Previous studies on the mating system of the Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus) have been limited to observations of captive populations and estimations of multiple paternities. Hence, the mating system of wild bears remains poorly understood. Animal-borne camera systems (i.e., cameras mounted on animals) provide novel tools to study the behavior of elusive animals. Here, we used an animal-borne video system to record the activities of wild bears during the mating season. Video camera collars...

Soil samples from several European countries were scanned using medical computer tomography (CT) device and are now available as CT images. The analysis of these samples was carried out using deep learning methods. For this purpose, a VGG16 network was trained with the CT-images (X). For the annotation (y) a new method for automated annotation, "surrogate'' learning, was introduced. The generated neural networks (NN) were subjected to a detailed analysis. Among other things, transfer learning...

Assessment of nitrogen (N) saturation of forests is critical to evaluate how ecosystems will respond to current and future global changes such as N deposition. However, quantifying N saturation remains a challenge. We developed a conceptual model of N saturation stages in forest ecosystems based on i) a hypothetical relative rate of ammonification, nitrification, and denitrification, ii) concentrations of ammonium and nitrate in the soil, and iii) 15N enrichment pattern of bulk soil N, ammonium,...