The Animals Will Play While the Visitors Are Away: What Happens When Zoos and Aquariums Are Closed to Visitors?

Dear Colleagues,

For decades, those in the zoo and aquarium community have been interested in understanding how visitors affect the animals in our care. Researchers began scientifically investigating this question in primates in the late 1970s, with the majority of early research suggesting visitors may be a stressful stimulus. However, as research expanded to include other taxonomic groups, the picture became far less clear, with studies reporting neutral and positive effects of visitors as well as negative ones. Recent studies have further demonstrated some neutral and positive effects even in primates, potentially due to larger, more naturalistic enclosures and advances in husbandry and management practices. One substantial limitation to understanding visitor effects is that zoos and aquariums rarely close to the public for extended periods. As such, the widespread closing of zoos and aquariums during the COVID-19 pandemic provided an unprecedented opportunity to study changes in animal behavior and physiology during prolonged, institution-wide closures. This special issue presents research conducted in zoos and aquariums during these closures to improve our understanding of visitor effects on animals in human care. This special issue will explore the impact of visitors on:

• Space use and biological hot spots
• Activity budgets
• Social behavior
• Physiological parameters
• Behavior
• Wounding rates
• Responses to novel object tests

All manuscripts submitted to this Special Issue will have publication fees fully waived. Please contact the Editorial Office (jzbg@mdpi.com) if you have any questions.

Dr. Ashley Edes
Dr. David Powell
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Zoological and Botanical Gardens is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.