Search results for "WILDLIFE"

Willingness of Student to Favour the Protection of Endangered Species in a Trade-off Conflict in Finland

1994

Abstract This paper explores the willingness of Finnish students to favour protection of endangered species in a hypothetical trade-off conflict, where conservation would cause an increase in the household energy cost. The most striking result was the very distinct preference of species which the students felt worth protecting. The students favoured species which are well known, taxonomically close to man and actually endangered. Major differences occurred among students due to sex, educational institute, nature-related activity groups, as well as knowledge of nature and conservation issues.

Founder population size and number of source populations enhance colonization success in waterstriders.

2002

Understanding the factors that underlie colonization success is crucial both for ecological theory and conservation practices. The most effective way to assess colonization ability is to introduce experimentally different sets of individuals in empty patches of suitable habitat and to monitor the outcome. We translocated mated female waterstriders, Aquarius najas, into 90 streams that were not currently inhabited by the species. We manipulated sizes of propagules (from 2 to 16 mated females) and numbers of origin populations (one or two). Three origin populations were genetically different from each other, but they were less than 150 km from the streams of translocation. The results demonst…

Female Preference and Adverse Developmental Effects of Glyphosate-Based Herbicides on Ecologically Relevant Traits in Japanese Quails

2019

Controversial glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) are the most frequently used herbicides globally. An increasing number of studies have identified GBH residues in soil, water, and even human food that may expose nontarget organisms including wildlife, livestock, and humans to health risks. After a heated debate, the European Union allowed the use of GBHs to continue until 2022, after which their risks will be re-evaluated. Thus, decision makers urgently need scientific evidence on GBH residues and their possible effects on ecosystems. An important, yet neglected, aspect is to assess whether animals show preference or avoidance for GBH-contaminated food, as it can influence the likelihood of…

Effetti della cattività  su alcuni parametri ematologici del grifone (Gyps fulvus)

2017

Haematological analysis is an essential field of veterinary medicine that provides inexpensive and reliable support to determinate animal health. The knowledge of how different factors affect the normal mean values of blood parameters is key to understand and improve animal health. In order to investigate how captivity can affect the haematological profile of birds of prey, the erythrocyte count, haemoglobin concentration, haematocrit, mean corpuscular volume, total leukocytes count of 123 griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus) were analysed. The birds were divided into 4 groups according to their life conditions: a control group of free-living griffons, 2 semi-captive groups held in an aviary for …

L'applicazione della CITES in Europa

2008

Transmission Heterogeneity and Control Strategies for Infectious Disease Emergence

2007

Background The control of emergence and spread of infectious diseases depends critically on the details of the genetic makeup of pathogens and hosts, their immunological, behavioral and ecological traits, and the pattern of temporal and spatial contacts among the age/stage-classes of susceptible and infectious host individuals. Methods and Findings We show that failing to acknowledge the existence of heterogeneities in the transmission rate among age/stage-classes can make traditional eradication and control strategies ineffective, and in some cases, policies aimed at controlling pathogen emergence can even increase disease incidence in the host. When control strategies target for reduction…

An overview of the Ephydridae (Diptera) of Saudi Arabia

2019

Despite the species richness of Ephydridae world-wide (2000 species) and its prominent environmental roles as a minor pest and as a food for wildlife, only 13 species have been recorded from Saudi Arabia. Between 2012 and 2016, a biodiversity study of Diptera was conducted at Jazan, Asir, and Najran in south-western Saudi Arabia, at 22 sites, was performed mainly using Malaise traps and sweep nets. In this study, 43 known species of Ephydridae were identified, 37 of them for the first time from southwestern Saudi Arabia and 16 from Arabian Peninsula. This brings the total number of Ephydridae species in Saudi Arabia to 49 (including previous records). There were a further four species, whic…

Data from: Plant – herbivorous beetle networks: molecular characterization of trophic ecology within a threatened steppic environment

2015

DNA barcoding facilitates many evolutionary and ecological studies, including the examination of the dietary diversity of herbivores. In this study, we present a survey of ecological associations between herbivorous beetles and host plants from seriously threatened European steppic grasslands. We determined host plants for the majority (65%) of steppic leaf beetles (55 species) and weevils (59) known from central Europe using two barcodes (trnL and rbcL) and two sequencing strategies (Sanger for mono/oligophagous species and Illumina for polyphagous taxa). To better understand the ecological associations between steppic beetles and their host plants, we tested the hypothesis that leaf beetl…

Pesticides and conservation of large ungulates: Health risk to European bison from plant protection products as a result of crop depredation.

2020

The coexistence of large mammals and humans in the contemporary landscape is a big challenge for conservationists. Wild ungulates that forage on arable fields are exposed to the negative effects of pesticides, and this problem also applies to protected species for which intoxication by pesticides may pose a health risk and directly affect the effectiveness of conservation efforts. In this paper we assessed the threat posed by pesticides to the European bison Bison bonasus, a species successfully restituted after being extinct in the wild. We studied samples of B. bonasus liver from three free-living populations in Poland (Białowieska, Knyszyńska, and Borecka forests) and captive individuals…

Scavengers on the move: behavioural changes in foraging search patterns during the annual cycle

2013

Background: Optimal foraging theory predicts that animals will tend to maximize foraging success by optimizing search strategies. However, how organisms detect sparsely distributed food resources remains an open question. When targets are sparse and unpredictably distributed, a Lévy strategy should maximize foraging success. By contrast, when resources are abundant and regularly distributed, simple Brownian random movement should be sufficient. Although very different groups of organisms exhibit Lévy motion, the shift from a Lévy to a Brownian search strategy has been suggested to depend on internal and external factors such as sex, prey density, or environmental context. However, animal re…