An official website of the United States government
Fear of predation may assert privilege to prey species by restricting their exposure to potential predators, meanwhile it can also impose costs by constraining the exploration of optimal resources. A predator–prey model with the effect of fear, refuge, and hunting cooperation has been investigated in this paper. The system’s equilibria are obtained and their local stability behavior is discussed. The existence of Hopf-bifurcation is analytically shown by taking refuge as a bifurcation parameter. There are many ecological factors which are not instantaneous processes, and so, to make the system more realistic, we incorporate three discrete time delays: in the effect of fear, refuge and hunting cooperation, and analyze the delayed system for stability and bifurcation. Moreover, for environmental fluctuations, we further modify the delayed system by incorporating seasonality in the fear, refuge and cooperation. We have analyzed the seasonally forced delayed system for the existence of a positive periodic solution. In the support of analytical results, some numerical simulations are carried out. Sensitivity analysis is used to identify parameters having crucial impacts on the ecological balance of predator–prey interactions. We find that the rate of predation, fear, and hunting cooperation destabilizes the system, whereas prey refuge stabilizes the system. Time delay in the cooperation behavior generates irregular oscillations whereas delay in refuge stabilizes an otherwise unstable system. Seasonal variations in the level of fear and refuge generate higher periodic solutions and bursting patterns, respectively, which can be replaced by simple 1-periodic solution if the cooperation and fear are also allowed to vary with time in the former and latter situations. Higher periodicity and bursting patterns are also observed due to synergistic effects of delay and seasonality. Our results indicate that the combined effects of fear, refuge and hunting cooperation play a major role in maintaining a healthy ecological environment.
more »
« less
Under greater cooperative care, childhood fear is more accommodated, but less warranted
Abstract The target article posits that caregiver cooperation rendered heightened expression of childhood fear an adaptive response to threat. I argue that caregiver cooperation rendered childhood fear expression less accurate as a signal of actual threat, and hence less effective for harm avoidance. Further, other emotional expressions that avoid unwarranted caregiver stress may be more likely to evoke needed care.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1749348
- PAR ID:
- 10434588
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Behavioral and Brain Sciences
- Volume:
- 46
- ISSN:
- 0140-525X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract Human infancy and early childhood is both a time of heightened brain plasticity and responsivity to the environment as well as a developmental period of dependency on caregivers for survival, nurturance, and stimulation. Across primate species and human evolutionary history, close contact between infants and caregivers is species-expected. As children develop, caregiver–child proximity patterns change as children become more autonomous. In addition to developmental changes, there is variation in caregiver–child proximity across cultures and families, with potential implications for child functioning. We propose that caregiver–child proximity is an important dimension for understanding early environments, given that interactions between children and their caregivers are a primary source of experience-dependent learning. We review approaches for operationalizing this construct (e.g., touch, physical distance) and highlight studies that illustrate how caregiver–child proximity can be measured. Drawing on the concepts proposed in dimensional models of adversity, we consider how caregiver–child proximity may contribute to our understanding of children’s early experiences. Finally, we discuss future directions in caregiver–child proximity research with the goal of understanding the link between early experiences and child adaptive and maladaptive functioning.more » « less
-
Abstract In childhood, higher levels of temperamental fear—an early‐emerging proclivity to distress in the face of novelty—are associated with lower social responsivity and greater social anxiety. While the early emergence of temperamental fear in infancy is poorly understood, it is theorized to be driven by individual differences in reactivity and self‐regulation to novel stimuli. The current study used eye tracking to capture infants’ (N = 124) reactions to a video of a smiling stranger—a common social encounter—including infant gaze aversions from the stranger's face (indexing arousal regulation) and pupil dilation (indexing physiological reactivity), longitudinally at 2, 4, 6, and 8 months of age. Multilevel mixed‐effects models indicated that more fearful infants took more time to look away from a smiling stranger's face than less fearful infants, suggesting that high‐fear infants may have slower arousal regulation. At 2 and 4 months, more fearful infants also exhibited greater and faster pupil dilation before gaze aversions, consistent with greater physiological reactivity. Together, these findings suggest that individual differences in infants’ gaze aversions and pupil dilation can index the development of fearful temperament in early infancy, facilitating the identification of, and interventions for, risk factors to social disruptions.more » « less
-
Abstract Early home musical environments can significantly impact sensory, cognitive, and socioemotional development. While longitudinal studies may be resource-intensive, retrospective reports are a relatively quick and inexpensive way to examine associations between early home musical environments and adult outcomes. We present the Music@Home–Retrospective scale, derived partly from the Music@Home–Preschool scale (Politimou et al., 2018), to retrospectively assess the childhood home musical environment. In two studies (totaln = 578), we conducted an exploratory factor analysis (Study 1) and confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2) on items, including many adapted from the Music@Home–Preschool scale. This revealed a 20-item solution with five subscales. Items retained for three subscales (Caregiver Beliefs, Caregiver Initiation of Singing, Child Engagement with Music) load identically to three in the Music@Home-–Preschool Scale. We also identified two additional dimensions of the childhood home musical environment. The Attitude Toward Childhood Home Musical Environment subscale captures participants’ current adult attitudes toward their childhood home musical environment, and the Social Listening Contexts subscale indexes the degree to which participants listened to music at home with others (i.e., friends, siblings, and caregivers). Music@Home–Retrospective scores were related to adult self-reports of musicality, performance on a melodic perception task, and self-reports of well-being, demonstrating utility in measuring the early home music environment as captured through this scale. The Music@Home–Retrospective scale is freely available to enable future investigations exploring how the early home musical environment relates to adult cognition, affect, and behavior.more » « less
-
Abstract Learning can occur via direct experience or through observation of another individual (i.e., social learning). While research focused on understanding the neural mechanisms of direct learning is prevalent, less work has examined the brain circuitry mediating the acquisition and recall of socially acquired information. Here, we aimed to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying recall of socially acquired information by having male and female rats sequentially recall a socially transmitted food preference (STFP) and a fear association via fear conditioning by-proxy (FCbP). Brain tissue was processed for mRNA expression of the immediate early gene (IEG) Arc , which expresses in the nucleus following transcription before migrating to the cytoplasm over the next 25 min. Given this timeframe, we could identify whether Arc transcription was triggered by STFP recall, FCbP recall, or both. Contrary to past research, we found no differences in any Arc expression measures across a number of prefrontal regions and the ventral CA3 of the hippocampus between controls, demonstrators, and observers. We theorize that these results may indicate that relatively little Arc- dependent neural restructuring is taking place in the prefrontal cortices and ventral CA3 following recall of recently socially acquired information or directly acquired fear associations in these areas.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X22001984
