A multi-scale distribution model for non-equilibrium populations suggests resource limitation in an endangered rodent.

Species distributions are known to be limited by biotic and abiotic factors at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Species distribution models, however, frequently assume a population at equilibrium in both time and space. Studies of habitat selection have repeatedly shown the difficulty of estimating resource selection if the scale or extent of analysis is incorrect. Here, we present a multi-step approach to estimate the realized and potential distribution of the endangered giant kangaroo rat. First, we estimate the potential distribution by modeling suitability at a range-wide scale using static bioclimatic variables. We then examine annual changes in extent at a population-level. We define available habitat based on the total suitable potential distribution at the range-wide scale. Then, within the available habitat, model changes in population extent driven by multiple measures of resource availability. By modeling distributions for a population with robust estimates of population extent through time, and ecologically relevant predictor variables, we improved the predictive ability of SDMs, as well as revealed an unanticipated relationship between population extent and precipitation at multiple scales. At a range-wide scale, the best model indicated the giant kangaroo rat was limited to areas that received little to no precipitation in the summer months. In contrast, the best model for shorter time scales showed a positive relation with resource abundance, driven by precipitation, in the current and previous year. These results suggest that the distribution of the giant kangaroo rat was limited to the wettest parts of the drier areas within the study region. This multi-step approach reinforces the differing relationship species may have with environmental variables at different scales, provides a novel method for defining available habitat in habitat selection studies, and suggests a way to create distribution models at spatial and temporal scales relevant to theoretical and applied ecologists

Hierarchical Multi-Species Modeling of Carnivore Responses to Hunting, Habitat and Prey in a West African Protected Area

Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of global efforts to shield wildlife from anthropogenic impacts, yet their effectiveness at protecting wide-ranging species prone to human conflict – notably mammalian carnivores – is increasingly in question. An understanding of carnivore responses to human-induced and natural changes in and around PAs is critical not only to the conservation of threatened carnivore populations, but also to the effective protection of ecosystems in which they play key functional roles. However, an important challenge to assessing carnivore communities is the often infrequent and imperfect nature of survey detections. We applied a novel hierarchical multi-species occupancy model that accounted for detectability and spatial autocorrelation to data from 224 camera trap stations (sampled between October 2006 and January 2009) in order to test hypotheses about extrinsic influences on carnivore community dynamics in a West African protected area (Mole National Park, Ghana). We developed spatially explicit indices of illegal hunting activity, law enforcement patrol effort, prey biomass, and habitat productivity across the park, and used a Bayesian model selection framework to identify predictors of site occurrence for individual species and the entire carnivore community. Contrary to our expectation, hunting pressure and edge proximity did not have consistent, negative effects on occurrence across the nine carnivore species detected. Occurrence patterns for most species were positively associated with small prey biomass, and several species had either positive or negative associations with riverine forest (but not with other habitat descriptors). Influences of sampling design on carnivore detectability were also identified and addressed within our modeling framework (e.g., road and observer effects), and the multi-species approach facilitated inference on even the rarest carnivore species in the park. Our study provides insight for the conservation of these regionally significant carnivore populations, and our approach is broadly applicable to the robust assessment of communities of rare and elusive species subject to environmental change

The Rise of the Mesopredator

Apex predators have experienced catastrophic declines throughout the world as a result of human persecution and habitat loss. These collapses in top predator populations are commonly associated with dramatic increases in the abundance of smaller predators. Known as “mesopredator release,” this trophic interaction has been recorded across a range of communities and ecosystems. Mesopredator outbreaks often lead to declining prey populations, sometimes destabilizing communities and driving local extinctions.We present an overview of mesopredator release and illustrate how its underlying concepts can be used to improve predator management in an increasingly fragmented world. We also examine shifts in North American carnivore ranges during the past 200 years and show that 60% of mesopredator ranges have expanded, whereas all apex predator ranges have contracted. The need to understand how best to predict and manage mesopredator release is urgent—mesopredator outbreaks are causing high ecological, economic, and social costs around the world

Transformation and endurance of Indigenous hunting: Kadazandusun-Murut bearded pig hunting practices amidst oil palm expansion and urbanization in Sabah, Malaysia

Land-use change and political–economic shifts have shaped hunting patterns globally, even as traditional hunting practices endure across many local socio-cultural contexts. The widespread expansion of oil palm cultivation, and associated urbanization, alters land-use patterns, ecological processes, economic relationships, access to land and social practices. In particular, we focus on the socio-ecological dynamics between Kadazandusun-Murut (KDM) hunters in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, and bearded pigs (Sus barbatus; Malay: ‘babi hutan’), the favoured game animal for non-Muslim communities throughout much of Borneo. We conducted 38 semi-structured interviews spanning over 50 hr with bearded pig hunters, asking them about contemporary hunting practices and motivations, changes in hunting practices, changes in pig behaviour, and patterns of animal protein consumption in village and urban contexts. Amidst widespread land-use change, primarily driven by oil palm expansion, respondents reported substantially different characteristics of hunting in oil palm plantations as compared to hunting in forests. Additionally, 17 of 38 hunters—including 71% (10/14) of hunters who started hunting before 1985, compared to 26% (6/23) of hunters who started hunting in 1985 or later—mentioned that bearded pigs are behaving in a more skittish or fearful way as compared to the past. Our respondents also reported reductions in hunting frequency and wild meat consumption in urban contexts as compared to rural contexts. However, despite these substantial changes in hunting and dietary practices, numerous KDM hunting motivations, hunting techniques and socio-cultural traditions have endured over the last several decades. For some, bearded pig meat remains deeply tied to food provision, gifting and sharing customs, and cultural components of celebrations and feasts. Oil palm has cultivated new hunting practices that differ from those in forests, and has potentially contributed to altered bearded pig behaviour due to increased hunting accessibility. Together, oil palm and urbanization are helping reshape the KDM-bearded pig socio-ecological system. In light of these reshaped connections, we recommend location-specific management approaches that ensure fair access to the dietary and social benefits of bearded pig hunting while preserving the critical conservation needs of bearded pig populations and habitat. These twin goals are particularly urgent given the confirmed outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF), and mass deaths of domestic pigs and wild bearded pigs, in Sabah and Kalimantan in 2021

Reflections from the Workshop on AI-Assisted Decision Making for Conservation

In this white paper, we synthesize key points made during presentations and discussions from the AI-Assisted Decision Making for Conservation workshop, hosted by the Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard University on October 20-21, 2022. We identify key open research questions in resource allocation, planning, and interventions for biodiversity conservation, highlighting conservation challenges that not only require AI solutions, but also require novel methodological advances. In addition to providing a summary of the workshop talks and discussions, we hope this document serves as a call-to-action to orient the expansion of algorithmic decision-making approaches to prioritize real-world conservation challenges, through collaborative efforts of ecologists, conservation decision-makers, and AI researchers.Comment: Co-authored by participants from the October 2022 workshop: https://crcs.seas.harvard.edu/conservation-worksho

Merging paleobiology with conservation biology to guide the future of terrestrial ecosystems

Conservation of species and ecosystems is increasingly difficult because anthropogenic impacts are pervasive and accelerating. Under this rapid global change, maximizing conservation success requires a paradigm shift from maintaining ecosystems in idealized past states toward facilitating their adaptive and functional capacities, even as species ebb and flow individually. Developing effective strategies under this new paradigm will require deeper understanding of the long-term dynamics that govern ecosystem persistence and reconciliation of conflicts among approaches to conserving historical versus novel ecosystems. Integrating emerging information from conservation biology, paleobiology, and the Earth sciences is an important step forward on the path to success. Maintaining nature in all its aspects will also entail immediately addressing the overarching threats of growing human population, overconsumption, pollution, and climate change.Peer reviewe

Socio-ecological factors shape the distribution of a cultural keystone species in Malaysian Borneo

Biophysical and socio-cultural factors have jointly shaped the distribution of global biodiversity, yet relatively few studies have quantitatively assessed the influence of social and ecological landscapes on wildlife distributions. We sought to determine whether social and ecological covariates shape the distribution of a cultural keystone species, the bearded pig (Sus barbatus). Drawing on a dataset of 295 total camera trap locations and 25,755 trap days across 18 field sites and three years in Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, we fitted occupancy models that incorporated socio-cultural covariates and ecological covariates hypothesized to influence bearded pig occupancy. We found that all competitive occupancy models included both socio-cultural and ecological covariates. Moreover, we found quantitative evidence supporting Indigenous pig hunting rights: predicted pig occupancy was positively associated with predicted high levels of Indigenous pig-hunting groups in low-accessibility areas, and predicted pig occupancy was positively associated with predicted medium and low levels of Indigenous pig-hunting groups in high-accessibility areas. These results suggest that bearded pig populations in Malaysian Borneo should be managed with context-specific strategies, promoting Indigenous pig hunting rights. We also provide important baseline information on bearded pig occupancy levels prior to the 2020–2021 outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF), which caused social and ecological concerns after mass dieoffs of bearded pigs in Borneo. The abstract provided in Malay is in the Supplementary file

Socio-ecological factors shape the distribution of a cultural keystone species in Malaysian Borneo

Biophysical and socio-cultural factors have jointly shaped the distribution of global biodiversity, yet relatively few studies have quantitatively assessed the influence of social and ecological landscapes on wildlife distributions. We sought to determine whether social and ecological covariates shape the distribution of a cultural keystone species, the bearded pig (Sus barbatus). Drawing on a dataset of 295 total camera trap locations and 25,755 trap days across 18 field sites and three years in Sabah and Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, we fitted occupancy models that incorporated socio-cultural covariates and ecological covariates hypothesized to influence bearded pig occupancy. We found that all competitive occupancy models included both socio-cultural and ecological covariates. Moreover, we found quantitative evidence supporting Indigenous pig hunting rights: predicted pig occupancy was positively associated with predicted high levels of Indigenous pig-hunting groups in low-accessibility areas, and predicted pig occupancy was positively associated with predicted medium and low levels of Indigenous pig-hunting groups in high-accessibility areas. These results suggest that bearded pig populations in Malaysian Borneo should be managed with context-specific strategies, promoting Indigenous pig hunting rights. We also provide important baseline information on bearded pig occupancy levels prior to the 2020–2021 outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF), which caused social and ecological concerns after mass dieoffs of bearded pigs in Borneo. The abstract provided in Malay is in the Supplementary file

The ecology and evolution of behavioral variation in the African antelope and the relevance of behavior for conservation

Resource distribution, habitat structure, and predation pressure are thought to be the primary forces driving the evolution of variation in social organization within and between species. I tested several predicted links between ecology and social organization with interand intraspecific comparative examinations of African antelope (family Bovidae). First, for 75 antelope species I tested the hypotheses that dietary selectivity is correlated negatively with (1) body mass and (2) group size, (3) that gregarious species either flee or counter-attack when approached by predators, but that solitary and pair-living species seek cover to hide, and (4) that body mass and group size are correlated positively. My results supported the first three of these hypotheses, but the hypothesis that body mass and group size are related positively was only weakly supported in a phylogenetically corrected analysis. Second, I studied 161 individually identified oribi, Ourebia ourebi, at five sites along an ecological gradient in Ghana, West Africa, to examine correlates of variability in social behavior. Results of uni- and multi-variate analyses showed that forage abundance and quality accounted best for variation in female oribi dispersion among and within study populations. Male territorial behavior differed among sites and was related to female home range size. Using 30 years of historical wildlife count data from six reserves in Ghana, I next asked if behavior, and other traits of 41 species of large African mammals, and geographic characteristics of reserves predispose species to local extinction. I showed that species in isolated populations and monogamous species were particularly prone to extinction. Abundance, fecundity, trophic group, and human hunting preference were unrelated to persistence. Looking at external influences on species persistence I found that ninety-eight percent of the observed variation in extinction rates among Ghana's reserves was accounted for statistically by human population and reserve size. Results also showed that extinction rates were highest for all large mammals near reserve borders. Taken together, these four studies identify the role of ecology in shaping the behavioral variation observed among and within species and they highlight behavioral and other traits that affect the management and conservation of African mammals.Forestry, Faculty ofGraduat