Zooplankton, integral to aquatic ecosystems, face diverse environmental influences. To comprehend their dynamics, critical for ecological insights and fisheries management, traditional morphological analysis proves laborious. Recent advances include...
In the western subarctic Pacific, zooplankton biomass is dominated by large copepods such as Neocalanus spp. and Eucalanus bungii, whereas small copepods dominate numerically. To evaluate how mesh size affects long-term monitoring, zooplankton were c...
Integrated assessment of the water environment has become widespread in many rivers, lakes, and reservoirs; however, aquatic organisms in freshwater are often overlooked in this process. Zooplankton, as primary consumers, are sensitive and responsive...
Funka Bay, located in southwest Hokkaido, is a vital fishing area with a shallow depth of less than 100 m. Seasonal flows of the Oyashio and Tsugaru Warm Current affect the marine environment, leading to significant changes in zooplankton communities...
Visitors are a prominent feature of the zoo environment and lives of zoo animals. The COVID-19 pandemic led to repeated and extended closure periods for zoos worldwide. This unique period in zoological history enabled the opportunity to investigate t...
Visitors to zoos can have positive, neutral, or negative relationships with zoo animals. This makes human–animal interactions (HAIs) an essential component of welfare and an important consideration in species selection for zoo exhibits and in e...
The effect of visitor presence on zoo animals has been explored in numerous studies over the past two decades. However, the opportunities for observations without visitors have been very limited at most institutions. In 2020, the Oregon Zoo was close...
The factors underlying the ‘zoo visit effect’ (changes in animal behaviour/physiology in response to visitor presence) are still poorly understood, despite it being widely investigated. The present study examined the effect of zoo visitor...
Many zoos display animals in mixed-species exhibits where multiple different species share the same space and potentially interact. This study analyzes a mixed-species exhibit with three New World monkey species (white-faced saki, black-capped squirr...
The pinioning of birds was previously one of the most-accepted forms of mutilation in zoos. Despite a lack of knowledge on the effects of deflighting procedures with regard to the well-being of deflighted birds, pelicans are often reversibly deflight...
There is a growing need for animal care institutions to house multiple bull elephants as the population increases due to transfers from private ownership and the births of male offspring in managed care. Elephants in North American, European, and Lat...
Deflighting zoo birds is a practice that receives increasing criticism due to its presumed incompatibility with animal welfare. To our knowledge, this is the first approach to address this problem in a scientific way. To do this, we compared feather...
Zoos include invertebrates in visitor interaction sessions to educate and spread conservation messages to the public. Yet, the welfare implications of these encounters on invertebrates are unstudied. Empirical studies reveal negative effects of handl...
Environmental enrichment is essential for promoting species-specific behaviors and enhancing the welfare of zoo-housed animals. This study examined the behavioral responses of two juvenile male binturongs (Arctictis binturong) at the Minnesota Zoo to...
The serval (Leptailurus serval) is a small African felid that is well represented in zoos and often serves as an animal ambassador in encounter programs with zoo visitors. The impact on serval welfare in relation to such programs has not been investi...
Background: Appropriate space is considered paramount for good captive animal welfare. There has been a concerted effort by captive institutions, particularly zoos, to provide captive animals with relatively large, naturalistic enclosures which haveh...
The introduction of elephants into new groups is necessary for breeding programmes. However, behavioural studies on the reactions of these animals at first encounters are missing. In the present study, female African elephants (Loxodonta africana) li...
The infrequency of a total solar eclipse renders the event novel to those animals that experience its effects and, consequently, may induce anomalous behavioral responses. However, historical information on the responses of animals to eclipses is sca...
We quantified how exhibit design and routine management shape behavior and space use in captive harbor seals (Phoca vitulina). Using a species-specific ethogram, scan sampling and focal follows on adult females housed in a modern zoo exhibit, we esti...
Studies of positional (=locomotor and postural) behavior are central to understanding how animals interact with the challenges imposed by their environment and are crucial for conservation management. The present study investigates, for the first tim...
Systematic data collection has become increasingly important in zoos as it facilitates evidence-based decision-making. Here, we describe the results of a two-year study on exhibit use and pair-bonding in a colony of Humboldt penguins. We used two dif...
Provision of optimal captive care should be supported by species-specific evidence. Callimico (Callimico goeldii) is a small South American callitrichid primate. This study sought to address gaps in species-specific knowledge and captive management r...
Primates are traditionally considered to have a poor sense of smell. However, olfaction is important for non-human primates as demonstrated by conspicuous scent-marking behaviours in lemurs. We studied two pairs (n = 4) of crowned lemurs (Eulemur cor...
Good zoo animal welfare is commonly promoted with environmental enrichment; however, some species are less likely to be offered enrichment than others. This study tested the effect of enrichment on a group of scarlet ibises from Zoomarine Algarve, Po...
The distribution of authigenic phosphates in the sedimentary sequence of prehistoric Denisova Cave (Altai, South Siberia) has important archeological implications. The sampled Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene sedimentary sequence in the East Cha...
It is important to examine the animal welfare implications of all aspects of zoo operations, including out-of-hours public events. Research to date has indicated variable responses across species and event types. The current research aimed to underst...