Search results for "Landscape"
showing 10 items of 1561 documents
Habitat preferences of Bonelli's Eagles Aquila fasciata in Sicily
2012
Capsule For breeding, areas dominated by extensive agricultural and rugged Mediterranean landscapes are preferred; maintenance of habitat heterogeneity and extensive agriculture are key for the conservation of this eagle. Aims To model breeding habitat preferences of Bonelli's Eagles Aquila fasciata in Sicily, where the last viable population still remains in Italy, in order to identify the most important habitats for conservation. Methods Pairs were monitored between 1990 and 2010. A case-control design through glms was used at two spatial scales: landscape and home-range. Variables included topographic, climatic, land-use, road and descriptors of habitat heterogeneity. Information-based c…
Incorporating spatial structure and stochasticity in endangered Bonelli’s eagle’s population models: implications for conservation and management
2008
Population models have played a chief role informing management decisions for the endangered Bonelli’s eagle (Aquila fasciata) in Spain. In this paper, we incorporate spatial structure and stochasticity in the construction of individual-based metapopulation models, and use these models to explore the effects of possible management actions on the persistence of the species in Spain. To build the models we used data on seven sub-populations that have experienced different trends in the last decades, and we introduced new estimates of pre-adult survival rate. The elasticity analysis of our models showed that when the interchange of individuals among sub-populations is taken into account, pre-a…
Variation in predator species abundance can cause variable selection pressure on warning signaling prey
2012
Predation pressure is expected to drive visual warning signals to evolve toward conspicuousness. However, coloration of defended species varies tremendously and can at certain instances be considered as more camouflaged rather than conspicuous. Recent theoretical studies suggest that the variation in signal conspicuousness can be caused by variation (within or between species) in predators' willingness to attack defended prey or by the broadness of the predators' signal generalization. If some of the predator species are capable of coping with the secondary defenses of their prey, selection can favor reduced prey signal conspicuousness via reduced detectability or recognition. In this study…
Post-fire practices benefits on vegetation recovery and soil conservation in a Mediterranean area
2021
Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade da Coruña/CISUG. [Abstract] Post-fire practices (PFP) aim to reduce soil erosion and favour vegetation recovery, but their effectiveness is spatially heterogeneous and under debate because of the economic and environmental costs. This study evaluates the different changes (Δ) of canopy cover (CC), sediment connectivity (SC) and local topography in four areas affected by the Pinet fire in eastern Spain (August 8th, 2018) and managed with: totally burnt with tree removal and long log erosion barriers (LEBs) (Pinet-1), partially burnt without PFP (Pinet-2), totally burnt with tree removal and short LEBs (Pinet-3), and totally burnt wit…
Rural Society, Social Inclusion and Landscape Change in Central and Eastern Europe:A Case Study of Latvia
2009
The countryside of Europe is undergoing many social, economic and environmental changes as a result of depopulation and agricultural land abandonment. This trend, driven in part by the wide disparity of income levels between rural and urban inhabitants, is particularly evident in the Central and Eastern European countries such as Latvia, which joined the EU in 2004 and in 2007. Research was undertaken in Latvia in 2003, the year before it joined the EU, to explore this trend, as manifested in the relationship of people to the countryside, using focus groups and a questionnaire survey. The results showed that, although Latvians retain a strong regard for their traditional countryside landsca…
Cities facing the Wild
2021
Untamed ecosystems and plots of wild nature increasingly constitute large parts of contemporary urban spaces. They are often the unbidden result of a long-standing lack of maintenance as well as of the uncontrolled flourishing of weeds produced by the pesticide absolute ban. But they are also something more. Many recently implemented urban open spaces deal with wild nature to solve some of the most urgent tasks of the contemporary cities: reclaiming areas fallen into disuse, designing sustainable infrastructures, revitalizing valuable public spaces, enhancing the ecological footprint of new developments, suggesting new practices and social ritual, reducing management costs, fighting climate…
Invasion biology in non‐free‐living species: interactions between abiotic (climatic) and biotic (host availability) factors in geographical space in …
2013
In invasion processes, both abiotic and biotic factors are considered essential, but the latter are usually disregarded when modeling the potential spread of exotic species. In the framework of set theory, interactions between biotic (B), abiotic (A), and movement-related (M) factors in the geographical space can be hypothesized with BAM diagrams and tested using ecological niche models (ENMs) to estimate A and B areas. The main aim of our survey was to evaluate the interactions between abiotic (climatic) and biotic (host availability) factors in geographical space for exotic symbionts (i.e., non-free-living species), using ENM techniques combined with a BAM framework and using exotic Entoc…
Predicting future thermal habitat suitability of competing native and invasive fish species: From metabolic scope to oceanographic modelling
2015
Global increase in sea temperatures has been suggested to facilitate the incoming and spread of tropical invaders. Here, we determined the effect of temperature on the aerobic metabolic scope of two competing fish species, one native and one invasive, and we predicted their future thermal habitat suitability.
Integrating species distribution models (SDMs) and phylogeography for two species of AlpinePrimula
2012
The major intention of the present study was to investigate whether an approach combining the use of niche-based palaeodistribution modeling and phylo-geography would support or modify hypotheses about the Quaternary distributional history derived from phylogeographic methods alone. Our study system comprised two closely related species of Alpine Primula. We used species distribution models based on the extant distribution of the species and last glacial maximum (LGM) climate models to predict the distribution of the two species during the LGM. Phylogeographic data were generated using amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs). In Primula hirsuta, models of past distribution and phylo…
Multi-Locus Phylogenetic Analyses of the Almadablennius Clade Reveals Inconsistencies with the Present Taxonomy of Blenniid Fishes
2022
We used a multi-locus phylogenetic approach (i.e., combining both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA fragments) to address some long-standing taxonomic inconsistencies within the diverse fish clade of Combtooth Blennies (Blenniidae—unranked clade Almadablennius). The obtained phylogenetic trees revealed some major inconsistencies in the current taxonomy of Parablennini, such as the paraphyletic status of the Salaria and Parablennius genera, casting some doubt regarding their actual phylogenetic relationship. Furthermore, a scarce-to-absent genetic differentiation was observed among the three species belonging to the genus Chasmodes. This study provides an updated taxonomy and phylogeny of the fo…