Distribution and habitat use by the Audouin's Gull (Ichthyaetus audouinii) in anthropized environments.

Human activities provide wildlife with highly abundant and predictable food subsidies, which can affect population dynamics and have wide-ranging ecological impacts. A key ecological question is how species adapt their foraging behaviour to capitalize on these new feeding opportunities. We investigate habitat use by Audouin's Gulls (Ichthyaetus audouinii) off the Western Mediterranean Sea, an opportunistic seabird that has recently expanded to diverse breeding colonies subjected to varying degrees of human influence.

Direct and indirect effects of climate and seed dynamics on the breeding performance of a seed predator at the distribution edge.

Marginal populations usually have low densities and are considered to be particularly vulnerable to environmental stochasticity. Using data collected in nest boxes, we analyzed the breeding performance of the edible dormouse (), an obligate hibernating rodent and a seed predator in deciduous forests, in two populations at the distribution range's edge. Despite being only 20 km apart from each other, Montseny is a large patch of mixed deciduous forests (oaks and beech), whereas Montnegre would be the harshest habitat, that is, a small, isolated patch with only oaks.

Drivers of resource allocation for breeding under variable environments in a bet hedger.

The evolutionary theory of life histories predicts that there is a trade-off between survival and reproduction: since adult survival in long-lived organisms is high, then breeding investment is more variable and more dependent on conditions (e.g. food availability and individual experience).

Local buffer mechanisms for population persistence.

Assessing and predicting the persistence of populations is essential for the conservation and control of species. Here, we argue that local mechanisms require a better conceptual synthesis to facilitate a more holistic consideration along with regional mechanisms known from metapopulation theory. We summarise the evidence for local buffer mechanisms along with their capacities and emphasise the need to include multiple buffer mechanisms in studies of population persistence.

Increased grey wolf diurnality in southern Europe under human-restricted conditions.

Wolves have been the archetype of wildlife persecution by humans for centuries all over the world, and still are heavily persecuted in some regions. Facultative diurnal/nocturnal wild mammals are known to become more nocturnal when persecuted. Conversely, little is known regarding the possibility of wolves becoming more diurnal if not persecuted.

Global assessment of marine plastic exposure risk for oceanic birds.

Plastic pollution is distributed patchily around the world's oceans. Likewise, marine organisms that are vulnerable to plastic ingestion or entanglement have uneven distributions. Understanding where wildlife encounters plastic is crucial for targeting research and mitigation.

The effect of climate change on avian offspring production: A global meta-analysis.

Climate change affects timing of reproduction in many bird species, but few studies have investigated its influence on annual reproductive output. Here, we assess changes in the annual production of young by female breeders in 201 populations of 104 bird species (N = 745,962 clutches) covering all continents between 1970 and 2019. Overall, average offspring production has declined in recent decades, but considerable differences were found among species and populations.

Social copying drives a tipping point for nonlinear population collapse.

Sudden changes in populations are ubiquitous in ecological systems, especially under perturbations. The agents of global change may increase the frequency and severity of anthropogenic perturbations, but complex populations' responses hamper our understanding of their dynamics and resilience. Furthermore, the long-term environmental and demographic data required to study those sudden changes are rare.

Active breeding seabirds prospect alternative breeding colonies.

Compared to other animal movements, prospecting by adult individuals for a future breeding site is commonly overlooked. Prospecting influences the decision of where to breed and has consequences on fitness and lifetime reproductive success. By analysing movements of 31 satellite- and GPS-tracked gull and tern populations belonging to 14 species in Europe and North America, we examined the occurrence and factors explaining prospecting by actively breeding birds.

Interspecific synchrony on breeding performance and the role of anthropogenic food subsidies.

Synchrony can have important consequences for long-term metapopulations persistence, community dynamics and ecosystems functioning. While the causes and consequences of intra-specific synchrony on population size and demographic rates have received considerable attention only a few factors that may affect inter-specific synchrony have been described. We formulate the hypothesis that food subsidies can buffer the influence of environmental stochasticity on community dynamics, disrupting and masking originally synchronized systems.

Inferring the age of breeders from easily measurable variables.

Age drives differences in fitness components typically due to lower performances of younger and senescent individuals, and changes in breeding age structure influence population dynamics and persistence. However, determining age and age structure is challenging in most species, where distinctive age features are lacking and available methods require substantial efforts or invasive procedures. Here we explore the potential to assess the age of breeders, or at least to identify young and senescent individuals, by measuring some breeding parameters partially driven by age (e.

Long transient response of vegetation dynamics after four millennia of anthropogenic impacts in an island ecosystem.

Agents of global change commonly have a higher impact on island ecosystem dynamics. In the Mediterranean region, those dynamics have historically been influenced by anthropogenic impacts, for example, the introduction of invasive species and overharvesting of resources. Here, we analysed the spatio-temporal dynamics of vegetation in sa Dragonera island, which experienced a large environmental change ca.

High frequency of prospecting for informed dispersal and colonisation in a social species at large spatial scale.

Animals explore and prospect space searching for resources and individuals may disperse, targeting suitable patches to increase fitness. Nevertheless, dispersal is costly because it implies leaving the patch where the individual has gathered information and reduced uncertainty. In social species, information gathered during the prospection process for deciding whether and where to disperse is not only personal but also public, i.

Multi-species prey dynamics influence local survival in resident and wintering generalist predators.

Stochasticity in food availability influences vital rates such as survival and fertility. Life-history theory predicts that in long-lived organisms, survival should be buffered against environmental stochasticity showing little temporal variability. Furthermore, to optimize survival prospects, many animal species perform migrations to wintering areas where food availability is larger.

Global political responsibility for the conservation of albatrosses and large petrels.

Migratory marine species cross political borders and enter the high seas, where the lack of an effective global management framework for biodiversity leaves them vulnerable to threats. Here, we combine 10,108 tracks from 5775 individual birds at 87 sites with data on breeding population sizes to estimate the relative year-round importance of national jurisdictions and high seas areas for 39 species of albatrosses and large petrels. Populations from every country made extensive use of the high seas, indicating the stake each country has in the management of biodiversity in international waters.

Flickering body temperature anticipates criticality in hibernation dynamics.

Hibernation has been selected for increasing survival in harsh climatic environments. Seasonal variability in temperature may push the body temperatures of hibernating animals across boundaries of alternative states between euthermic temperature and torpor temperature, typical of either hibernation or summer dormancy. Nowadays, wearable electronics present a promising avenue to assess the occurrence of criticality in physiological systems, such as body temperature fluctuating between attractors of activity and hibernation.

Breeding transients in capture-recapture modeling and their consequences for local population dynamics.

Standard procedures for capture-mark-recapture modelling (CMR) for the study of animal demography include running goodness-of-fit tests on a general starting model. A frequent reason for poor model fit is heterogeneity in local survival among individuals captured for the first time and those already captured or seen on previous occasions. This deviation is technically termed a transience effect.

Meta-analysis of multidecadal biodiversity trends in Europe.

Local biodiversity trends over time are likely to be decoupled from global trends, as local processes may compensate or counteract global change. We analyze 161 long-term biological time series (15-91 years) collected across Europe, using a comprehensive dataset comprising ~6,200 marine, freshwater and terrestrial taxa. We test whether (i) local long-term biodiversity trends are consistent among biogeoregions, realms and taxonomic groups, and (ii) changes in biodiversity correlate with regional climate and local conditions.

Does sexual segregation occur during the nonbreeding period? A comparative analysis in spatial and feeding ecology of three shearwaters.

Sexual segregation (SS) is widespread among animal taxa, with males and females segregated in distribution, behavior, or feeding ecology but so far, most studies on birds have focused on the breeding period. Outside this period, the relevance of segregation and the potential drivers of its persistence remain elusive, especially in the marine environment, where animals can disperse over vast areas and are not easily observed. We evaluated the degree of SS in spatio-temporal distribution and phenology, at-sea behavior, and feeding ecology during the nonbreeding period among three closely related shearwaters: Scopoli's, Cory's, and Cape Verde shearwaters (, and , respectively).

Exposure of yellow-legged gulls to along the Western Mediterranean coasts: Tales from a sentinel.

Efficiently tracking and anticipating the dynamics of infectious agents in wild populations requires the gathering of large numbers of samples, if possible at several locations and points in time, which can be a challenge for some species. Testing for the presence of specific maternal antibodies in egg yolks sampled on the colonies could represent an efficient way to quantify the exposure of breeding females to infectious agents, particularly when using an abundant and widespread species, such as the yellow-legged gull (). We used such an approach to explore spatio-temporal patterns of exposure to , a pathogenic protozoan responsible of toxoplasmosis in humans and other warm-blooded vertebrates.

Assessing the effect of density on population growth when modeling individual encounter data.

The relative role of density-dependent and density-independent variation in vital rates and population size remains largely unsolved. Despite its importance to the theory and application of population ecology, and to conservation biology, quantifying the role and strength of density dependence is particularly challenging. We present a hierarchical formulation of the temporal symmetry approach, also known as the Pradel model, that permits estimation of the strength of density dependence from capture-mark-reencounter data.

Complex demographic heterogeneity from anthropogenic impacts in a coastal marine predator.

Environmental drivers, including anthropogenic impacts, affect vital rates of organisms. Nevertheless, the influence of these drivers may depend on the physical features of the habitat and how they affect life history strategies depending on individual covariates such as age and sex. Here, the long-term monitoring (1994-2014) of marked European Shags in eight colonies in two regions with different ecological features, such as foraging habitat, allowed us to test several biological hypotheses about how survival changes by age and sex in each region by means of multi-event capture-recapture modeling.

Differential adult survival at close seabird colonies: The importance of spatial foraging segregation and bycatch risk during the breeding season.

Marine megafauna, including seabirds, are critically affected by fisheries bycatch. However, bycatch risk may differ on temporal and spatial scales due to the uneven distribution and effort of fleets operating different fishing gear, and to focal species distribution and foraging behavior. Scopoli's shearwater Calonectris diomedea is a long-lived seabird that experiences high bycatch rates in longline fisheries and strong population-level impacts due to this type of anthropogenic mortality.