Factors influencing nest survival of white-tipped doves in the lower Rio Grande Valley, Texas

The white-tipped dove (Leptotila verreauxi) is a sedentary, secretive columbid that ranges from Argentina to the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) of south Texas. Since its designation as a game species in 1984, little research has been dedicated to the species’ reproductive ecology. My objectives were to (1) identify predators of white-tipped dove eggs and nestling, (2) determine how the predator community differs among land cover types, (3) examine the impact of vegetation and landscape variation in both citrus and woodland land cover types on nest survival, (4) examine the impact of temporal variation on nest survival, (5) provide information on general nest ecology that is currently lacking, (6) investigate movements of doves and examine feasibility of tracking and recapture using a GPS/VHF transmitters pilot study. During the summers of 2015 and 2016, I conducted nest searches in citrus and woodland sites in Hidalgo County, Texas. I placed real-time, infrared emitting camera systems on a subset of nests to monitor predation. I also trapped, banded, and placed backpack transmitters on doves in Estero Llano Grande State Park (ELGSP) In the 2 years, I located 63 dove nests, 34 in citrus and 29 in woodland. I placed camera systems on 33 nests and identified 9 species of nest predator. Green jays (Cyanocorax incas) were our most common nest predator, accounting for 10 of 28 predation events. Other predators were crested caracara (Caracara cheriway), Harris’s hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus), great-tailed grackle (Quisicalus mexicanus), tawny crazy ant ( Nylanderia fulva), rat (Rattus spp.), opossum ( Didelphis virginiana), house cat (Felis catus), and Texas indigo snake (Drymarchon melanurus erebennus). Based on AIC candidate model selection, I identified nest stage as the best predictor of daily nest survival rate across both land cover types. By separating land covers for a second step to model selection, I identified different environmental variables as predictors of daily survival rate in each land cover type. In the woodland site, my null model was most important, indicating that no measured variables were important for predicting nest survival. In citrus, canopy cover was the top model. In citrus, a diverse predator community due to heavy human disturbance may have increased the importance of canopy cover and other concealment variables for nest survival. The different predator communities they encounter in the two land cover types that they nest in prioritize much different environmental conditions for nest survival

Open educational resources in higher education: cases from Latin America and Europe

The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was coined in 2002 in discussions at the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware UNESCO. It describes "the provision of educational resources on open license, enabled by information technologies and communication, for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users with non-commercial purposes".In June 2012, Community OER and UNESCO celebrated 10 years in the area of Open World Congress of Educational Resources in Paris, where the Declaration REA Paris 2012 was formally adopted. This calls on governments around the world to establish the adoption of open licenses for sharing knowledge produced with public funds.This trilingual Compendium (written in English, Spanish and Portuguese) aims to fill part of the need for institutionalized information, and aims to discuss in a clear, didactic and realistic way, the experiences of selected higher education institutions who have offered OER. This document provides a unique approach. It combines remarkable initiatives in the institutional development of REA in Higher Education institutions in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Spain with experiences from Higher Education institutions and universities from Brazil, Mexico, and Ecuador, which serve to enlighten the compendium with their innovative ideas and projects.This document has been developed in close collaboration with experts, researchers and decision makers from more than 10 universities in order to provide a global perspective of the OER movement. Some of the more relevant trends identified in this study are exemplified by a broad range of initiatives, including: change in the organizational culture; flexible certification; new business models; middle term institutional strategy; incentives policy; use of non-commercial open source or self-develop platforms; focus on champions; decentralized – federated solutions; open standard, bibliometric criteria; search engine optimization; community building and peer-based collaboration; quality assurance; repurposing and licensing; and open publishing policies.</p