0000000000550342
AUTHOR
Bruno J. Ens
LTSER platforms as a place-based transdisciplinary research infrastructure: learning landscape approach through evaluation
Context: Place-based transdisciplinary research involves multiple academic disciplines and non-academic actors. Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) platform is one concept with ~ 80 initiatives globally. Objectives: As an exercise in learning through evaluation we audited (1) the siting, construction and maintenance of individual LTSER platforms, and (2) them as a distributed infrastructure for place-based transdisciplinary research with focus on the European continent. Methods: First, we defined a normative model for ideal performance at both platform and network levels. Second, four surveys were sent out to the 67 self-reported LTSER platforms officially listed at the end of 2016.…
Unexpected diversity in socially synchronized rhythms of shorebirds.
The behavioural rhythms of organisms are thought to be under strong selection, influenced by the rhythmicity of the environment1,2,3,4. Such behavioural rhythms are well studied in isolated individuals under laboratory conditions1,5, but free-living individuals have to temporally synchronize their activities with those of others, including potential mates, competitors, prey and predators6,7,8,9,10. Individuals can temporally segregate their daily activities (for example, prey avoiding predators, subordinates avoiding dominants) or synchronize their activities (for example, group foraging, communal defence, pairs reproducing or caring for offspring)6,7,8,9,11. The behavioural rhythms that em…
Cumulative Human Impacts on biRd Populations (CHIRP): A multi-tiered approach to conserving the near-threatened Eurasian Oystercatcher
The Eurasian Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) is a partially migratory meadow bird, and wading bird, that has declined substantially in recent decades. The cause of the decline may be due to several threats which vary in space and time. For example, some threats occur principally in winter like climate change, human disturbance or competition whilst others occur in summer, of which some only occur inland like agricultural intensification whilst shellfisheries or flooding are in coastal areas. Therefore, the relative impact of these threats, and how these impacts accumulate across the annual cycle will depend upon where an individual is in space and time, i.e. where it breeds and winter…