Publications by authors named "Lacey Hughey"
Fencing is one of the most widely utilized tools for reducing human-wildlife conflict in agricultural landscapes. However, the increasing global footprint of fencing exceeds millions of kilometers and has unintended consequences for wildlife, including habitat fragmentation, movement restriction, entanglement, and mortality. Here, we present a novel and quantitative approach to prioritize fence removal within historic migratory pathways of white-bearded wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) across Kenya's Greater Masai Mara Ecosystem.
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- New satellite remote sensing and machine learning techniques are enhancing the ability to monitor global biodiversity efficiently and accurately.
- A deep learning pipeline was developed to automatically identify and count migratory ungulates (wildebeest and zebra) in the Serengeti-Mara ecosystem using high-resolution satellite imagery, yielding impressive results.
- The study shows that these advanced technologies can accurately count large populations of mammals across diverse habitats, potentially improving our understanding of animal behavior and ecology.
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- Climatic variability, resource availability, and human impacts shape the home range size of African elephants in Namibia, which helps to understand their behavior and distribution.
- The study found that average home range size was around 2,200 km², with precipitation and vegetation being the main factors influencing this size across different regions.
- Elephants showed a strong preference for protected areas, spending about 85% of their tracked time within these safe zones, indicating a mix of natural and human-influenced space use.
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- * Removal of hippopotamuses led to reduced grassland height and increased grass leafiness, while also impacting soil nutrient levels, though it did not significantly affect plant species diversity.
- * Findings suggest that the loss of hippos, due to their ecological importance, could lead to significant changes in the ecosystem, emphasizing the need to protect this vulnerable species.
Recent increases in human disturbance pose significant threats to migratory species using collective movement strategies. Key threats to migrants may differ depending on behavioural traits (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChallenges and solutions for studying collective animal behaviour in the wild.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
May 2018
Mobile animal groups provide some of the most compelling examples of self-organization in the natural world. While field observations of songbird flocks wheeling in the sky or anchovy schools fleeing from predators have inspired considerable interest in the mechanics of collective motion, the challenge of simultaneously monitoring multiple animals in the field has historically limited our capacity to study collective behaviour of wild animal groups with precision. However, recent technological advancements now present exciting opportunities to overcome many of these limitations.
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