Short-term transformation of matrix into hospitable habitat facilitates gene flow and mitigates fragmentation

Can NDVI identify drought refugia for mammals and birds in mesic landscapes?

Refugia within landscapes are increasingly important as climate change intensifies, yet identifying refugia, and how they respond to climatic perturbations remains understudied. We use Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) developed during extreme drought to identify drought refugia. We then utilise camera trapping to understand the ecological role and importance of these refugia under fluctuating rainfall conditions. Ground foraging mammals and birds were surveyed annually from 2016 to 2019 whereby 171 remote-sensing cameras were deployed in the southern section of the Grampians, Australia. NDVI values were calculated during Australia's millennium drought, allowing the assessment of how NDVI calculated during extreme drought predicts drought refugia and the response of biodiversity to NDVI under rainfall fluctuations. Site occupancy of bird and mammal assemblages were dependent on NDVI, with areas of high NDVI during drought exhibiting characteristics consistent with refugia. Rainfall pulses increased site occupancy at all sites with colonisation probability initially associated with higher NDVI sites. Extinction probabilities were greatest at low NDVI sites when rainfall declined. Within mesic systems, remotely sensed NDVI can identify areas of the landscape that act as drought refugia enabling landscape management to prioritise species conservation within these areas. The protection and persistence of refugia is crucial in ensuring landscapes and their species communities therein are resilient to a range of climate change scenarios.

Mind the gap: genetic distance increases with habitat gap size in Florida scrub jays

Habitat gap size has been negatively linked to movement probability in several species occupying fragmented landscapes. How these effects on movement behaviour in turn affect the genetic structure of fragmented populations at local scales is less well known. We tested, and confirmed, the hypothesis that genetic differentiation among adjacent populations of Florida scrub jays--an endangered bird species with poor dispersal abilities and a high degree of habitat specialization--increases with the width of habitat gaps separating them. This relationship was not an artefact of simple isolation-by-distance, as genetic distance was not correlated with the Euclidean distance between geographical centroids of the adjacent populations. Our results suggest that gap size affects movement behaviour even at remarkably local spatial scales, producing direct consequences on the genetic structure of fragmented populations. This finding shows that conserving genetic continuity for specialist species within fragmented habitat requires maintenance or restoration of preserve networks in which habitat gaps do not exceed a species-specific threshold distance.

The BIOTA Biodiversity Observatories in Africa--a standardized framework for large-scale environmental monitoring

The international, interdisciplinary biodiversity research project BIOTA AFRICA initiated a standardized biodiversity monitoring network along climatic gradients across the African continent. Due to an identified lack of adequate monitoring designs, BIOTA AFRICA developed and implemented the standardized BIOTA Biodiversity Observatories, that meet the following criteria (a) enable long-term monitoring of biodiversity, potential driving factors, and relevant indicators with adequate spatial and temporal resolution, (b) facilitate comparability of data generated within different ecosystems, (c) allow integration of many disciplines, (d) allow spatial up-scaling, and (e) be applicable within a network approach. A BIOTA Observatory encompasses an area of 1 km(2) and is subdivided into 100 1-ha plots. For meeting the needs of sampling of different organism groups, the hectare plot is again subdivided into standardized subplots, whose sizes follow a geometric series. To allow for different sampling intensities but at the same time to characterize the whole square kilometer, the number of hectare plots to be sampled depends on the requirements of the respective discipline. A hierarchical ranking of the hectare plots ensures that all disciplines monitor as many hectare plots jointly as possible. The BIOTA Observatory design assures repeated, multidisciplinary standardized inventories of biodiversity and its environmental drivers, including options for spatial up- and downscaling and different sampling intensities. BIOTA Observatories have been installed along climatic and landscape gradients in Morocco, West Africa, and southern Africa. In regions with varying land use, several BIOTA Observatories are situated close to each other to analyze management effects.

Human-mediated dispersal of seeds over long distances

Human activities have fundamental impacts on the distribution of species through altered land use, but also directly by dispersal of propagules. Rare long-distance dispersal events have a disproportionate importance for the spread of species including invasions. While it is widely accepted that humans may act as vectors of long-distance dispersal, there are few studies that quantify this process. We studied in detail a mechanism of human-mediated dispersal (HMD). For two plant species we measured, over a wide range of distances, how many seeds are carried by humans on shoes. While over half of the seeds fell off within 5m, seeds were regularly still attached to shoes after 5 km. Semi-mechanistic models were fitted, and these suggested that long-distance dispersal on shoes is facilitated by decreasing seed detachment probability with distance. Mechanistic modelling showed that the primary vector, wind, was less important as an agent of long-distance dispersal, dispersing seeds less than 250 m. Full dispersal kernels were derived by combining the models for primary dispersal by wind and secondary dispersal by humans. These suggest that walking humans can disperse seeds to very long distances, up to at least 10 km, and provide some of the first quantified dispersal kernels for HMD.

Spatial genetic structure of a small rodent in a heterogeneous landscape

Gene flow in natural populations may be strongly influenced by landscape features. The integration of landscape characteristics in population genetic studies may thus improve our understanding of population functioning. In this study, we investigated the population genetic structure and gene flow pattern for the common vole, Microtus arvalis, in a heterogeneous landscape characterised by strong spatial and temporal variation. The studied area is an intensive agricultural zone of approximately 500 km(2) crossed by a motorway. We used individual-based Bayesian methods to define the number of population units and their spatial borders without prior delimitation of such units. Unexpectedly, we determined a single genetic unit that covered the entire area studied. In particular, the motorway considered as a likely barrier to dispersal was not associated with any spatial genetic discontinuity. Using computer simulations, we demonstrated that recent anthropogenic barriers to effective dispersal are difficult to detect through analysis of genetic variation for species with large effective population sizes. We observed a slight, but significant, pattern of isolation by distance over the whole study site. Spatial autocorrelation analyses detected genetic structuring on a local scale, most probably due to the social organisation of the study species. Overall, our analysis suggests intense small-scale dispersal associated with a large effective population size. High dispersal rates may be imposed by the strong spatio-temporal heterogeneity of habitat quality, which characterises intensive agroecosystems.

Indexing small mammalian carnivores in the southern Kalahari, South Africa

Monitoring animal populations in changing environments is crucial to wildlife conservation and management, but restrictions in resources are a recurring problem for wildlife managers and researchers throughout Africa. Land-use-induced shrub encroachment in Kalahari savannah rangelands has led to fragmentation of the landscape. Mammalian carnivores are particularly vulnerable to local extinction in fragmented landscapes, but their low numbers and their often nocturnal and secretive habits make them difficult to monitor. In this study, we tested the applicability of a passive tracking method and compared two measurement methods and index calculations for monitoring small carnivores across a grazing gradient in the southern Kalahari. During the four years of monitoring in a five-year period, we used the knowledge of indigenous Khoisan Bushmen for the identification of carnivore tracks on 640 sand transects (5 m × 250 m). Our results showed that this simple and inexpensive observation method enabled detailed monitoring of 10 small carnivore species across the grazing gradient. A binary index calculated an index based on presence/absence of a species’ tracks on each transect, whereas the track intrusion index used the number of track intrusions to each transect for each species in its calculations. For less common species, the two indices were similar in trend and magnitude, because the number of intrusions to each transect was typically 1 or 0. Usually, the two indices showed relatively strong correlations. However, species with patchy distributions of higher numbers presented difficulties for the binary index to monitor trends, but not for the track intrusion index.

Bayesian inference of recent migration rates using multilocus genotypes

A new Bayesian method that uses individual multilocus genotypes to estimate rates of recent immigration (over the last several generations) among populations is presented. The method also estimates the posterior probability distributions of individual immigrant ancestries, population allele frequencies, population inbreeding coefficients, and other parameters of potential interest. The method is implemented in a computer program that relies on Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques to carry out the estimation of posterior probabilities. The program can be used with allozyme, microsatellite, RFLP, SNP, and other kinds of genotype data. We relax several assumptions of early methods for detecting recent immigrants, using genotype data; most significantly, we allow genotype frequencies to deviate from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium proportions within populations. The program is demonstrated by applying it to two recently published microsatellite data sets for populations of the plant species Centaurea corymbosa and the gray wolf species Canis lupus. A computer simulation study suggests that the program can provide highly accurate estimates of migration rates and individual migrant ancestries, given sufficient genetic differentiation among populations and sufficient numbers of marker loci.