Foraging habitats and utilization distributions of Black-necked Cranes wintering at the Napahai Wetland, China

One of the most endangered populations of Black-necked Cranes (Grus nigricollis), the central population, is declining due to habitat loss and degradation, but little is known about their space use patterns and habitat preferences. We examined the space use and habitat preferences of Black-necked Cranes during the winter of 2007-2008 at the Napahai wetland in northwest Yunnan, China, where approximately 300 Black-necked Cranes (>90% of the total central population) spent the winter. Euclidean distance analysis was employed to determine the habitat preferences of Black-necked Cranes, and a local nearest-neighbor, convex-hull construction method was used to examine space use. Our results indicate that Black-necked Cranes preferred shallow marsh and wet meadow habitats and avoided farmland and dry grassland. Core-use areas (50% isopleths) and total-use areas (100% isopleths) accounted for only 1.2% and 28.2% of the study area, respectively. We recommend that habitat protection efforts focus on shallow marsh and wet meadow habitats to maintain preferred foraging sites. Core-use areas, such as the primary foraging areas of Black-necked Cranes, should be designated as part of the core zone of the nature reserve. Monthly shifts in the core-use areas of the cranes also indicate that the reserve should be large enough to permit changes in space use. In addition to preserving habitat, government officials should also take measures to decrease human activity in areas used by foraging Black-necked Cranes.

The decline and impending extinction of the South China tiger

The South China tiger Panthera tigris amoyensis is the rarest of the five living tiger subspecies, the most critically threatened and the closest to extinction. No wild South China tigers have been seen by officials for 25 years and one was last brought into captivity 27 years ago. The 19 reserves listed by the Chinese Ministry of Forestry within the presumed range of the tiger are spatially fragmented and most are too small to support viable tiger populations. Over the last 40 years wild populations have declined from thousands to a scattered few. Despite its plight and occasional anecdotal reports of sightings by local people, no intensive field study has been conducted on this tiger subspecies and its habitat. The captive population of about 50 tigers, derived from six wild-caught founders, is genetically impoverished with low reproductive output. Given the size and fragmentation of potential tiger habitat, saving what remains of the captive population may be the only option left to prevent extinction of this tiger subspecies, and even this option is becoming increasingly less probable. This precarious dilemma demands that conservation priorities be re-evaluated and action taken immediately to decide if recovery of the wild population will be possible.

态度结构一致性对态度-行为关系的影响：个体与群体水平的研究

Social psychologists have long been interested in understanding the conditions under which attitudes influence behaviors, and they have formed two relatively independent theoretical perspectives in the attitude-behavior domain. One perspective, which we adopt in the present paper, focuses on investigating the effect of attitude strength on the attitude-behavior relationship. Specifically, the present research investigates the role of structural consistency, a dimension of attitude strength, on the attitude-behavior relationship. Structural consistency has typically been defined as the extent to which one aspect of individual’s attitude is consistent with either his or her overall attitude toward the object or the other aspect of the attitude, including affective-cognitive consistency (ACC), evaluative-cognitive consistency (ECC) and evaluative-affective consistency (EAC). The ECC and EAC can be integrated into the attitude base. Despite the evidence that structural consistency is associated with attitude-behavior relationship, there are some limitations in previous studies: (1) attitude base and ACC have been rarely studied together ;( 2) researchers often used the term behavior in a broad sense to encompass behavioral intentions as well as actual behaviors ;( 3) the effects were all investigated at individual level. The present research tried to explore the effects of ACC and attitude base on attitude-behavioral intention-actual behavior relationships at individual and group levels in different behavior areas including shopping, supportive behavior towards officials, and offensive behavior towards governors and central and local governments. The roles of affective and cognitive components of attitudes on general attitudes and following behaviors were also examined in this research. The results indicated that: A. At individual and group levels, the effect of structural consistency on attitude –intention relation is as the same as its effect on attitude-behavior relation, but it varies in different areas. On the other hand, the effect of structural consistency on explicit attitude-behavior relation is different from its effect on implicit attitude-behavior relation. B. The cognitive components of the individuals and groups’ implicit attitudes towards officials, the implicit and explicit attitudes towards governors, and the public’s attitudes towards central and local governments exert the stronger influence on general attitudes. Similarly, the cognitive components also exert the stronger influence on groups’ supportive behaviors towards officials and offensive behaviors towards governors and governments. C. Both group attitude and emotion can influence the group offensive behavior towards governors. The group attitude exerts its influence through the mediating effects of behavior intention and group emotion. The group emotion which is the core factor can exert the direct influence on group offensive behavior towards governors. D. At individual and group levels, the implicit and explicit measures should be used together to collect the attitude data, because the implicit and explicit attitudes can both predict behaviors under most conditions. It is the best implicit attitude measure to use the experts’ evaluations of listed words. And the emotion should be measured by the experts’ evaluations of listed words if the emotion data is used to predict the following behavior.