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Rivers support some of Earth's richest biodiversity.sup.1 and provide essential ecosystem services to society.sup.2, but they are often fragmented by barriers to free flow.sup.3. In Europe, attempts to quantify river connectivity have been hampered by the absence of a harmonized barrier database. Here we show that there are at least 1.2 million instream barriers in 36 European countries (with a mean density of 0.74 barriers per kilometre), 68 per cent of which are structures less than two metres in height that are often overlooked. Standardized walkover surveys along 2,715 kilometres of stream length for 147 rivers indicate that existing records underestimate barrier numbers by about 61 per cent. The highest barrier densities occur in the heavily modified rivers of central Europe and the lowest barrier densities occur in the most remote, sparsely populated alpine areas. Across Europe, the main predictors of barrier density are agricultural pressure, density of river-road crossings, extent of surface water and elevation. Relatively unfragmented rivers are still found in the Balkans, the Baltic states and parts of Scandinavia and southern Europe, but these require urgent protection from proposed dam developments. Our findings could inform the implementation of the EU Biodiversity Strategy, which aims to reconnect 25,000 kilometres of Europe's rivers by 2030, but achieving this will require a paradigm shift in river restoration that recognizes the widespread impacts caused by small barriers. Validated barrier inventories and modelling indicate that Europe's rivers are fragmented by more than one million barriers, such as dams, weirs and fords, causing major impacts on biodiversity., Author(s): Barbara Belletti [sup.1] [sup.29] , Carlos Garcia de Leaniz [sup.2] , Joshua Jones [sup.2] , Simone Bizzi [sup.1] [sup.30] , Luca Börger [sup.2] , Gilles Segura [sup.3] [sup.4] , [...]

Sleep serves vital physiological functions, yet how sleep in wild animals is influenced by environmental conditions is poorly understood. Here we use high-resolution biologgers to investigate sleep in wild animals over ecologically relevant time scales and quantify variability between individuals under changing conditions. We developed a robust classification for accelerometer data and measured multiple dimensions of sleep in the wild boar (Sus scrofa) over an annual cycle. In support of the hypothesis that environmental conditions determine thermoregulatory challenges, which regulate sleep, we show that sleep quantity, efficiency and quality are reduced on warmer days, sleep is less fragmented in longer and more humid days, while greater snow cover and rainfall promote sleep quality. Importantly, this longest and most detailed analysis of sleep in wild animals to date reveals large inter- and intra-individual variation. Specifically, short-sleepers sleep up to 46% less than long-sleepers but do not compensate for their short sleep through greater plasticity or quality, suggesting they may pay higher costs of sleep deprivation. Given the major role of sleep in health, our results suggest that global warming and the associated increase in extreme climatic events are likely to negatively impact sleep, and consequently health, in wildlife, particularly in nocturnal animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Historically, climate has been a dominant driver of global vegetation patterns. Recently, ecological understanding has been updated to acknowledge the influence of human land use (the dominant driver of biodiversity change) in shaping global vegetation patterns. We test whether Raunkiær's life form, a plant classification system designed to reflect climatic drivers, affects how plants respond to both land use and climate. Location: Forty‐one countries across six continents. Time period: 1990 to 2013. Major taxa studied: Terrestrial plants. Methods: Combining data from the biodiversity and land use database PREDICTS, and plant trait databases TRY and BIEN, we use generalized linear mixed models with weighted effects coding to test whether Raunkiær's life form affects plant response to land use and climate in over 4800 species at over 300 sites globally. Results: We provide evidence that human land use is comparable to climate in influencing life form occurrence and that land use produces divergent outcomes across life forms. Main conclusions: Combined with climatic suitability, land use acts as a filter contracting the realized niche of trees and expanding the realized niche of disturbance‐tolerant species. Our results highlight the fundamental role of human activity in shaping species' distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dispersal is a central life history trait that affects the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations and communities. The recent use of experimental evolution for the study of dispersal is a promising avenue for demonstrating valuable proofs of concept, bringing insight into alternative dispersal strategies and trade‐offs, and testing the repeatability of evolutionary outcomes.Practical constraints restrict experimental evolution studies of dispersal to a set of typically small, short‐lived organisms reared in artificial laboratory conditions. Here, we argue that despite these restrictions, inferences from these studies can reinforce links between theoretical predictions and empirical observations and advance our understanding of the eco‐evolutionary consequences of dispersal.We illustrate how applying an integrative framework of theory, experimental evolution and natural systems can improve our understanding of dispersal evolution under more complex and realistic biological scenarios, such as the role of biotic interactions and complex dispersal syndromes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncovering the mechanisms behind animal space use patterns is of vital importance for predictive ecology, thus conservation and management of ecosystems. Movement is a core driver of those patterns so understanding how movement mechanisms give rise to space use patterns has become an increasingly active area of research.This study focuses on a particular strand of research in this area, based around step selection analysis (SSA). SSA is a popular way of inferring drivers of movement decisions, but, perhaps less well appreciated, it also parametrises a model of animal movement. Of key interest is that this model can be propagated forwards in time to predict the space use patterns over broader spatial and temporal scales than those that pertain to the proximate movement decisions of animals.Here, we provide a guide for understanding and using the various existing techniques for scaling up step selection models to predict broad‐scale space use patterns. We give practical guidance on when to use which technique, as well as specific examples together with code in R and Python.By pulling together various disparate techniques into one place, and providing code and instructions in simple examples, we hope to highlight the importance of these techniques and make them accessible to a wider range of ecologists, ultimately helping expand the usefulness of SSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These models encompass all areas of ecology from population and community ecology to landscape and ecosystem ecology. Situating ecology as a big-data science: Current advances, challenges, and solutions. Big-data approaches lead to an increased understanding of the ecology of animal movement. Data Ecology, like environmental sciences and other branches of biology, has entered into an era of big data, with enormous possibilities for a better understanding of environmental state (Runting et al., [44]). [Extracted from the article]

Addressing ongoing biodiversity loss requires collaboration between conservation scientists and practitioners. However, such collaboration has proved challenging. Despite the potential importance of tracking animal movements for conservation, reviews of the tracking literature have identified a gap between the academic discipline of movement ecology and its application to biodiversity conservation. Through structured conversations with movement ecologists and conservation practitioners, we aimed to understand whether the identified gap is also perceived in practice, and if so, what factors hamper collaboration and how these factors can be remediated. We found that both groups are motivated and willing to collaborate. However, because their motivations differ, there is potential for misunderstandings and miscommunications. In addition, external factors such as funder requirements, academic metrics, and journal scopes may limit the applicability of scientific results in a conservation setting. Potential solutions we identified included improved communication and better presentation of results, acknowledging each other's motivations and desired outputs, and adjustment of funder priorities. Addressing gaps between science and implementation can enhance collaboration and support conservation action to address the global biodiversity crisis more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animals perceive human activities as risky and generally respond with fear‐induced proactive behaviors to buffer the circadian patterns of lethal and nonlethal disturbances, such as diel migrations (DMs) between risky places during safe nighttime and safer places during risky daytime. However, such responses potentially incur costs through movement or reduced foraging time, so individuals should adjust their tolerance when human activities are harmless, through habituation. Yet this is a challenging cognitive task when lethal and nonlethal risks co‐occur, forming complex landscapes of fear. The consequences of this human‐induced complexity have, however, rarely been assessed. We studied the individual DM dynamics of chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra rupicapra), 89 GPS‐tracked individual‐years, from/to trails in the French Alps in areas with co‐occurring lethal (hunting) and nonlethal (hiking and skiing) disturbances, with different intensities across seasons. We developed a conceptual framework relying on the risk‐disturbance hypothesis and habituation to predict tolerance adjustments of chamois under various disturbance contexts and across contrasted seasonal periods. Based on spatial and statistical analyses combining periodograms and multinomial logistic models, we found that DM in relation to distance to a trail was a consistent response by chamois (~85% of individuals) to avoid human disturbance during daytime, especially during the hiking and hunting periods. Such behavior revealed a low tolerance of most chamois to human activities, although there was considerable interindividual heterogeneity in DM. Interestingly, there was an increased tolerance among the most disturbed diel migrants, potentially through habituation, with chamois performing shorter DMs in areas highly disturbed by hikers. Crucially, chamois that were most human‐habituated during the hiking period remained more tolerant in the subsequent harvesting period, which could increase their risk of being harvested. In contrast, individuals less tolerant to hiking performed longer DMs when hunting risk increased, and compared to hiking, hunting exacerbated the threshold distance to trails triggering DMs. No carryover effect of hunting beyond the hunting period was observed. In conclusion, complex human‐induced landscapes of fear with co‐occurring disturbances by nature‐based tourism and hunting may shape unexpected patterns of tolerance to human activities, whereby animal tolerance could become potentially deleterious for individual survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the role of traits in dispersal is necessary to improve our knowledge of historical biogeography, community assembly processes and predictions of species' future movements. Here we aimed to determine the relationship between three traits (coastal distribution, body size, position on the fast/slow life history continuum) and past dispersal probability on an evolutionary timescale in chameleons (Chamaeleonidae). Using species' distribution data we identified the nine most important biogeographic regions for all included chameleons (181/217 species). We compiled life history trait data and used phylogenetic factor analysis to infer independent body size and fast/slow life history trait axes. Finally, we tested whether traits and trait combinations related to biogeographic dispersal success in the past, using trait‐dependent biogeographic models. All three traits were associated with past biogeographical movements. Lineages having coastal distributions and those with large bodies had higher dispersal probabilities. Interestingly, chameleons with either a very fast or very slow life history were more successful dispersers than species with an intermediate strategy. Together, the three traits – coastal, large‐bodied and extreme life history – form a dispersal syndrome. Traits have played an important role in the biogeographic history of chameleons. While only fast traits have been linked to present‐day invasion success in reptiles, both extremes of the life history spectrum were likely advantageous for dispersal and establishment during past biogeographic movements. Fast‐living species may be less susceptible to stochastic extinction in the first phases of a colonization (due to rapid population growth), and slow‐living species may be less vulnerable to environmental stochasticity (due to low demographic variability). Our results call for broader analyses testing the general influence of life history strategy in biogeographic dispersal success, which would help explain species distribution patterns on Earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to predict animal space use patterns is a fundamental concern in changing environments. Such predictions require a detailed understanding of the movement mechanisms from which spatial distributions emerge. However, these are typically complex, multifaceted, and therefore difficult to uncover.Here, we provide a methodological framework for uncovering the movement mechanisms necessary for building predictive models of animal space use. Our procedure begins by parametrising a movement model of each individual in a population using step selection analysis, from which we build an individual‐based model (IBM) of interacting individuals, derive predicted broad‐scale space use patterns from the IBM and then compare the predicted and empirical patterns. Importantly, discrepancies between these predicted and empirical patterns are used to formulate new hypotheses about the drivers of animal movement decisions and thus iteratively improve the model's predictive power. We demonstrate our method on a population of feral pigs in Mississippi, USA.Our technique incorporates both social interactions between individuals and environmental drivers of movement. At each iteration of model construction, we were able to identify missing features to improve model prediction by analysing the IBM output. These include overuse‐avoidance effects of self‐attractive mechanisms (i.e. attraction to previously visited sites becomes repulsion if there have been multiple visits in quick succession), which were vital for ensuring predicted occurrence distributions do not become vanishingly small.Overall, we have provided a general method for iteratively improving the predictive power of step selection models. This will enable future researchers to maximise the information obtained from step selection analyses and to highlight potentially missing data for uncovering the drivers of movement decisions and emergent space use patterns. Ultimately, this provides a fundamental step towards the general aim of constructing predictive models of animal space use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biomedical literature has consistently highlighted that long-term elevation of glucocorticoids might impair immune functions. However, patterns are less clear in wild animals. Here, we re-explored the stress–immunity relationship considering the potential effects of behavioural profiles. Thirteen captive roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) were monitored over an eight-week period encompassing two capture events. We assessed how changes in baseline faecal cortisol metabolite (FCM) concentrations following a standardized capture protocol and an immune challenge using anti-rabies vaccination affected changes in 13 immune parameters of innate and adaptive immunity, and whether these changes in baseline FCM levels and immune parameters related to behavioural profiles. We found that individuals with increased baseline FCM levels also exhibited increased immunity and were characterized by more reactive behavioural profiles (low activity levels, docility to manipulation and neophilia). Our results suggest that the immunity of large mammals may be influenced by glucocorticoids, but also behavioural profiles, as it is predicted by the pace-of-life syndrome hypothesis. Our results highlight the need to consider covariations between behaviour, immunity and glucocorticoids in order to improve our understanding of the among-individual variability in the stress–immunity relationships observed in wildlife, as they may be underpinned by different life-history strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energetic gains from foraging and costs of movement are expected to be key drivers of animal decision‐making, as their balance is a large determinant of body condition and survival. This fundamental perspective is often missing from habitat selection studies, which mainly describe correlations between space use and environmental features, rather than the mechanisms behind these correlations.To address this gap, we present a novel parameterisation of step selection functions (SSFs), that we term the energy selection function (ESF). In this model, the likelihood of an animal selecting a movement step depends directly on the corresponding energetic gains and costs, and we can therefore assess how moving animals choose habitat based on energetic considerations.The ESF retains the mathematical convenience and practicality of other SSFs and can be quickly fitted using standard software. In this article, we outline a workflow, from data gathering to statistical analysis, and use a case study of polar bears Ursus maritimus to demonstrate application of the model.We explain how defining gains and costs at the scale of the movement step allows us to include information about resource distribution, landscape resistance and movement patterns. We further demonstrate this process with a case study of polar bears and show how the parameters can be interpreted in terms of selection for energetic gains and against energetic costs.The ESF is a flexible framework that combines the energetic consequences of both movement and resource selection, thus incorporating a key mechanism into habitat selection analysis. Further, because it is based on familiar habitat selection models, the ESF is widely applicable to any study system where energetic gains and costs can be derived, and has immense potential for methodological extensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]