Eric Wagner’s newest essay – “Snapshot: The Penguins at Twilight”
Be sure to check out Eric Wagner’s newest essay for The Last Word On Nothing, called “Snapshot: The Penguins at Twilight” ! Featured image photo credit: Eric Wagner
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Removing institutional barriers to long-term fieldwork is critical for advancing ecology
Abstract: Long-term fieldwork is essential for ecology and conservation, but is hindered by institutional barriers, such as the publish-or-perish culture of academia, and funding limitations. Here, we discuss these challenges and propose strategies to overcome them, such as broadening evaluation metrics and supporting inclusivity, to advance scientific insight and societal equity. Authors: Kasim Rafiq, Neil R. Jordan, Weldon McNutt, John
Maximizing biological insights from instruments attached to animals
From the highlights section: “Biologging sensors enable broad-scale, high-resolution measurements of the physiological, behavioral, demographic, social, and environmental interactions underpinning patterns in nature. We present a framework, case studies, and outstanding questions for integrating biologging data with theoretical concepts to facilitate process explanation and prediction.” Authors: Roxanne S. Beltran, A. Marm Kilpatrick, Simona Picardi, Briana Abrahms, Gabriel M. Barrile, William
Foot darkening with age in Spheniscus penguins: applications and functions
From the abstract: “We found that Spheniscus penguins have pale feet at hatching and the feet become darker with age throughout the lives of individuals. We showed that we can accurately predict the age structure of a colony of Magellanic penguins Spheniscus magellanicus, but not the ages of individual penguins, based on a sample of foot colors.” Authors: Ginger Rebstock,
Field Updates: Botswana, summer 2024
Written by Dr. Kasim Rafiq In June 2024, postdoctoral researcher Dr. Kasim Rafiq and PhD candidate Leigh West from Dr. Briana Abrahms‘ lab returned to Wild Dog Camp in the Okavango Delta and were joined by Briana’s new PhD student Marie-Pier Poulin. The team successfully deployed six new tracking collars on African wild dogs, including in two brand new packs,
Grad student Leigh West published first article as lead author
Congratulations to Leigh West, Dr. Abrahms’s graduate student, who just recently published her first article as lead author. Her research article, “Droughts reshape apex predator space use and intraguild overlap,” was published in the Journal of Animal Ecology on October 4th, and also serves as the second chapter of her dissertation. This is an exciting milestone for Leigh as she
Field Updates: Galápagos Islands, summer 2024
In July 2024, Dr. Dee Boersma and Dr. Caroline Cappello traveled to the Galápagos Islands for a penguin expedition unlike any they’d experienced before. Since 2010, CES has collaborated with Galápagos National Park and conservationist Godfrey Merlen to visit penguin breeding areas and conduct research. After Godfrey’s passing in 2023, CES—with heavy hearts but optimism for the future—sought a new
Droughts reshape apex predator space use and intraguild overlap
From the Abstract:Droughts are increasing in frequency and severity globally due to climate change, leading to changes in resource availability that may have cascading effects on animal ecology. Although several studies have demonstrated the ecological impacts of drought, the behavioural responses of individuals that scale up to these broader-scale effects are not well known, particularly among animals in top trophic
Males miss and females forgo
Summary adapted from social media post by Anna Testorf: One of our recent studies illustrates how noise from large ships and other vessels decreases overall foraging success of fish-eating killer whales through a process known as auditory masking. Knowing how vessel noise affects killer whales can inform actions to mitigate noise and promote health and survival of these vulnerable populations
Anthropogenic impacts at the interface of animal spatial and social behaviour
From the abstract: “Here, we review studies of animal behaviour at the spatial–social interface to understand and predict how human disturbance affects animal movement, distribution and intraspecific interactions, with consequences for the conservation of populations and ecosystems. By understanding the spatial–social mechanisms linking human disturbance to conservation outcomes, we can better design management interventions to mitigate undesired consequences of disturbance.”
Scale at the interface of spatial and social ecology
From the abstract: “We propose three key innovations that incrementally build upon each other […] These conceptual innovations cast our understanding of the relationships between social and spatial dimensions of animal ecology in a new light, allowing a more holistic understanding and clearer hypothesis development for animal behaviour.” Authors: Simona Picardi, Briana L. Abrahms and Jerod A. MerkleJournal: Philosophical Transactions
Research updates: fall 2024
We’ve been publishing a lot these days! Here’s a digest of what we’ve published from September 2024 – November 2024: Keep up with all of our research following us on Instagram, Facebook, or X/Twitter!
World African Wild Dog Day
Happy World African Wild Dog Day! While most people know the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels for our work on penguins, we also research African Wild Dogs. In fact, Dr. Kasim Rafiq and graduate students Leigh West and Marie-Pier Poulin are just returning from Botswana right now! As usual, they worked alongside our collaborators from Botswana Predator Conservation over the summer.
Global expansion of human-wildlife overlap in the 21st century
“We show that the potential spatial overlap of global human populations and 22,374 terrestrial vertebrate species will increase across ~56.6% and decrease across only ~11.8% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface by 2070 […] The strong spatial heterogeneity of future human-wildlife overlap found in our study makes it clear that local context is imperative to consider, and more targeted area-based land-use
Increasing environmental variability inhibits evolutionary rescue in a long-lived vertebrate
“Using a multidecadal dataset on Magellanic penguins, we show that despite strong selection on body size, some environmental conditions favored larger bodies, and others favored smaller bodies, thus preventing consistent evolution in one direction or the other […] Such findings highlight that fluctuating selection can be driven by environmental variability, and these processes could eliminate the possibility of evolutionary rescue