Seabird species vary in behavioural response to drone census

This is the final version of the article. Available from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) provide an opportunity to rapidly census wildlife in remote areas while removing some of the hazards. However, wildlife may respond negatively to the UAVs, thereby skewing counts. We surveyed four species of Arctic cliff-nesting seabirds (glaucous gull Larus hyperboreus, Iceland gull Larus glaucoides, common murre Uria aalge and thick-billed murre Uria lomvia) using a UAV and compared censusing techniques to ground photography. An average of 8.5% of murres flew off in response to the UAV, but >99% of those birds were non-breeders. We were unable to detect any impact of the UAV on breeding success of murres, except at a site where aerial predators were abundant and several birds lost their eggs to predators following UAV flights. Furthermore, we found little evidence for habituation by murres to the UAV. Most gulls flew off in response to the UAV, but returned to the nest within five minutes. Counts of gull nests and adults were similar between UAV and ground photography, however the UAV detected up to 52.4% more chicks because chicks were camouflaged and invisible to ground observers. UAVs provide a less hazardous and potentially more accurate method for surveying wildlife. We provide some simple recommendations for their use.We thank T. Leonard and the Seabird Ecological Reserves Advisory Committee for permission to work at Witless Bay, the Canadian Wildlife Service for permits to work at Newfoundland and Nunavut and the Government of Nunavut for permits to work in Nunavut. Newfoundland and Labrador Murre Fund, Bird Studies Canada and the Molson Foundation directly funded the work. An NSERC Discovery Grant, the Canada Research Chair in Arctic Ecology and Polar Continental Shelf Project also helped fund the project. We thank T. Burke, G. Sorenson, T. Lazarus and M. Guigueno for their help and J. Nakoolak for keeping us safe from bear

Conservation et anthropisation en Afrique centrale

Conservation and Anthropization in Central Africa. As we enter a millennium often referred to as Anthropocene, with reference to the influence never before seen in the history of a species namely the human being, world biodiversity declines at an accelerated pace. A pace of change so severe that researchers have difficulties describing the current phenomena. Wildlife in particular is seriously threatened, to such an extent that we speak about the biggest massive extinction of animal species ever to occur on Earth. Many regions of the globe, in particular Central Africa, thus see theirbiodiversity disappearing before it is even documented. With regard to its concerns about the sustainability of the environment, the journal Tropicultura now opens its columns to authors working in conservation and the relations between man and nature, and more particularly its wildlife. Stemming from a call for contributions directed at young active researchers in Central.Africa, this special issue is as diverse as the themes developed in conservation of this region. >From plains Gorillas of Cameroon to bushmeat consumption in Gabon and the participative management in Congo, intrepid scientists offer us an anthology of fascinating stories. Scattered at the edge of dense forests, in remote and sometimes dangerous areas, these researchers raise numerous questions about the future of wildlife in this part of the globe. A frightening future, since the threats seem more numerous than the solutions. Nevertheless, these articles also deliver a positive vision of the situation. They demonstrate the will of enthusiast conservationists to fight relentlessly for the preservation of our ecosystems. They also demonstrate the increasing implication of researchers from those regions to protect their incredible heritage and reconcile man and nature. If figures are disturbing and human population grows and expands perpetually, particularly in these countries, the interest for environmental protection was never so important in our society as it is at the moment. Through their research, these young scientists offer potential solutions by demonstrating to what extent man is connected to this biodiversity and dependant upon it for his survival.By increasing the awareness of this dynamic, we dearly hope to mitigate the harm and facilitate a more accomodating future for the incredible natural resources of our planet. Let us appreciate that this publication would not have come about without the help of many renowned scientists, who agreed to make the selection and the review of the articles. We wish to specifically thank the following individuals :E. Arnhem (WCS), S. Carriere (IRD), N. Gami (ECOFAC V/RAPAC), B. Haurez (ULg/Gembloux), M.-C. Huynen (ULg), C. Julve (Nature+), J. Punga Kumanenge (Université de Kinshasa), C. Vermeulen (ULg/Gembloux)and J. Willie (Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp)

Best practices to train deep models on imbalanced datasets—a case study on animal detection in aerial imagery

We introduce recommendations to train a Convolutional Neural Network for grid-based detection on a dataset that has a substantial class imbalance. These include curriculum learning, hard negative mining, a special border class, and more. We evaluate the recommendations on the problem of animal detection in aerial images, where we obtain an increase in precision from 9% to 40% at high recalls, compared to state-of-the-art. Data related to this paper are available at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.609023.</p

Use of drones for research and conservation of birds of prey

In the last two decades, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) have experienced an exponential development. Originally conceived for military use, technological advances and a dramatic reduction of prices are leading to widespread use of UASs in environmental disciplines including remote sensing, ecology, wildlife management or environmental monitoring (Chabot and Bird 2015; Linchant et al. 2015; Christie et al. 2016).Fil: Canal Piña, David. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; EspañaFil: Negro Balmaseda, Juan José. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas; Españ

Proteome-wide Lysine Glutarylation Profiling of the <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> H37Rv

Lysine glutarylation, a new protein posttranslational modification (PTM), was recently identified and characterized in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. To explore the distribution of lysine glutarylation in <i>Mycobacterium tuberculsosis</i>, by using a comprehensive method combining the immune affinity peptide enrichment by the glutaryl-lysine antibody with LC–MS, we finally identified 41 glutarylation sites in 24 glutarylated proteins from <i>M. tuberculosis</i>. These glutarylated proteins are involved in various cellular functions such as translation and metabolism and exhibit diverse subcellular localizations. Three common glutarylated proteins including 50S ribosomal protein L7/L12, elongation factor Tu, and dihydrolipoamide succinyltransferase are shared between <i>Escherichia coli</i> and <i>M. tuberculosis</i>. Moreover, comparison with other PTMs characterized in <i>M. tuberculosis</i>, 15 glutarylated proteins, are found to be both acetylated and succinylated. Notably, several stress-response-associated proteins including HspX are glutarylated. Our data provide the first analysis of <i>M. tuberculosis</i> lysine glutarylated proteins. Further studies on the role of the glutarylated proteins will unveil the molecular mechanisms of glutarylation underlying <i>M. tuberculosis</i> physiology and pathogenesis