Cost-efficiency of various camera trapping studies.

<p>Cost-efficiency of various camera trapping studies.</p

Abundance trends of wolf packs using monitored viaducts.

<p>Event—a photograph/movie of a wolf/wolves. Maximal number of wolves recorded in a single event for each year, i.e. minimal pack size, is marked above bars.</p

Testing the correlation between abundance trends of wolves and (i) their prey and (ii) human-caused wolf mortality in the southern part of wolf range (packs OSM and RO+KON).

<p>Testing the correlation between abundance trends of wolves and (i) their prey and (ii) human-caused wolf mortality in the southern part of wolf range (packs OSM and RO+KON).</p

Negative correlation between wolf abundance trends and legal wolf cull in southern Croatia.

<p>Wolf population trend is presented as a total number of events (photographs of wolf/wolves) recorded on Dalmatian green bridges. The data for the legal cull in the corresponding Split-Dalmatia County during the monitoring period was extracted from the literature.</p

Benefits and limitations of camera traps on crossing structures used as a wildlife monitoring tool.

<p>Benefits and limitations of camera traps on crossing structures used as a wildlife monitoring tool.</p

Abundance trends of natural prey (roe deer, red deer and wild boar combined) on the monitored green bridges.

<p>Event—a photograph/movie of natural prey.</p

Quantum aspects of grand unified theories

In this thesis we focus on Grand Unified Theories based on the SO(10) gauge group and, in particular, on the viability of the minimal nonsupersymmetric SO(10) models. Technically, this amounts to a detailed assessment of their vac- uum stability and related (non-)tachyonicity of their scalar spectrum. It turns out that the one-loop scalar mass corrections are important for elimination of the tachyonic behaviour of certain pseudo-Goldstone bosons. In this work these issues are briefly reviewed and two distinct methods for the calculation of the critical radiative corrections are discussed. More specifically, besides the revision of the effective potential approach to the 45 ⊕ 16 Higgs model also the standard perturbative theory method is employed for this purpose. The latter approach is particularly suitable for the more realistic 45 ⊕ 126 Higgs model since it appears to be practically impossible to construct the corresponding effective potential in that case. Consequently, diagrammatic methods are used to calculate the SO(10)- invariant leading scalar quantum correction to the problematic pseudo-Goldstone masses in the 45 ⊕ 126 model.

Number of IR events (0, 1, >1) per photographed large animal/human.

<p>Number of IR events (0, 1, >1) per photographed large animal/human.</p

Comparison of different monitoring methods.

<p>Comparison of different monitoring methods.</p

Comparative Analysis of Three Different Methods for Monitoring the Use of Green Bridges by Wildlife

<div><p>Green bridges are used to decrease highly negative impact of roads/highways on wildlife populations and their effectiveness is evaluated by various monitoring methods. Based on the 3-year monitoring of four Croatian green bridges, we compared the effectiveness of three indirect monitoring methods: track-pads, camera traps and active infrared (IR) trail monitoring system. The ability of the methods to detect different species and to give good estimation of number of animal crossings was analyzed. The accuracy of species detection by track-pad method was influenced by granulometric composition of track-pad material, with the best results obtained with higher percentage of silt and clay. We compared the species composition determined by track-pad and camera trap methods and found that monitoring by tracks underestimated the ratio of small canids, while camera traps underestimated the ratio of roe deer. Regarding total number of recorder events, active IR detectors recorded from 11 to 19 times more events then camera traps and app. 80% of them were not caused by animal crossings. Camera trap method underestimated the real number of total events. Therefore, an algorithm for filtration of the IR dataset was developed for approximation of the real number of crossings. Presented results are valuable for future monitoring of wildlife crossings in Croatia and elsewhere, since advantages and disadvantages of used monitoring methods are shown. In conclusion, different methods should be chosen/combined depending on the aims of the particular monitoring study.</p></div