbill, Tockus leucomelas) in the Kalahari and wondered if the same would be true of a small mammal living in this arid environment. Meerkats, however, have an advantage hornbills do not: a little help from their friends.


Researcher Tanja Van de Ven observing meerkats in the southern Kalahari. Photo by Laura Thomas.

In arid and unpredictable environments, some animals work together as a community to raise their young, a system known as cooperative breeding. The researchers guessed that this community effort, found in meerkat populations, might buffer the adverse effects of climate change on the pups, with more helpers around to forage and feed the young.

“I did presume that the cooperative strategy of the meerkats could prevent the pups from being affected, because of the family members looking after the pups,” said Van de Ven. But independent of group size, high temperatures still affected pup growth and survival, even though the overall feeding rate increased on hotter days.


A group of meerkats is sometimes called a mob. Meerkats work together to raise the young. Photo by Tanja Van de Ven.

“In arid environments, decreases in reproduction and survival [of animals] are typically associated with droughts — that is, the focus is largely on rainfall,” said Maria Paniw, an ecologist at the University of Zurich who has studied the effects of climate on meerkats. “Here, we see that rainfall is only one part of the picture.”

This study draws upon long-term monitoring of meerkats in the southern Kalahari by volunteers at the Kalahari Meerkat Project. The meerkat populations studied, though wild, have been habituated to humans. They are trained to climb on a scale for measurements in exchange for a tiny crumb of boiled egg.


These meerkats have been habituated for study and monitored for over 20 years by the Kalahari Meerkat Project. Photo by Laura Thomas.

“This paper demonstrates the great value of long-term studies in global-change ecology,” Paniw said. “More than 20 years of detailed observations of meerkats allowed the authors to assess robustly some of the complex mechanisms through which climate change affects natural populations.”

The past decade was the hottest on record, and 2019 the second-hottest year globally. Warming is predicted to continue, meaning the future is uncertain for the meerkats of the Kalahari.

Citation: Van de Ven, T. M. F. N., Fuller, A., & Clutton‐Brock, T. H. (2020). Effects of climate change on pup growth and survival in a cooperative mammal, the meerkat. Functional Ecology, 34(1),194-202. doi:10.1111/1365-2435.13468

Liz Kimbrough is a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter @lizkimbrough_

[Klipspringer]

Tswalu Kalahari (WildEarth)