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Understanding the movement pattern and ranging behavior of the Griffon vulture population in Serbia is of great importance for prioritizing conservation action. In 2011, an immature vulture was the first bird to be equipped with a satellite transmitter in Serbia. Our study aims to define the vulture’s foraging areas, home ranges, core and basic areas, and to investigate movement patterns across different years and seasons by analyzing satellite telemetry data. We tracked the movements of the vulture for over three years and obtained satellite tracking data for 34 bird-months (1976 GPS fixes) between October 2011 and July 2014. We determined that the overall foraging area of the vulture across the entire study period was 11654.34 km2. The overall area used by the vulture was larger during spring and summer than during winter periods. Combined ranges across all years identified one basic area and its associated core area around the Uvac colony and nearby feeding site; we identified three core areas in its proximity. This study showed that areas of traditional stock-raising practices are important vulture foraging areas and that supplementary feeding sites have a vital role. Our maps can be used for future planning of vulture conservation measures.

The development of the information and communication technology (ICT), regardless of its many advantages, unfortunately has its disadvantage - the abuse of the cyberworld. The global character of cyberspace is specific in terms of national legislation and its view of specificities. Some countries adopted the recommendation of the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe (Official Gazette NN-MU 9/02, 4/04) and amended their national legislation, whereas others kept implementing their criminal law solutions, which are outdated and cannot reach the level of this type of criminal offences. Consequently, governments are inclined to cooperate and exchange information about this type of crime due to the fact that the criminal offender may be anywhere, and the offence itself can take place at a great distance from the offender. In September 2015, the government of the Republic of Croatia adopted the National Cyber Security Strategy and the Action Plan for the Implementation of the National Cyber Security Strategy, the first allencompassing strategy of the Republic of Croatia on cyber security. The paper also focuses on the role of the Police College in the Action Plan for the Implementation of the National Cyber Security Strategy.

Background: Oilseed rape is an important crop grown worldwide and used for various purposes, including oil extraction and animal feed. In Europe, there are six major pest species and several other minor pests that can significantly affect oilseed rape production, requiring growers to effectively control them in order to ensure crop yield. The host-parasitoid complexes of these pests have been studied in detail and recorded mainly in western, central and northern Europe. As an abundant source of pollen and nectar, oilseed rape may also be attractive to other parasitoids that do not have direct trophic interactions with oilseed rape pest species. The aim of this study is to fill the knowledge gap regarding the wider parasitoid community in oilseed rape fields, particularly in southern Europe., New Information: During the two-year study, a total of 3135 specimens of primary and secondary parasitoids were sampled, of which 2855 were found in oilseed rape fields and 280 in semi-natural habitats. We found 153 taxa, of which 119 were found in oilseed rape fields and 87 in semi-natural habitats. We identified 31 genera (33 species) as parasitoids of oilseed rape pests, 54 genera (97 species) parasitising non-pest species and 10 genera (23 species) as possible parasitoids of oilseed rape pests. This study shows that the parasitoid community in oilseed rape fields is very diverse and that includes parasitoids of both oilseed rape pest and non-pest species., (Milan Plećaš, Vladimir Žikić, Korana Kocić, Jelisaveta Čkrkić, Anđeljko Petrović, Željko Tomanović.)

It is assumed that wild honey bees have become largely extinct across Europe since the 1980s, following the introduction of exotic ectoparasitic mite ( Varroa ) and the associated spillover of various pathogens. However, several recent studies reported on unmanaged colonies that survived the Varroa mite infestation. Herewith, we present another case of unmanaged, free-living population of honey bees in SE Europe, a rare case of feral bees inhabiting a large and highly populated urban area: Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. We compiled a massive data-set derived from opportunistic citizen science (>1300 records) during the 2011-2017 period and investigated whether these honey bee colonies and the high incidence of swarms could be a result of a stable, self-sustaining feral population (i.e., not of regular inflow of swarms escaping from local managed apiaries), and discussed various explanations for its existence. We also present the possibilities and challenges associated with the detection and effective monitoring of feral/wild honey bees in urban settings, and the role of citizen science in such endeavors. Our results will underpin ongoing initiatives to better understand and support naturally selected resistance mechanisms against the Varroa mite, which should contribute to alleviating current threats and risks to global apiculture and food production security.

Most animals concentrate their movement into certain hours of the day depending on drivers such as photoperiod, ambient temperature, inter- or intraspecific competition, and predation risk. The main activity periods of many mammal species, especially in human-dominated landscapes, are commonly set at dusk, dawn, and during nighttime hours. Large carnivores, such as brown bears, often display great flexibility in diel movement patterns throughout their range, and even within populations, striking between individual differences in movement have been demonstrated. Here, we evaluated how seasonality and reproductive class affected diel movement patterns of brown bears of the Dinaric-Pindos and Carpathian bear populations in Serbia. We analyzed the movement distances and general probability of movement of 13 brown bears (8 males and 5 females) equipped with GPS collars and monitored over 1-3 years. Our analyses revealed that movement distances and probability of bear movement differed between seasons (mating versus hyperphagia) and reproductive classes. Adult males, solitary females, and subadult males showed a crepuscular movement pattern. Compared with other reproductive classes, females with offspring were moving significantly less during crepuscular hours and during the night, particularly during the mating season, suggesting temporal niche partitioning among different reproductive classes. Adult males, solitary females, and in particular subadult males traveled greater hourly distances during the mating season in May-June than the hyperphagia in July-October. Subadult males significantly decreased their movement from the mating season to hyperphagia, whereas females with offspring exhibited an opposite pattern with almost doubling their movement from the mating to hyperphagia season. Our results provide insights into how seasonality and reproductive class drive intrapopulation differences in movement distances and probability of movement in a recovering, to date little studied, brown bear population in southeastern Europe., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2021 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield-related ecosystem services can be maintained by a few dominant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 studies (with 1475 locations), we partition the relative importance of species richness, abundance, and dominance for pollination; biological pest control; and final yields in the context of ongoing land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem services in addition to and independent of abundance and dominance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem services was due to richness losses of service-providing organisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystem benefits to society., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).)

The idea that noncrop habitat enhances pest control and represents a win-win opportunity to conserve biodiversity and bolster yields has emerged as an agroecological paradigm. However, while noncrop habitat in landscapes surrounding farms sometimes benefits pest predators, natural enemy responses remain heterogeneous across studies and effects on pests are inconclusive. The observed heterogeneity in species responses to noncrop habitat may be biological in origin or could result from variation in how habitat and biocontrol are measured. Here, we use a pest-control database encompassing 132 studies and 6,759 sites worldwide to model natural enemy and pest abundances, predation rates, and crop damage as a function of landscape composition. Our results showed that although landscape composition explained significant variation within studies, pest and enemy abundances, predation rates, crop damage, and yields each exhibited different responses across studies, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing in landscapes with more noncrop habitat but overall showing no consistent trend. Thus, models that used landscape-composition variables to predict pest-control dynamics demonstrated little potential to explain variation across studies, though prediction did improve when comparing studies with similar crop and landscape features. Overall, our work shows that surrounding noncrop habitat does not consistently improve pest management, meaning habitat conservation may bolster production in some systems and depress yields in others. Future efforts to develop tools that inform farmers when habitat conservation truly represents a win-win would benefit from increased understanding of how landscape effects are modulated by local farm management and the biology of pests and their enemies., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)