Biology subjects

Sommese, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Sommese, A..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Addressing the Elephant in the Room: A Quantitative Approach to Understanding 'Wild'

The concept of "wild" is poorly defined when applied to non-human animals, despite its central role in conservation, wildlife management and environmental policy. Despite numerous attempts to define "wildness", the distinction between "wild" and "non-wild" remains inconsistently applied. A shared, empirically grounded understanding of wildness would strengthen communication, support policy and legislation, and clarify human attitudes towards wildlife and nature. We assessed whether a shared understanding of wildness exists within the research community. A total of 358 professionals from different fields completed an online survey comprising 44 wildness-related statements along established measures of attitude and acceptability toward wildlife (AATW) and nature-relatedness (NRS). . Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed six components (19 statements): Human-mediated animal availability, Urbanisation, Independence from humans, Human-wildlife perceived conflict, Individual history of wildness, and Feralisation. These factors explained 43.91% of the variance. Mediation analysis showed that urbanisation and human-wildlife perceived conflict shape nature-relatedness by influencing attitudes and acceptability towards wildlife. Respondents demographic and professional backgrounds influenced their conceptualisation of wildness. While there is a shared latent structure of wildness across fields, it is multidimensional. This has implications for developing working definitions applicable to research, policy and practice.

scientific communication and education↗

bioRxiv2025

Joint attention biases dogs' memory towards object identity

Ostensive communication, characterized by direct eye contact and other attention-catching signals, shapes how humans encode and remember novel objects, biasing memory toward identity-relevant features. Dogs are sensitive to human ostensive cues and follow gaze direction. However, whether these signals also enhance and modulate object encoding remains unknown. In an eye-tracking study, we tested dogs in a violation-of-expectation paradigm. A human actor directed eye contact toward the dog or looked away while looking at an object. After an occlusion, dogs viewed three outcomes: the same object (no change), the same object in a different location (location change), or a different object (identity change). We measured dogs looking times during the outcome phase within predefined areas of interest around the object. In line with our predictions and matching earlier findings with infants, dogs looked longer at identity changes in the eye-contact condition. In contrast, looking times at location and no-change outcomes were unaffected by communicative context, indicating selective enhancement of identity encoding. During the initial addressing phase, pupil dilation was greater in the eye-contact condition, indicating increased arousal or engagement. These findings demonstrate that dogs and infants exhibit a communication-induced memory bias, revealing a capacity for ostension-guided learning that facilitates information transfer.

animal behavior and cognition↗