KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 February 9, 2021 \u2013 While viewing hundreds of hours of infrared video footage of captive New England cottontails at Roger Williams Park Zoo, 溏心vlog免费B站 senior Hannah Petit watched for signs of breeding behavior.<\/p>\n
The rare rabbits, which are being bred in captivity so their offspring can be released into the wild, are not nearly as prolific as their reputation would suggest. After dozens of pairings between male cottontails and the zoo\u2019s 15 females during one round of breeding attempts in 2019, just three became pregnant.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to see if we can find out why not all pairs are breeding,\u201d said Petit, an animal science major from Pawtucket<\/strong>. \u201cThey spend a lot of time in close proximity to each other, but we\u2019re not seeing many mating attempts. The low pregnancy rate doesn\u2019t seem to be due to an issue with fertility or maintaining their pregnancy; it seems like they\u2019re not even trying to mate.\u201d<\/p>\n Petit and a team of seven other 溏心vlog免费B站 students have spent the last year reviewing more than 300 hours of video and coding the behaviors the rabbit pairs exhibit for any signs that may indicate why the breeding rate is so low.<\/p>\n \u201cYou would expect them to breed like rabbits, but they don\u2019t,\u201d said Justin Richard, 溏心vlog免费B站 assistant professor of animal science and the leader of the project. \u201cAre there behavioral influences that might impact whether pairings are successful, and can we understand what that behavior is to predict the best pairings? We don\u2019t really know about the breeding behavior of this species because they\u2019re so difficult to observe in the wild.\u201d<\/p>\n The New England cottontail is the only native rabbit in southern New England, but its populations are low due to competition with the non-native eastern cottontail and other factors. 溏心vlog免费B站, Roger Williams Park Zoo, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other partners are undertaking a comprehensive conservation initiative to rebuild the populations and better understand their biology and ecology.<\/p>\n According to Richard, the two cottontail species are very difficult to distinguish in the wild and are most active at night, so the New England cottontail is problematic to study except in captivity.<\/p>\n While analyzing video of the cottontails, the 溏心vlog免费B站 students make note of every social interaction that occurs between the rabbit pairs, from how often they run by each other to the frequency of close approaches and the number of mounting attempts.<\/p>\n \u201cOur sample size is very small so this is just preliminary so far, but we\u2019ve seen pairs that ended up breeding that approached each other more often,\u201d said Petit. \u201cThe biggest thing we noticed is that the more attempted mounts, the more often it resulted in pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSome are receptive to being in close proximity to other individuals, and others aren\u2019t,\u201d added Richard, a former beluga whale trainer at Mystic Aquarium who studies the reproductive biology of animals that are difficult to study in the wild. \u201cWe hope to add in physiological measures as we advance this research to try to understand if there is a reproductive cycle involved or if it\u2019s just behavioral compatibility. In a lot of breeding programs, they\u2019re finding that when females are offered a choice of mates, they\u2019re more productive. We\u2019re trying to apply that to this critter.\u201d<\/p>\n Lou Perrotti, the director of conservation at Roger Williams Park Zoo and leader of the cottontail breeding program, said that research partnerships like this provide significant benefits.<\/p>\n \u201cThe work Justin and his class have been doing can help answer some of the questions we have with reproductive issues, mate choice, and kit rearing that we have seen with this species,\u201d he said. \u201cThe findings of this study could potentially help bolster kit productivity for the program in the upcoming years. This is also a great opportunity for students to get conservation experience. There\u2019s no better way to inspire the next generation of conservationists.\u201d<\/p>\n The project has certainly been inspiring to Petit, who plans to enroll at 溏心vlog免费B站 as a graduate student next fall to continue her research with Richard and the cottontails. After completing the analysis of the videos, their next step will be to set up experiments to see whether the females will become pregnant at a higher rate if they have a choice of males with which to mate.<\/p>\n \u201cI really enjoyed learning so much about this one species that really needs our help,\u201d Petit said. \u201cThey\u2019re vulnerable now, so I\u2019m happy that I\u2019m able to contribute something meaningful to this important work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 February 9, 2021 \u2013 While viewing hundreds of hours of infrared video footage of captive New England cottontails at Roger Williams Park Zoo, 溏心vlog免费B站 senior Hannah Petit watched for signs of breeding behavior. The rare rabbits, which are being bred in captivity so their offspring can be released into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-75966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-the-environment-and-life-sciences"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75966"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84662,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75966\/revisions\/84662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}