Search

Your search keyword '"Doncaster, C. Patrick"' showing total 334 results
Start Over Author "Doncaster, C. Patrick"
334 results on '"Doncaster, C. Patrick"'

5. What can ecosystems learn? Expanding evolutionary ecology with learning theory

Author

Power, Daniel A., Watson, Richard A., Szathmáry, Eörs, Mills, Rob, Powers, Simon T, Doncaster, C Patrick, and Czapp, Błażej

Subjects
Quantitative Biology - Populations and Evolution
Abstract

Understanding how the structure of community interactions is modified by coevolution is vital for understanding system responses to change at all scales. However, in absence of a group selection process, collective community behaviours cannot be organised or adapted in a Darwinian sense. An open question thus persists: are there alternative organising principles that enable us to understand how coevolution of component species creates complex collective behaviours exhibited at the community level? We address this issue using principles from connectionist learning, a discipline with well-developed theories of emergent behaviours in simple networks. We identify conditions where selection on ecological interactions is equivalent to 'unsupervised learning' (a simple type of connectionist learning) and observe that this enables communities to self organize without community-level selection. Despite not being a Darwinian unit, ecological communities can behave like connectionist learning systems, creating internal organisation that habituates to past environmental conditions and actively recalling those conditions., Comment: 37 pages 11 figures

Published
2015

24. Safe and just operating spaces for regional social-ecological systems

Author

Dearing, John A., Wang, Rong, Zhang, Ke, Dyke, James G., Haberl, Helmut, Hossain, Md. Sarwar, Langdon, Peter G., Lenton, Timothy M., Raworth, Kate, Brown, Sally, Carstensen, Jacob, Cole, Megan J., Cornell, Sarah E., Dawson, Terence P., Doncaster, C. Patrick, Eigenbrod, Felix, Flörke, Martina, Jeffers, Elizabeth, Mackay, Anson W., Nykvist, Björn, and Poppy, Guy M.

Published
2014
Full Text
View/download PDF

29. Ecology of large felids and their prey in small reserves of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico.

Author

Piña-Covarrubias, Evelyn, Chávez, Cuauhtémoc, Chapman, Mark A, Morales, Montserrat, Elizalde-Arellano, Cynthia, and Doncaster, C Patrick

Subjects
JAGUAR, COMPETITION (Biology), ARMADILLOS, PREDATION, CANIDAE, HABITAT destruction, PUMAS, COMMUNITIES
Abstract

Jaguars and pumas are top-predator species in the Neotropics that are threatened by habitat destruction, illegal poaching of their body parts and their favored prey, and by the human–wildlife conflicts that arise when predators attack livestock. Much of the remaining felid habitat in the Americas is in protected nature reserves that are too small and isolated to support local populations. Surrounding forests therefore play a vital role in felid conservation. Successful long-term conservation of these two felids requires evidence-based knowledge of their biological and ecological requirements. We studied population distributions of jaguars and pumas and their prey in and between two small, private reserves of the Northern Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, with areas of 25 and 43 km2. During 2 years of camera trapping (2015 and 2016), we detected 21 jaguars, from which we estimated an average space requirement of 28–45 km2/individual. Dietary niche overlap exceeded random expectation. The most frequently occurring prey items in jaguar and puma diets were collared peccary and deer. Jaguar also favored nine-banded armadillos and white-nosed coati, while puma favored canids. Both felids avoided ocellated turkey. Overall, diet of jaguars was less species-rich, but similar in niche breadth, to that of pumas. A fluid use of space by both species, in 2015 tending toward mutual attraction and in 2016 toward partial exclusion of pumas by jaguars, combined with the high dietary overlap, is consistent with a dominance hierarchy facilitating coexistence. Jaguars and pumas favor the same prey as the people in local communities who hunt, which likely will intensify human–wildlife impacts when prey become scarce. We conclude that even small reserves play an important role in increasing the continuity of habitat for prey and large felids, whose generalist habits suppress interspecific competition for increasingly limiting prey that are largely shared between them and humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2023
Full Text
View/download PDF

Catalog

Books, media, physical & digital resources
See catalog results