Special Issue "The Response of Wildlife Populations and Communities to Global Change"
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Wildlife".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2021.
Special Issue Editors
Interests: population and ecosystem dynamics; wildlife management and conservation; global changes; citizen science; host–parasite interactions; ecological modelling; cartography and geographic information systems
Interests: mammalian ecology, behavior and conservation, with a special interest in carnivores; ecological strategies involved in carnivores’ adaptation to changing environments; role of agriculture landscapes in conservation
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The distribution and abundance of wildlife populations and the structure and composition of wildlife communities are driven by a myriad of biotic and abiotic factors that act synergistically. The ecological requirements of each species, the temporal variation in resource availability, the changes in landscape composition and the environmental stochasticity are among the key agents that influence wildlife through time and space. Disentangling and understanding the relative contribution of each factor in a multicausal world is a challenging endeavor for ecologists. Probably, questions of whether global changes may disrupt natural populations and communities cannot lead to simple and definitive answers. However, such assessments are increasingly relevant to: 1) evaluate the exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity of wildlife populations and communities to human-induced environmental changes; 2) understand how these changes dilute or strengthen the effects of natural sources of environmental variation; and 3) forecast how induced changes in wildlife populations and communities impact biodiversity conservation, ecological networks and ecosystem services. For this Special Issue, we welcome the submission of original research papers that improve our understanding of how wildlife populations and/or communities cope with environmental change, both natural and human-induced. Field studies and review articles that aim to synthetise evidence on this research topic are within the scope of this Special Issue. We encourage and challenge authors to highlight their contribution’s relevance to local and global conservation and management issues.
Dr. João Luís Oliveira CarvalhoDr. Luís Miguel Rosalino
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- climate variations
- population and community structure
- exotic species
- habitat fragmentation
- land-use change
- spatial and temporal ecology
- trophic cascades.
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Title: Domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) and crab-eating foxes (Cerdocyon thous) in the southern limit of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: coexistence facilitated by spatio-temporal segregation?
Authors: Mateus Zimmer; Flávia Pereira Tirelli; Eduardo Eizirik; Maria João Ramos Pereira
Affiliation: 1. Bird and Mammal Evolution, Systematics and Ecology Lab, Institute of Biosciences, Universidade Federal do Rio rande do Sul, Campus do Vale, 90650-001 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil 2. Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, 90619-900 Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil 3. Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
Abstract: Humans (Homo sapiens) and dogs (Canis familiaris) have an ancient relationship of proximity, and are thus distributed around the world. Natural areas bordering human settlements, in urban or rural settings, may suffer from the presence of roaming dogs. Dogs may compete with wildlife in several ways, but due to phylogenetic and behavioral proximity, wild canids are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of competitive interactions with dogs. Here, we assessed spatio-temporal effects of dogs on a species of wild canid, the crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous) in the southernmost limit of the Atlantic Forest, in Brazil. We detected changes in the behavior of C. thous in the presence of dogs, including changes in temporal activity and spatio-temporal segregation, i.e, dogs and crab-eating foxes do not occur in the same place at the same time. Multi‐species occupancy model still to come. The coexistence of C. thous and C. familiaris seems to be facilitated by spatio-temporal segregation, where C. thous avoids encounters with domestic dogs in sites where both occur. In relation to crab-eating foxes, dogs seem to act as interference competitors, although the possibility of other forms of competition should not be excluded.
Title: Drivers of rodents’ abundance patterns in South Africa: the importance of considering the management contexts and functional groups.
Authors: Beatriz C. Afonso*; Gonçalo Curveira-Santos; Lourens H. Swanepoel; Beatriz P. Rosa; Tiago A. Marques; Luis Miguel Rosalino; Margarida Santos-Reis
Affiliation: cE3c – Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes / Departamento de Biologia Animal, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande Edifício C2–5º Piso, 1749-016 Lisboa, Portugal
Abstract: South Africa’s decentralized approach to conservation entails that wildlife outside protected areas inhabits complex multi-use landscapes, where private wildlife business (ecotourism and/or hunting) co-exist in a human-dominated landscape matrix. Under decentralized conservation, wildlife is perceived to benefit from increased amount of available habitat, but little is known about how distinct management priorities and associated landscape modifications impact less charismatic taxa, such as small mammals. We conducted extensive ink-tracking-tunnel surveys to investigate the effect of different environmental factors on abundance patterns of two small mammal’s size-based functional groups, across three adjacent management contexts in NE KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: a private ecotourism reserve, game ranches and traditional communal areas. Using a boosted regression trees approach we found considerable differences in functional groups’ abundance distribution and underlying environmental factors. Variation in rodent relative abundance was positivity affected by vegetation (e.g. denser vegetation cover) and negatively by ungulate presence across all landscape contexts, albeit with varying specific effects. The mean relative abundance of medium-sized species did not differ across the three management contexts, but small species mean abundance was higher in the private reserve. The effect of vegetation cover and ungulate presence holds among all different management context, but abundance and occurrence patterns differ between functional groups, reinforcing the need to avoid generalizations based on only a limited view of wildlife responses.