1. The sudden loss of habitats due to natural or anthropogenic disturbances causes displacement of mobile animals from affected areas to refuge habitats, where large but often transitory concentrations of individuals may occur. While these local density increases have been previously described, the hypothesis that crowding disrupts demographic processes remains largely untested. 2. Here we used the sudden flooding of a river valley by a hydroelectric reservoir as a quasi-experiment to investigate the consequences of...

Artigo de Rotura - Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Artes ROTURA, 2 (2021): 79-86 eISSN: 2184-8661

In gregarious animals, social network positions of individuals may influence their life-history and fitness. Although association patterns and the position of individuals in social networks can be shaped by phenotypic differences and by past interactions, few studies have quantified their relative importance. We evaluated how phenotypic differences and familiarity influence social preferences and the position of individuals within the social network. We monitored wild-caught common waxbills (Estrilda astrild) with radio-frequency identifiers in a large mesocosm...

Evaluating species responses to anthropogenic infrastructures and other habitat changes is often used to assess environmental impacts and to guide conservation actions. However, such studies are generally carried out at the population-level, disregarding inter-individual variability. Here, we investigate population- and individual-level responses towards power lines of a territorial raptor, the Bonelli’s eagle Aquila fasciata. We used GPS-PTT tracking data of seventeen adult eagles to model space use as a function of distance to transmission and...

Ecologically distinct species may respond to landscape changes in different ways. In addition to basic ecological data, the extent of the geographic range has been successfully used as an indicator of species sensitivity to anthropogenic landscapes, with widespread species usually found to be less sensitive compared to range-restricted species. In this study, we investigate connectivity patterns of two closely related but ecologically distinct newt species – the range-restricted, Lissotriton montandoni and the widespread, L. vulgaris...

The avian bill is finely adjusted to foraging ecology and, as part of the vocal tract, it may also affect sexual signals such as songs. Acoustic theory predicts that larger bills lower the resonant frequency of vocal tracts, allowing larger-billed species to emphasize lower sound frequencies. Theory also predicts that larger-billed species can change bill gape so as to sing over a wider frequency bandwidth. We tested these associations between bill size and sound frequencies...

Artigo de Rotura - Revista de Comunicação, Cultura e Artes ROTURA, 2 (2021): 25-32 eISSN: 2184-8661