Population viability analysis (PVA) and metapopulation theory are valuable tools to model the dynamics of spatially structured populations. In this article we used a spatially realistic population dynamic model to simulate the trajectory of a Proclossiana eunomia metapopulation in a network of habitat patches located in the Belgian Ardenne. Sensitivity analysis was used to evaluate the relative...

Epidemic transmission is one of the critical density-dependent mechanisms that affect species viability and dynamics. In a predator-prey system, epidemic transmission can strongly affect the success probability of hunting, especially for social animals. Predators, therefore, will suffer from the positive density-dependence, i.e., Allee effect, due to epidemic transmission in the population. The...

Habitat destruction has driven many once-contiguous animal populations into remnant patches of varying size and isolation. The underlying framework for the conservation of fragmented populations is founded on the principles of island biogeography, wherein the probability of species occurrence in habitat patches varies as a function of patch size and isolation. Despite decades of research, the g...

Climate change and habitat destruction have been linked to global declines in vertebrate biodiversity, including mammals, amphibians, birds, and fishes. However, invertebrates make up the vast majority of global species richness, and the combined effects of climate change and land use on invertebrates remain poorly understood. Here we present 35 years of data on 159 species of butterflies from ...

The importance of positive interactions is increasingly acknowledged in contemporary ecology. Most research has focused on direct positive effects of one species on another. However, there is recent evidence that indirect positive effects in the form of facilitation cascades can also structure species abundances and biodiversity. Here we conceptualize a specific type of facilitation cascade-the...

The British Columbia Ministry of Forests is developing a practical classification system for British Columbia’s wetland and riparian ecosystems. The project has identified a diversity of wetland and riparian ecosystem types, in terms of environmental profiles, regional distribution, and habitat values. Urbanization, agricultural development, hydrological modification, livestock grazing, intensi...

Recent studies have described the architecture of plant–animal mutualistic networks, but little is known on how such networks disassemble as a consequence of global change. This is a relevant question because 1) species interactions seem to be very susceptible to habitat loss, and 2) the loss of a critical fraction of interactions can abruptly change the topology of the entire network with pote...

Models predicting current habitat availability for four prominent tick species in Africa (Boophilus decoloratus, Amblyomma hebraeum, Rhipicephalus appendiculatus and Hyalomma truncatum) were constructed using remotely sensed information about abiotic variables and a point-to-point similarity metric. Year-to-year variations in the forecasted habitat suitability over the period 1983-2000 show a c...

Abstract Large carnivores such as the jaguar Panthera onca are particularly susceptible to population decline and local extinction a result of habitat loss. Here we report on long-term monitoring in mixed land-use area eastern lowlands Bolivia from March 2017 December 2019. We recorded 15 individuals four reproduction events (five offspring three females), suggesting that our study harbours res...