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Circadian rhythms are a mechanism by which species adapt to environmental variability and fundamental to understanding species behavior. However, we lack data and a standardized framework to accurately assess and compare temporal activity for species during rapid ecological change. Through a global network representing 38 countries, we leveraged 8.9 million mammalian observations to create a library of 14,587 standardized diel activity estimates for 445 species. We found that less than half the species' estimates were in agreement with diel classifications from the reference literature and that species commonly used more than one diel classification. Species diel activity was highly plastic when exposed to anthropogenic change. Furthermore, body size and distributional extent were strongly associated with whether a species is diurnal or nocturnal. Our findings provide essential knowledge of species behavior in an era of rapid global change and suggest the need for a new, quantitative framework that defines diel activity logically and consistently while capturing species plasticity. more...

Long-term quantification of temporal species trends is fundamental to the assignment of conservation status, which in turn is critical for planning and targeting management interventions. However, monitoring effort and methodologies can change over the assessment period, resulting in heterogeneous data that are difficult to interpret. Here, we develop a hierarchical, random effects Bayesian model to estimate site-level trends in density of African elephants from geographically disparate survey data. The approach treats the density trend per site as a random effect and estimates a parametric distribution of these trends for each partitioning of the data. Data were available from 475 sites, in 37 countries, between 1964 and 2016 (a total of 1,325 surveys). We implemented the model separately and in combination for the African forest ( Loxodonta cyclotis ) and savannah ( Loxodonta africana ) elephant species, as well as by region. Inference from these distributions indicates a mean site-level decline for each species over the study period, with the average forest elephant decline estimated to be more than 90% compared to 70% for the savannah elephant. In combination, there has been a mean 77% decline across all sites; but in all models, substantial heterogeneity in trends was found, with stable to increasing trends more common in southern Africa. This work provides the most comprehensive assessment undertaken on the two African elephant species, illustrating the variability in their status across populations., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest. more...

Vocalizations often vary in structure within a species, from the individual to population level. Vocal differences among social groups and populations can provide insight into biological processes such as vocal learning and evolutionary divergence, with important conservation implications. As vocal learners of conservation concern, intraspecific vocal variation is of particular interest in elephants. We recorded calls from individuals in multiple, wild elephant social groups in two distinct Kenyan populations. We used machine learning to investigate vocal differentiation among individual callers, core groups, bond groups (collections of core groups) and populations. We found clear evidence for vocal distinctiveness at the individual and population level, and evidence for much subtler vocal differences among social groups. Social group membership was a better predictor of call similarity than genetic relatedness, suggesting that subtle vocal differences among social groups may be learned. Vocal divergence among populations and social groups has conservation implications for the effects of social disruption and translocation of elephants., Competing Interests: We declare we have no competing interests., (© 2024 The Author(s).) more...

African savanna elephants are a highly mobile species that ranges widely across the diversity of ecosystems they inhabit. In xeric environments, elephant movement patterns are largely dictated by the availability of water and suitable forage resources, which can drive strong seasonal changes in their movement behavior. In this study, we analyzed a unique movement dataset from 43 collared elephants, collected over a period of 10 years, to assess the degree to which seasonal changes influences home range size of elephants in the semi-arid, Laikipia-Samburu ecosystem of northern Kenya. Auto-correlated Kernel Density Estimation (AKDE) was used to estimate elephants' seasonal home range size. For each individual elephant, we also calculated seasonal home range shifts, as the distance between wet season home range centroids and dry season home range centroids. Core areas (50% AKDE isopleths) of all individual elephants ranged from 3 to 1743 km 2 whereas total home range sizes (the 95% AKDE isopleths) ranged between 15 and 10,677 km 2 . Core areas and home range sizes were 67% and 61% larger, respectively, during the wet season than during the dry season. On average, the core area centroids for all elephants were 17 km away from the nearest river (range 0.2-150.3 km). Females had their core areas closer to the river than males (13.5 vs. 27.5 km). Females differed from males in their response to seasonal variation. Specifically, females tended to occupy areas farther from the river during the wet season, while males occupied areas further from the river during the dry season. Our study highlights how elephants adjust their space use seasonally, which can be incorporated into conservation area planning in the face of increased uncertainty in rainfall patterns due to climate change., Competing Interests: The corresponding author confirms on behalf of all authors that no involvements might raise the question of bias in work reported or in the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.) more...

A key driver of the African savannah elephant population decline is the loss of habitat and associated human-elephant conflict. Elephant physiological responses to these pressures, however, are largely unknown. To address this knowledge gap, we evaluated faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) concentrations as an indicator of adrenal activity and faecal thyroid metabolite (fT3) concentrations as an indicator of metabolic activity in relation to land use, livestock density, and human landscape modification, while controlling for the effects of seasonality and primary productivity (measured using the normalized difference vegetation index). Our best-fit model found that fGCM concentrations to be elevated during the dry season, in areas with higher human modification index values, and those with more agropastoral activities and livestock. There was also a negative relationship between primary productivity and fGCM concentrations. We found fT3 concentrations to be higher during the wet season, in agropastoral landscapes, in locations with higher human activity, and in areas with no livestock. This study highlights how elephants balance nutritional rewards and risks in foraging decisions when using human-dominated landscapes, results that can serve to better interpret elephant behaviour at the human-wildlife interface and contribute to more insightful conservation strategies., Competing Interests: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for Experimental Biology.) more...

To conserve wide-ranging species in degraded landscapes, it is essential to understand how the behavior of animals changes in relation to the degree and composition of modification. Evidence suggests that large inter-individual variation exists in the propensity for use of degraded areas and may be driven by both behavioral and landscape factors. The use of cultivated lands by wildlife is of particular interest, given the importance of reducing human-wildlife conflicts and understanding how such areas can function as biodiversity buffers. African elephant space use can be highly influenced by human activity and the degree to which individuals crop-raid. We analyzed GPS data from 56 free-ranging elephants in the Serengeti-Mara Ecosystem using resource selection functions (RSFs) to assess how crop use may drive patterns of resource selection and space use within a population. We quantified drivers of similarity in resource selection across individuals using proximity analysis of individual RSF coefficients derived from random forest models. We found wide variation in RSF coefficient values between individuals indicating strongly differentiated resource selection strategies. Proximity assessment indicated the degree of crop use in the dry season, individual repeatability, and time spent in unprotected areas drove similarity in resource selection patterns. Crop selection was also spatially structured in relation to agricultural fragmentation. In areas with low fragmentation, elephants spent less time in crops and selected most strongly for crops further from protected area boundaries, but in areas of high fragmentation, elephants spent twice as much time in crops and selected most strongly for crops closer to the protected area boundary. Our results highlight how individual differences and landscape structure can shape use of agricultural landscapes. We discuss our findings in respect to the conservation challenges of human-elephant conflict and incorporating behavioral variation into human-wildlife coexistence efforts., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.) more...

Understanding drivers of space use by African elephants is critical to their conservation and management, particularly given their large home-ranges, extensive resource requirements, ecological role as ecosystem engineers, involvement in human-elephant conflict and as a target species for ivory poaching. In this study we investigated resource selection by elephants inhabiting the Greater Mara Ecosystem in Southwestern Kenya in relation to three distinct but spatially contiguous management zones: (i) the government protected Maasai Mara National Reserve (ii) community-owned wildlife conservancies, and (iii) elephant range outside any formal wildlife protected area. We combined GPS tracking data from 49 elephants with spatial covariate information to compare elephant selection across these management zones using a hierarchical Bayesian framework, providing insight regarding how human activities structure elephant spatial behavior. We also contrasted differences in selection by zone across several data strata: sex, season and time-of-day. Our results showed that the strongest selection by elephants was for closed-canopy forest and the strongest avoidance was for open-cover, but that selection behavior varied significantly by management zone and selection for cover was accentuated in human-dominated areas. When contrasting selection parameters according to strata, variability in selection parameter values reduced along a protection gradient whereby elephants tended to behave more similarly (limited plasticity) in the human dominated, unprotected zone and more variably (greater plasticity) in the protected reserve. However, avoidance of slope was consistent across all zones. Differences in selection behavior was greatest between sexes, followed by time-of-day, then management zone and finally season (where seasonal selection showed the least differentiation of the contrasts assessed). By contrasting selection coefficients across strata, our analysis quantifies behavioural switching related to human presence and impact displayed by a cognitively advanced megaherbivore. Our study broadens the knowledge base about the movement ecology of African elephants and builds our capacity for both management and conservation., (© 2024. The Author(s).) more...

Contact among animals is crucial for various ecological processes, including social behaviors, disease transmission, and predator-prey interactions. However, the distribution of contact events across time and space is heterogeneous, influenced by environmental factors and biological purposes. Previous studies have assumed that areas with abundant resources and preferred habitats attract more individuals and, therefore, lead to more contact. To examine the accuracy of this assumption, we used a use-available framework to compare landscape factors influencing the location of contacts between wild pigs (Sus scrofa) in two study areas in Florida and Texas (USA) from those influencing non-contact space use. We employed a contact-resource selection function (RSF) model, where contact locations were defined as used points and locations without contact as available points. By comparing outputs from this contact RSF with a general, population-level RSF, we assessed the factors driving both habitat selection and contact. We found that the landscape predictors (e.g., wetland, linear features, and food resources) played different roles in habitat selection from contact processes for wild pigs in both study areas. This indicated that pigs interacted with their landscapes differently when choosing habitats compared to when they encountered other individuals. Consequently, relying solely on the spatial overlap of individual or population-level RSF models may lead to a misleading understanding of contact-related ecology. Our findings challenge prevailing assumptions about contact and introduce innovative approaches to better understand the ecological drivers of spatially explicit contact. By accurately predicting the spatial distribution of contact events, we can enhance our understanding of contact based ecological processes and their spatial dynamics., (© 2023. The Author(s).) more...

Individual animals should adjust diets according to food availability. We used DNA metabarcoding to construct individual-level dietary timeseries for elephants from two family groups in Kenya varying in habitat use, social position and reproductive status. We detected at least 367 dietary plant taxa, with up to 137 unique plant sequences in one fecal sample. Results matched well-established trends: elephants tended to eat more grass when it rained and other plants when dry. Nested within these switches from 'grazing' to 'browsing' strategies, dietary DNA revealed seasonal shifts in food richness, composition and overlap between individuals. Elephants of both families converged on relatively cohesive diets in dry seasons but varied in their maintenance of cohesion during wet seasons. Dietary cohesion throughout the timeseries of the subdominant 'Artists' family was stronger and more consistently positive compared to the dominant 'Royals' family. The greater degree of individuality within the dominant family's timeseries could reflect more divergent nutritional requirements associated with calf dependency and/or priority access to preferred habitats. Whereas theory predicts that individuals should specialize on different foods under resource scarcity, our data suggest family bonds may promote cohesion and foster the emergence of diverse feeding cultures reflecting links between social behaviour and nutrition., Competing Interests: We declare we have no competing interests., (© 2023 The Authors.) more...

Quantifying spatiotemporally explicit interactions within animal populations facilitates the understanding of social structure and its relationship with ecological processes. Data from animal tracking technologies (Global Positioning Systems ["GPS"]) can circumvent longstanding challenges in the estimation of spatiotemporally explicit interactions, but the discrete nature and coarse temporal resolution of data mean that ephemeral interactions that occur between consecutive GPS locations go undetected. Here, we developed a method to quantify individual and spatial patterns of interaction using continuous-time movement models (CTMMs) fit to GPS tracking data. We first applied CTMMs to infer the full movement trajectories at an arbitrarily fine temporal scale before estimating interactions, thus allowing inference of interactions occurring between observed GPS locations. Our framework then infers indirect interactions-individuals occurring at the same location, but at different times-while allowing the identification of indirect interactions to vary with ecological context based on CTMM outputs. We assessed the performance of our new method using simulations and illustrated its implementation by deriving disease-relevant interaction networks for two behaviorally differentiated species, wild pigs ( Sus scrofa ) that can host African Swine Fever and mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus ) that can host chronic wasting disease. Simulations showed that interactions derived from observed GPS data can be substantially underestimated when temporal resolution of movement data exceeds 30-min intervals. Empirical application suggested that underestimation occurred in both interaction rates and their spatial distributions. CTMM-Interaction method, which can introduce uncertainties, recovered majority of true interactions. Our method leverages advances in movement ecology to quantify fine-scale spatiotemporal interactions between individuals from lower temporal resolution GPS data. It can be leveraged to infer dynamic social networks, transmission potential in disease systems, consumer-resource interactions, information sharing, and beyond. The method also sets the stage for future predictive models linking observed spatiotemporal interaction patterns to environmental drivers., Competing Interests: All authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2023 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.) more...

Animal migrations are some of the most ubiquitous and one of the most threatened ecological processes globally. A wide range of migratory behaviours occur in nature, and this behaviour is not uniform among and within species, where even individuals in the same population can exhibit differences. While the environment largely drives migratory behaviour, it is necessary to understand the genetic mechanisms influencing migration to elucidate the potential of migratory species to cope with novel conditions and adapt to environmental change. In this study, we identified genes associated with a migratory trait by undertaking pooled genome-wide scans on a natural population of migrating mule deer. We identified genomic regions associated with variation in migratory direction, including FITM1, a gene linked to the formation of lipids, and DPPA3, a gene linked to epigenetic modifications of the maternal line. Such a genetic basis for a migratory trait contributes to the adaptive potential of the species and might affect the flexibility of individuals to change their behaviour in the face of changes in their environment. more...

Climatic variability, resource availability, and anthropogenic impacts heavily influence an animal's home range. This makes home range size an effective metric for understanding how variation in environmental factors alter the behavior and spatial distribution of animals. In this study, we estimated home range size of African elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) across four sites in Namibia, along a gradient of precipitation and human impact, and investigated how these gradients influence the home range size on regional and site scales. Additionally, we estimated the time individuals spent within protected area boundaries. The mean 50% autocorrelated kernel density estimate for home range was 2200 km 2 [95% CI:1500-3100 km 2 ]. Regionally, precipitation and vegetation were the strongest predictors of home range size, accounting for a combined 53% of observed variation. However, different environmental covariates explained home range variation at each site. Precipitation predicted most variation (up to 74%) in home range sizes ( n  = 66) in the drier western sites, while human impacts explained 71% of the variation in home range sizes ( n  = 10) in Namibia's portion of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. Elephants in all study areas maintained high fidelity to protected areas, spending an average of 85% of time tracked on protected lands. These results suggest that while most elephant space use in Namibia is driven by natural dynamics, some elephants are experiencing changes in space use due to human modification., Competing Interests: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest., (© 2022 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.) more...

Pathogen transmission depends on host density, mobility and contact. These components emerge from host and pathogen movements that themselves arise through interactions with the surrounding environment. The environment, the emergent host and pathogen movements, and the subsequent patterns of density, mobility and contact form an 'epidemiological landscape' connecting the environment to specific locations where transmissions occur. Conventionally, the epidemiological landscape has been described in terms of the geographical coordinates where hosts or pathogens are located. We advocate for an alternative approach that relates those locations to attributes of the local environment. Environmental descriptions can strengthen epidemiological forecasts by allowing for predictions even when local geographical data are not available. Environmental predictions are more accessible than ever thanks to new tools from movement ecology, and we introduce a 'movement-pathogen pace of life' heuristic to help identify aspects of movement that have the most influence on spatial epidemiology. By linking pathogen transmission directly to the environment, the epidemiological landscape offers an efficient path for using environmental information to inform models describing when and where transmission will occur., (© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.) more...

Orphans of several species suffer social and physiological consequences such as receiving more aggression from conspecifics and lower survival. One physiological consequence of orphaning, stunted growth, has been identified in both humans and chimpanzees, but has not been assessed in a non-primate species. Here, we tested whether wild African elephant orphans show evidence of stunted growth. We measured individually known female elephants in the Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves of Kenya, with a rangefinder capable of calculating height, to estimate a von Bertalanffy growth curve for female elephants of the study population. We then compared measurements of known orphans and non-orphans of various ages, using a Bayesian analysis to assess variation around the derived growth curve. We found that orphans are shorter for their age than non-orphans. However, results suggest orphans may partially compensate for stunting through later growth, as orphans who had spent a longer time without their mother had heights more similar to non-orphans. More age mates in an individual's family were associated with taller height, suggesting social support from peers may contribute to increased growth. Conversely, more adult females in an individual's family were associated with shorter height, suggesting within-group competition for resources with older individuals may reduce juvenile growth. Finally, we found a counterintuitive result that less rainfall in the first 6 years of life was correlated with taller height, potentially reflecting the unavoidable bias of measuring individuals who were fit enough to survive conditions of low rainfall as young calves. Reduced growth of individuals has been shown to reduce survival and reproduction in other species. As such, stunting in wildlife orphans may negatively affect fitness and represents an indirect effect of ivory poaching on African elephants., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press and the Society for Experimental Biology.) more...

Conservation technology holds the potential to vastly increase conservationists' ability to understand and address critical environmental challenges, but systemic constraints appear to hamper its development and adoption. Understanding of these constraints and opportunities for advancement remains limited. We conducted a global online survey of 248 conservation technology users and developers to identify perceptions of existing tools' current performance and potential impact, user and developer constraints, and key opportunities for growth. We also conducted focus groups with 45 leading experts to triangulate findings. The technologies with the highest perceived potential were machine learning and computer vision, eDNA and genomics, and networked sensors. A total of 95%, 94%, and 92% respondents, respectively, rated them as very helpful or game changers. The most pressing challenges affecting the field as a whole were competition for limited funding, duplication of efforts, and inadequate capacity building. A total of 76%, 67%, and 55% respondents, respectively, identified these as primary concerns. The key opportunities for growth identified in focus groups were increasing collaboration and information sharing, improving the interoperability of tools, and enhancing capacity for data analyses at scale. Some constraints appeared to disproportionately affect marginalized groups. Respondents in countries with developing economies were more likely to report being constrained by upfront costs, maintenance costs, and development funding (p = 0.048, odds ratio [OR] = 2.78; p = 0.005, OR = 4.23; p = 0.024, OR = 4.26), and female respondents were more likely to report being constrained by development funding and perceived technical skills (p = 0.027, OR = 3.98; p = 0.048, OR = 2.33). To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to formally capture the perspectives and needs of the global conservation technology community, providing foundational data that can serve as a benchmark to measure progress. We see tremendous potential for this community to further the vision they define, in which collaboration trumps competition; solutions are open, accessible, and interoperable; and user-friendly processing tools empower the rapid translation of data into conservation action. Article impact statement: Addressing financing, coordination, and capacity-building constraints is critical to the development and adoption of conservation technology., (© 2021 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.) more...

Oral baiting is used to deliver vaccines to wildlife to prevent, control, and eliminate infectious diseases. A central challenge is how to spatially distribute baits to maximize encounters by target animal populations, particularly in urban and suburban areas where wildlife such as raccoons (Procyon lotor) are abundant and baits are delivered along roads. Methods from movement ecology that quantify movement and habitat selection could help to optimize baiting strategies by more effectively targeting wildlife populations across space. We developed a spatially explicit, individual-based model of raccoon movement and oral rabies vaccine seroconversion to examine whether and when baiting strategies that match raccoon movement patterns perform better than currently used baiting strategies in an oral rabies vaccination zone in greater Burlington, Vermont, USA. Habitat selection patterns estimated from locally radio-collared raccoons were used to parameterize movement simulations. We then used our simulations to estimate raccoon population rabies seroprevalence under currently used baiting strategies (actual baiting) relative to habitat selection-based baiting strategies (habitat baiting). We conducted simulations on the Burlington landscape and artificial landscapes that varied in heterogeneity relative to Burlington in the proportion and patch size of preferred habitats. We found that the benefits of habitat baiting strongly depended on the magnitude and variability of raccoon habitat selection and the degree of landscape heterogeneity within the baiting area. Habitat baiting improved seroprevalence over actual baiting for raccoons characterized as habitat specialists but not for raccoons that displayed weak habitat selection similar to radiocollared individuals, except when baits were delivered off roads where preferred habitat coverage and complexity was more pronounced. In contrast, in artificial landscapes with either more strongly juxtaposed favored habitats and/or higher proportions of favored habitats, habitat baiting performed better than actual baiting, even when raccoons displayed weak habitat preferences and where baiting was constrained to roads. Our results suggest that habitat selection-based baiting could increase raccoon population seroprevalence in urban-suburban areas, where practical, given the heterogeneity and availability of preferred habitat types in those areas. Our novel simulation approach provides a flexible framework to test alternative baiting strategies in multiclass landscapes to optimize bait-distribution strategies., (© 2022 The Authors. Ecological Applications published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.) more...

The ongoing explosion of fine-resolution movement data in animal systems provides a unique opportunity to empirically quantify spatial, temporal and individual variation in transmission risk and improve our ability to forecast disease outbreaks. However, we lack a generalizable model that can leverage movement data to quantify transmission risk and how it affects pathogen invasion and persistence on heterogeneous landscapes. We developed a flexible model 'Movement-driven modelling of spatio-temporal infection risk' (MoveSTIR) that leverages diverse data on animal movement to derive metrics of direct and indirect contact by decomposing transmission into constituent processes of contact formation and duration and pathogen deposition and acquisition. We use MoveSTIR to demonstrate that ignoring fine-scale animal movements on actual landscapes can mis-characterize transmission risk and epidemiological dynamics. MoveSTIR unifies previous work on epidemiological contact networks and can address applied and theoretical questions at the nexus of movement and disease ecology., (© 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.) more...

Understanding factors that influence real-world public conservation behaviors is critical for developing successful conservation policies and management actions. Citizens of Colorado, USA recently passed a ballot initiative to restore the gray wolf to its former range within the state. The >3 million votes offer an unprecedented opportunity to test factors that influenced decisions to support or oppose this conservation action. We created spatial linear regression models to assess the relationship between support for wolf restoration and (1) the presidential vote, (2) distance to conservation intervention (i.e., proposed wolf reintroduction and existing wolves), and measures of (3) livelihood and (4) demographics using precinct-level data. Our results demonstrate the strong relationship between support for wolf restoration and political support for the Democratic candidate for president in the 2020 election, and highlight how other factors, including increased age, participation in elk hunting, and proximity to the reintroduction region were associated with less support. Our findings underscore the critical role of politicization on public conservation action and the need to develop outreach and engagement strategies to mitigate polarization., (© 2022 The Ecological Society of America.) more...

Amid accelerating threats to species and ecosystems, technology advancements to monitor, protect, and conserve biodiversity have taken on increased importance. While most innovations stem from adaptation of off-the-shelf devices, these tools can fail to meet the specialized needs of conservation and research or lack the support to scale beyond a single site. Despite calls from the conservation community for its importance, a shift to bottom-up innovation driven by conservation professionals remains limited. We surveyed practitioners, academic researchers, and technologists to understand the factors contributing to or inhibiting engagement in the collaborative process of technology development and adoption for field use and identify emerging technology needs. High cost was the main barrier to technology use across occupations, while development of new technologies faced barriers of cost and partner communication. Automated processing of data streams was the largest emerging need, and respondents focused mainly on applications for individual-level monitoring and automated image processing. Cross-discipline collaborations and expanded funding networks that encourage cyclical development and continued technical support are needed to address current limitations and meet the growing need for conservation technologies., (© 2022. The Author(s).) more...

The savannas of the Kenya-Tanzania borderland cover >100,000 km 2 and is one of the most important regions globally for biodiversity conservation, particularly large mammals. The region also supports >1 million pastoralists and their livestock. In these systems, resources for both large mammals and pastoralists are highly variable in space and time and thus require connected landscapes. However, ongoing fragmentation of (semi-)natural vegetation by smallholder fencing and expansion of agriculture threatens this social-ecological system. Spatial data on fences and agricultural expansion are localized and dispersed among data owners and databases. Here, we synthesized data from several research groups and conservation NGOs and present the first release of the Landscape Dynamics (landDX) spatial-temporal database, covering ~30,000 km 2 of southern Kenya. The data includes 31,000 livestock enclosures, nearly 40,000 kilometres of fencing, and 1,500 km 2 of agricultural land. We provide caveats and interpretation of the different methodologies used. These data are useful to answer fundamental ecological questions, to quantify the rate of change of ecosystem function and wildlife populations, for conservation and livestock management, and for local and governmental spatial planning., (© 2022. The Author(s).) more...

African Swine Fever (ASF) was reported in domestic pigs in China in 2018. This highly contagious viral infection with no effective vaccine reached pandemic proportions by 2019, substantially impacting protein availability in the same region where the COVID-19 pandemic subsequently emerged. We discuss the genesis, spread, and wide-reaching impacts of this epidemic in a vital livestock species, noting parallels and potential contributions to ignition of COVID-19. We speculate about impacts of these pandemics on global public health infrastructure and suggest intervention strategies using a cost: benefit approach for low-risk, massive-impact events. We note that substantive changes in how the world reacts to potential threats will be required to overcome catastrophes driven by climate change, food insecurity, lack of surveillance infrastructure, and other gaps. A One Health approach creating collaborative processes connecting expertise in human, animal, and environmental health is essential for combating future global health crises., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Tucker, Fagre, Wittemyer, Webb, Abworo and VandeWoude.) more...

Prolonged maternal care is vital to the well-being of many long-lived mammals. 1 The premature loss of maternal care, i.e., orphaning, can reduce offspring survival even after weaning is complete. 2-5 However, ecologists have not explicitly assessed how orphaning impacts population growth. We examined the impact of orphaning on population growth in a free-ranging African elephant population, using 19 years of individual-based demographic monitoring data. We compared orphan and nonorphan survival, performed a sensitivity analysis to understand how population growth responds to the probability of being orphaned and orphan survival, and investigated how sensitivity to these orphan parameters changed with level of poaching. Orphans were found to have lower survival compared to nonorphaned age mates, and population growth rate was negatively correlated with orphaning probability and positively correlated with orphan survival. This demonstrates that, in addition to its direct effects, adult elephant death indirectly decreases population growth through orphaning. Population growth rate's sensitivity to orphan survival increased for the analysis parameterized using only data from years of more poaching, indicating orphan survival is more important for population growth as orphaning increases. We conclude that orphaning substantively decreases population growth for elephants and should not be overlooked when quantifying the impacts of poaching. Moreover, we conclude that population models characterizing systems with extensive parental care benefit from explicitly incorporating orphan stages and encourage research into quantifying effects of orphaning in other social mammals of conservation concern., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.) more...

Over the last two millennia, and at an accelerating pace, the African elephant (Loxodonta spp. Lin.) has been threatened by human activities across its range. 1-7 We investigate the correlates of elephant home range sizes across diverse biomes. Annual and 16-day elliptical time density home ranges 8 were calculated by using GPS tracking data collected from 229 African savannah and forest elephants (L. africana and L. cyclotis, respectively) between 1998 and 2013 at 19 sites representing bushveld, savannah, Sahel, and forest biomes. Our analysis considered the relationship between home range area and sex, species, vegetation productivity, tree cover, surface temperature, rainfall, water, slope, aggregate human influence, and protected area use. Irrespective of these environmental conditions, long-term annual ranges were overwhelmingly affected by human influence and protected area use. Only over shorter, 16-day periods did environmental factors, particularly water availability and vegetation productivity, become important in explaining space use. Our work highlights the degree to which the human footprint and existing protected areas now constrain the distribution of the world's largest terrestrial mammal. 9 , 10 A habitat suitability model, created by evaluating every square kilometer of Africa, predicts that 18,169,219 km 2 would be suitable as elephant habitat-62% of the continent. The current elephant distribution covers just 17% of this potential range of which 57.4% falls outside protected areas. To stem the continued extirpation and to secure the elephants' future, effective and expanded protected areas and improved capacity for coexistence across unprotected range are essential., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors declare no competing interests., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.) more...

Parks are important places to listen to natural sounds and avoid human-related noise, an increasingly rare combination. We first explore whether and to what degree natural sounds influence health outcomes using a systematic literature review and meta-analysis. We identified 36 publications examining the health benefits of natural sound. Meta-analyses of 18 of these publications revealed aggregate evidence for decreased stress and annoyance ( g = -0.60, 95% CI = -0.97, -0.23) and improved health and positive affective outcomes ( g = 1.63, 95% CI = 0.09, 3.16). Examples of beneficial outcomes include decreased pain, lower stress, improved mood, and enhanced cognitive performance. Given this evidence, and to facilitate incorporating public health in US national park soundscape management, we then examined the distribution of natural sounds in relation to anthropogenic sound at 221 sites across 68 parks. National park soundscapes with little anthropogenic sound and abundant natural sounds occurred at 11.3% of the sites. Parks with high visitation and urban park sites had more anthropogenic sound, yet natural sounds associated with health benefits also were frequent. These included animal sounds (audible for a mean of 59.3% of the time, SD: 23.8) and sounds from wind and water (mean: 19.2%, SD: 14.8). Urban and other parks that are extensively visited offer important opportunities to experience natural sounds and are significant targets for soundscape conservation to bolster health for visitors. Our results assert that natural sounds provide important ecosystem services, and parks can bolster public health by highlighting and conserving natural soundscapes., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest., (Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.) more...

Landscape planning that ensures the ecological integrity of ecosystems is critical in the face of rapid human-driven habitat conversion and development pressure. Wildlife tracking data provide unique and valuable information on animal distribution and location-specific behaviors that can serve to increase the efficacy of such planning. Given the spatiotemporal complexity inherent to animal movements, the interaction between movement behavior and a location is often oversimplified in commonly applied analyses of tracking data. We analyzed GPS-tracking-derived metrics of intensity of use, structural properties (based on network theory), and properties of the movement path (speed and directionality) with machine learning to define homogeneous spatial movement types. We applied our approach to a long-term tracking data set of over 130 African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in an area under pressure from infrastructure development. We identified 5 unique location-specific movement categories displayed by elephants, generally defined as high, medium, and low use intensity, and 2 types of connectivity corridors associated with fast and slow movements. High-use and slow-movement corridors were associated with similar landscape characteristics associated with productive areas near water, whereas low-use and fast corridors were characterized by areas of low productivity farther from water. By combining information on intensity of use, properties of movement paths, and structural aspects of movement across the landscape, our approach provides an explicit definition of the functional role of areas for movement across the landscape that we term the movescape. This combined, high-resolution information regarding wildlife space use offers mechanistic information that can improve landscape planning., (© 2020 Society for Conservation Biology.) more...

Comparing parasitic infection among individuals of wildlife populations can provide insight into factors that influence wildlife disease ecology. Strongylids are parasitic worms that infect the intestinal tract of vertebrates, and infection with strongylids can be approximated by counting strongylid eggs in dung samples. Here we tested for correlations between strongylid egg counts and 18 different individual characteristics, environmental and social factors in individually known wild African elephants. We counted more eggs in the dung samples of younger elephants and females relative to mature elephants and males. We also found that elephants spending more time outside reserves shed more strongylid eggs than elephants that were more often within reserves. Elephants that were less socially integrated, as measured by how much aggression they received from other elephants, shed fewer strongylid eggs; relatedly, socially isolated orphan elephants that had left their family shed fewer strongylid eggs than elephants that remained with their family. Our results suggest that landscapes altered by livestock grazing and social disruption caused by humans may impact parasitic infection in wildlife. more...