Search results for "Vertebrate"
showing 10 items of 830 documents
Does trait-based joint species distribution modelling reveal the signature of competition in stream macroinvertebrate communities?
2021
1. The occupancy and abundance of species are jointly driven by local factors, such as environmental characteristics and biotic interactions, and regional‐scale factors, such as dispersal and climate. Recently, it has been shown that biotic interactions shape species occupancies and abundances beyond local extents. However, for small ectothermic animals, particularly for those occurring in freshwater environments, the importance of biotic interactions remains understudied. Species‐to‐species associations from joint species distribution models (i.e. species associations while controlling for environmental characteristics) are increasingly used to draw hypotheses of which species possibly sho…
Environmental filtering and spatial effects on metacommunity organisation differ among littoral macroinvertebrate groups deconstructed by biological …
2018
We examined spatial and environmental effects on the deconstructed assemblages of littoral macroinvertebrates within a large lake. We deconstructed assemblages by three biological trait groups: body size, dispersal mode and oviposition behaviour. We expected that spatial effects on assemblage structuring decrease and environmental effects increase with increasing body size. We also expected stronger environmental filtering and weaker spatial effect on the assemblages of flying species compared with assemblages of non-flying species. Stronger effect of environmental filtering was expected on the assemblages with species attaching eggs compared with assemblages of species with free eggs. We u…
Handbook of protocols for standardized measurement of terrestrial invertebrate functional traits
2017
Trait-based approaches are increasingly being used to test mechanisms underlying species assemblages and biotic interactions across a wide range of organisms including terrestrial arthropods and to investigate consequences for ecosystem processes. Such an approach relies on the standardized measurement of functional traits that can be applied across taxa and regions. Currently, however, unified methods of trait measurements are lacking for terrestrial arthropods and related macroinvertebrates (terrestrial invertebrates hereafter). Here, we present a comprehensive review and detailed protocol for a set of 29 traits known to be sensitive to global stressors and to affect ecosystem processes a…
Efficient estimation of generalized linear latent variable models.
2019
Generalized linear latent variable models (GLLVM) are popular tools for modeling multivariate, correlated responses. Such data are often encountered, for instance, in ecological studies, where presence-absences, counts, or biomass of interacting species are collected from a set of sites. Until very recently, the main challenge in fitting GLLVMs has been the lack of computationally efficient estimation methods. For likelihood based estimation, several closed form approximations for the marginal likelihood of GLLVMs have been proposed, but their efficient implementations have been lacking in the literature. To fill this gap, we show in this paper how to obtain computationally convenient estim…
Sampling effort and information quality provided by rare and common species in estimating assemblage structure
2020
Made available in DSpace on 2020-12-12T01:06:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2020-03-01 Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) Academy of Finland Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) Reliable biological assessments are essential to answer ecological and management questions but require well-designed studies and representative sample sizes. However, large sampling effort is rarely possible, because it demands large financial resources and time, restricting the number of sites sampled, the duration of the study and the sampling effort at each site. In…
Underwater noise from boats: Measurement of its influence on the behaviour and biochemistry of the common prawn (Palaemon serratus, Pennant 1777)
2016
Abstract This study examined the effects of recorded boat noises on the behaviour and biochemistry of the common prawn ( Palaemon serratus ) in laboratory settings. The experiment was carried out in a tank equipped with a video-recording system using six groups (three control and three tested) of eight common prawns (48 animals in total). After habituation for 1 h, the behaviour of the prawns was monitored for 1 h. During the last 30 min, the animals in the test groups were exposed to noise resembling a marine area with high anthropogenic acoustic pollution. The exposure to noise produced significant changes in locomotor patterns, presence inside or outside a shelter, total protein concentr…
Short-term benefits, but transgenerational costs of maternal loss in an insect with facultative maternal care
2015
A lack of parental care is generally assumed to entail substantial fitness costs for offspring that ultimately select for the maintenance of family life across generations. However, it is unknown whether these costs arise when parental care is facultative, thus questioning their fundamental importance in the early evolution of family life. Here, we investigated the short-term, long-term and transgenerational effects of maternal loss in the European earwig Forficula auricularia , an insect with facultative post-hatching maternal care. We showed that maternal loss did not influence the developmental time and survival rate of juveniles, but surprisingly yielded adults of larger body and force…
Habitat fragmentation and anthropogenic factors affect wildcat Felis silvestris silvestris occupancy and detectability on Mt Etna
2019
International audience; Knowledge of patterns of occupancy is crucial for planning sound biological management and for identifying areas which require paramount conservation attention. The European wildcat Felis silvestris is an elusive carnivore and is classified as ‘least concern' on the IUCN red list, but with a decreasing population trend in some areas. Sicily hosts a peculiar wildcat population, which deserves conservation and management actions, due to its isolation from the mainland. Patterns of occupancy for wildcats are unknown in Italy, and especially in Sicily. We aimed to identify which ecological drivers determined wildcat occurrence on Mt Etna and to provide conservation actio…
New Reptile Hosts for Helminth Parasites in a Mediterranean Region
2020
ABSTRACT Parasitic helminths are an almost universal feature of vertebrate animals, but reptiles are among the hosts with the most depauperate parasite communities. Biological traits of reptiles ar...
Guano-Derived Nutrient Subsidies Drive Food Web Structure in Coastal Ponds.
2016
A stable isotope study was carried out seasonally in three coastal ponds (Marinello system, Italy) affected by different gull guano input to investigate the effect of nutrient subsidies on food web structure and dynamics. A marked 15N enrichment occurred in the pond receiving the highest guano input, indicating that gull-derived fertilization (guanotrophication) had a strong localised effect and flowed across trophic levels. The main food web response to guanotrophication was an overall erosion of the benthic pathway in favour of the planktonic. Subsidized primary consumers, mostly deposit feeders, switched their diet according to organic matter source availability. Secondary consumers and,…