Exotic plants often invade areas of high human activity, such as along trails, roads, and forest edges, and in disturbed riparian areas. These same habitat types are also favored by ticks. This convergence suggests that habitat modifications caused by exotic plant invasions may mediate disease vector habitat quality, indirectly affecting human disease risk at the local spatial scale. We tested ...

Global biodiversity loss is largely driven by human activities such as the conversion of natural to human-dominated landscapes. A popular approach to mitigating land cover change is the designation of protected areas (e.g., nature reserves). Nature reserves are traditionally perceived as strongholds of biodiversity conservation. However, many reserves are affected by land cover changes not only...

Previous theoretical studies suggest that a species' landscape should influence the evolution of its dispersal characteristics, because landscape structure affects the costs and benefits of dispersal. However, these studies have not considered the evolution of boundary crossing, that is, the tendency of animals to cross from habitat to nonhabitat ("matrix"). It is important to understand this d...

Forage is one of the main products of rangeland ecosystems, which is threatened by different anthropogenic disturbances. This study was conducted to assess the impact of urbanization, rural development, agriculture extension, road construction and industry on forage production in an arid and semiarid rangeland using InVEST habitat quality model in spring 2018. In 14 rangeland types, thirty 2×1m...

................................................................................................................. II TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................III LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................... V LIST OF FIGURES ................................

Most wild animals show direct negative responses to human disturbance; however, disturbance may also have positive indirect effects by altering species interactions. In the Caribbean, introduced mongooses (Herpestes javanicus) are an important diurnal predator of the nests of critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata). We asked whether daytime visitor activity could be...

Habitat transformation and disturbance are significant threats to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem function. Disturbance is generally defined as any event that removes biomass (Townsend and Hildrew 1994), and is distinguished from habitat transformation or stress, which reduces available resources or changes the microclimate or structure of the habitat (Andersen 2000; Pickett and White 1...