Strong Response of an Invasive Plant Species (Centaurea solstitialis L.) to Global Environmental Changes.

Global environmental changes are altering interactions among plant species, sometimes favoring invasive species. Here, we examine how a suite of five environmental factors, singly and in combination, can affect the success of a highly invasive plant. We introduced Centaurea solstitialis L. (yellow starthistle), which is considered by many to be California’s most troublesome wildland weed, to grassland plots in the San Francisco Bay Area. These plots experienced ambient or elevated levels of warming, atmospheric CO2, precipitation, and nitrate deposition, and an accidental fire in the previous year created an additional treatment. Centaurea grew more than six times larger in response to elevated CO2, and, outside of the burned area, grew more than three times larger in response to nitrate deposition. In contrast, resident plants in the community responded less strongly (or did not respond) to these treatments. Interactive effects among treatments were rarely significant. Results from a parallel mesocosm experiment, while less dramatic, supported the pattern of results observed in the field. Taken together, our results suggest that ongoing environmental changes may dramatically increase Centaurea’s prevalence in western North America

Lean Multiclass Crowdsourcing

We introduce a method for efficiently crowdsourcing multiclass annotations in challenging, real world image datasets. Our method is designed to minimize the number of human annotations that are necessary to achieve a desired level of confidence on class labels. It is based on combining models of worker behavior with computer vision. Our method is general: it can handle a large number of classes, worker labels that come from a taxonomy rather than a flat list, and can model the dependence of labels when workers can see a history of previous annotations. Our method may be used as a drop-in replacement for the majority vote algorithms used in online crowdsourcing services that aggregate multiple human annotations into a final consolidated label. In experiments conducted on two real-life applications we find that our method can reduce the number of required annotations by as much as a factor of 5.4 and can reduce the residual annotation error by up to 90% when compared with majority voting. Furthermore, the online risk estimates of the models may be used to sort the annotated collection and minimize subsequent expert review effort

Lion hunting behaviour and vegetation structure in an African savanna

Emerging evidence suggests that male lions are not dependent on female’s hunting skills but are in fact successful hunters. But difficulty locating kills and objectively characterizing landscapes has complicated the comparison of male and female lion hunting strategies. We used airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) measurements of vegetation structure in Kruger National Park, combined with global positioning system (GPS) telemetry data on lion, Panthera leo, kills to quantify lines-of-sight where lion kills occurred compared with areas where lions rested, while controlling for time of day. We found significant differences in use of vegetation structure by male and female lions during hunts. While male lions killed in landscapes with much shorter linesof- sight (16.2 m) than those in which they rested, there were no significant differences for female lions. These results were consistent across sizes of prey species. The influence of vegetation structure in shaping predatoreprey interactions is often hypothe-sized, but quantitative evidence has been scarce. Although our sample sizes were limited, our results provide a mechanism, ambush hunting versus social hunting in the open, to explain why hunting success of male lions might equal that of females. This study serves as a case study for more complete studies with larger samples sizes and illustrates how LiDAR and GPS telemetry can be used to provide new insight into lion hunting behaviour.Support from the James S. McDonnell Foundation and a United States National Science Foundation Ecology of Infectious Disease Grant DEB-0090323 to Wayne Getz at the University of California,Berkeley, and a National Research Foundation.. This study was supported by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. The Carnegie Airborne Observatory is made possible by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Avatar Alliance Foundation, W.M. Keck Foundation,the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, Mary Anne Nyburg Baker and G. Leonard Baker, Jr and William R. Hearst, III.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/anbehavhb201

Lean Multiclass Crowdsourcing

We introduce a method for efficiently crowdsourcing multiclass annotations in challenging, real world image datasets. Our method is designed to minimize the number of human annotations that are necessary to achieve a desired level of confidence on class labels. It is based on combining models of worker behavior with computer vision. Our method is general: it can handle a large number of classes, worker labels that come from a taxonomy rather than a flat list, and can model the dependence of labels when workers can see a history of previous annotations. Our method may be used as a drop-in replacement for the majority vote algorithms used in online crowdsourcing services that aggregate multiple human annotations into a final consolidated label. In experiments conducted on two real-life applications we find that our method can reduce the number of required annotations by as much as a factor of 5.4 and can reduce the residual annotation error by up to 90% when compared with majority voting. Furthermore, the online risk estimates of the models may be used to sort the annotated collection and minimize subsequent expert review effort

On Population Growth Near Protected Areas

Background: Protected areas are the first, and often only, line of defense in efforts to conserve biodiversity. They might be detrimental or beneficial to rural communities depending on how they alter economic opportunities and access to natural resources. As such, protected areas may attract or repel human settlement. Disproportionate increases in population growth near protected area boundaries may threaten their ability to conserve biodiversity. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using decadal population datasets, we analyze population growth across 45 countries and 304 protected areas. We find no evidence for population growth near protected areas to be greater than growth of rural areas in the same country. Furthermore, we argue that what growth does occur near protected areas likely results from a general expansion of nearby population centers. Conclusions/Significance: Our results contradict those from a recent study by Wittemyer et al., who claim overwhelming evidence for increased human population growth near protected areas. To understand the disagreement, we re-analyzed the protected areas in Wittemyer et al.’s paper. Their results are simply artifacts of mixing two incompatible datasets. Protected areas may experience unusual population pressures near their edges; indeed, individual case studies provid

Striking the right balance in right whale conservation

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2009. This article is posted here by permission of NRC Research Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 66 (2009): 1399-1403, doi:10.1139/F09-115.Despite many years of study and protection, the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) remains on the brink of extinction. There is a crucial gap in our understanding of their habitat use in the migratory corridor along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Here, we characterize habitat suitability in migrating right whales in relation to depth, distance to shore, and the recently enacted ship speed regulations near major ports. We find that the range of suitable habitat exceeds previous estimates and that, as compared with the enacted 20 nautical mile buffer, the originally proposed 30 nautical mile buffer would protect more habitat for this critically endangered species.This work was supported in part by SERDP/DoD grant W912HQ-04-C-0011 to A.J. Read and P.N. Halpin as well as a James B. Duke Fellowship and a Harvey L. Smith Dissertation Year Fellowship to R.S. Schick

Comparative methods in R hackathon

The R statistical analysis package has emerged as a popular platform for implementation of powerful comparative methods to understand the evolution of organismal traits and diversification. A hackathon was organized to bring together active R developers as well as end-users working on the integration of comparative phylogenetic methods within R to actively address issues of data exchange standards, code interoperability, usability, documentation quality, and the breadth of functionality for comparative methods available within R. Outcomes included a new base package for phylogenetic trees and data, a public wiki with tutorials and overviews of existing packages, code to allow Mesquite and R to interact, improvement of existing packages, and increased interaction within the community

Testing the Accuracy of Aerial Surveys for Large Mammals: An Experiment with African Savanna Elephants (Loxodonta africana)

Accurate counts of animals are critical for prioritizing conservation efforts. Past research, however, suggests that observers on aerial surveys may fail to detect all individuals of the target species present in the survey area. Such errors could bias population estimates low and confound trend estimation. We used two approaches to assess the accuracy of aerial surveys for African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) in northern Botswana. First, we used double-observer sampling, in which two observers make observations on the same herds, to estimate detectability of elephants and determine what variables affect it. Second, we compared total counts, a complete survey of the entire study area, against sample counts, in which only a portion of the study area is sampled. Total counts are often considered a complete census, so comparing total counts against sample counts can help to determine if sample counts are underestimating elephant numbers. We estimated that observers detected only 76% ± SE of 2% of elephant herds and 87 ± 1% of individual elephants present in survey strips. Detectability increased strongly with elephant herd size. Out of the four observers used in total, one observer had a lower detection probability than the other three, and detectability was higher in the rear row of seats than the front. The habitat immediately adjacent to animals also affected detectability, with detection more likely in more open habitats. Total counts were not statistically distinguishable from sample counts. Because, however, the double-observer samples revealed that observers missed 13% of elephants, we conclude that total counts may be undercounting elephants as well. These results suggest that elephant population estimates from both sample and total counts are biased low. Because factors such as observer and habitat affected detectability of elephants, comparisons of elephant populations across time or space may be confounded. We encourage survey teams to incorporate detectability analysis in all aerial surveys for mammals

Climate Change and the Future of California's Endemic Flora

The flora of California, a global biodiversity hotspot, includes 2387 endemic plant taxa. With anticipated climate change, we project that up to 66% will experience >80% reductions in range size within a century. These results are comparable with other studies of fewer species or just samples of a region's endemics. Projected reductions depend on the magnitude of future emissions and on the ability of species to disperse from their current locations. California's varied terrain could cause species to move in very different directions, breaking up present-day floras. However, our projections also identify regions where species undergoing severe range reductions may persist. Protecting these potential future refugia and facilitating species dispersal will be essential to maintain biodiversity in the face of climate change