Prey Depletion and Source-Sink Dynamics in Endangered African Wild Dogs

This blog post is provided by Johnathan Reyes de Merkle and tells the #StoryBehindthePaper for the paper “An integrated population model reveals source-sink dynamics for competitively subordinate African wild dogs linked to anthropogenic prey depletion”, which was recently published in Journal of Animal Ecology. In their study, they investigated the effects of anthropogenic prey depletion on the coexistence and persistence of the African wild dog, a … Continue reading Prey Depletion and Source-Sink Dynamics in Endangered African Wild Dogs

A 30-year journey to fulfill a dream: social dominance networks reveal mechanisms promoting coexistence of charrs in streams of Hokkaido, Japan

This blog post is provided by Kurt D. Fausch, Satoshi Kitano, Yoichiro Kanno, and Seog Kim and tells the #StoryBehindThePaper for the article “Interspecific social dominance networks reveal mechanisms promoting coexistence in sympatric charrs in Hokkaido, Japan”. Some papers take a long time to come to fruition…. sometimes a very long time. Kurt Fausch first traveled to Japan in October 1988, to present an invited paper … Continue reading A 30-year journey to fulfill a dream: social dominance networks reveal mechanisms promoting coexistence of charrs in streams of Hokkaido, Japan

Stressed-Out Squirrels

A recently-published paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology has discovered that the grey squirrel (one of the most impacting alien invasive species in Europe) causes an increase in chronic stress in the native red squirrel. Lead author Dr Francesca Santicchia is a research fellow at the University of Insubria in Italy. She had studied the relationships among parasites, physiological stress, and personality in grey squirrel … Continue reading Stressed-Out Squirrels

How do birds avoid their sibling-species competitors?

Being similar can be problematic. When ecologically-similar species co-occur, competition can result. So how can this be avoided? A recent paper published in the Journal of Animal Ecology shows how birds avoid their sibling-species competitors. Authors Lechosław Kuczyński, Anna Skoracka, Jiri Reif and Radka Reifova explain. Mechanisms that enable coexistence of ecologically-similar species are crucial in maintaining biological diversity. When such species co‑occur they inevitably compete for resources, such as … Continue reading How do birds avoid their sibling-species competitors?