An article in a recent issue of Science ("At Home on the Range: Prairie Rodents Yield Their Secrets to a Dogged Observer") begins:
To say that John Hoogland is passionate about prairie dogs is an understatement. A behavioral ecologist, he has studied these North American colonial rodents for 40 years, spending months at a time sitting in a blind from dawn to dusk recording the activities of each individual in a colony.
The comprehensive biology number and interdisciplinary number for prairie dogs is 599.367 Cynomys (Prairie dogs). An example of a general work classed in 599.367 is Prairie Dogs.
The record for 599.367 Cynomys (Prairie dogs) has a footnote: "Add as instructed under 592-599." The add table at 592-599 Specific taxonomic groups of animals makes it possible to add 1 General topics of natural history of animals and then add further as instructed: "Add to 1 the numbers following 591 in 591.3-591.7, e.g., beneficial animals 163, marine animals 177." Thus it is possible to add notation from subdivisions of 591 Specific topics in natural history of animals to the number for prairie dogs.
Hoogland was called a "behavioral ecologist." Browsing the Relative Index for "ecology" yields:
Ecology--animals 591.7
Browsing the Relative Index for "behavior" yields:
Behavior--animals 591.5
At 591 Specific topics in natural history of animals is a table of preference in which
Behavior 591.5
appears above
Animal ecology, animals characteristic of specific environments 591.7
Hence we might expect works by a behavioral ecologist to be classed with behavior rather than ecology. That seems to fit the specific report from Hoogland given in another article in the same issue of Science: "Prairie Dogs Disperse When All Close Kin Have Disappeared." Here is part of the editor's summary:
Dispersal, movement away from an organism's natal site, is a critical stage in the development of a juvenile into an adult and several drivers of this process have been proposed. . . . Hoogland (p. 1205) studied populations of three species of prairie dogs over more than three decades and found that the presence of close kin in these highly social rodents actually led young animals to remain on their natal site, whereas dispersal away from it occurred almost exclusively when close female kin were absent. This suggests that sociality may in fact result in individuals remaining with their close kin in order to benefit from cooperation and that longer-distance dispersal may instead occur when the opportunity for cooperation does not exist.
Let's consider a monographic work (by C. N. Slobodchikoff and others): Prairie Dogs: Communication and Community in an Animal Society. The work has the LCSH:
Prairie dogs
Animal communication
Social behavior in animals
The work is classed in 599.367156 Behavior relating to life cycle in prairie dogs (built with 599.367 Cynomys [Prairie dogs] plus 1 General topics of natural history of animals plus 56 from 591.56 Behavior relating to life cycle). At 591.56 is a class-here note: "Class here . . . social behavior . . . ." Also at 591.56 is a see reference: "For communication, see 591.59." Since this work treats more aspects of social behavior than just communication, notation from the implied comprehensive number 591.56 is used to build the DDC number for the work instead of notation from 591.59 Communication. Here is how the number building process looks with the WebDewey number building tool:
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