Assessing Reliability for Quantifying Social Interactions among Crayfish

Lee Ann Smith, Jeremy Nadolski, Grace Jacobs, Jodi M. Ogle, Madhusudan P. Srinivasan, Hannah N. Tanner, Elizabeth R. Steele, Nicole T. Marguerite, Sonya Bierbower, Slane Steen, Isaac Easterling, Abigail Greenhalgh, Cecilia Pankau, Shelby McCubbin, Brad Behymer, Robin L. Cooper

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Animal behavior is a useful way to evaluate the environment and can be a predictive tool to assess not only the effects of treatments in a laboratory setting, but also the status of ecological habitats. As invasive species of crayfish encroach on territories of native species, the social behaviors and interactions can be informative for ecological studies. For a wider and more impactful effect, training community scientists using a scoring system to record the social interactions of crayfish that includes both the level of aggression and intensity would provide useable data to monitor the environment. Amateur scientists with little training were fairly reliable in their average scoring of the crayfish and the maximum behavior score with an expert as well as among themselves. However, the number of interactions was not as a reliable metric to compare with the expert or just among the amateurs.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8031535
JournalInternational Journal of Zoology
Volume2024
DOIs
StatePublished - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Lee Ann Smith et al.

Funding

'e authors thank Allison L. McLaughlin (University of Kentucky) for initially explaining how to use JWatcher. 'e authors also thank Dr. Guenter Schuster (retired from Eastern Kentucky University) for helping in the classi,cation of the Northern cray,sh. 'is research was funded by the Alumni of the Research Group, Personal Funds (R.L.C.) and Chellgren Endowed Funding (R.L.C.).

FundersFunder number
University of Kentucky
Eastern Kentucky, University
Chellgren Endowed Funding

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Animal Science and Zoology

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