Shearwater campaign (part I) ended!

Today was the last visit to the Shearwater colony to measure hatching success. 

Next visit in September to ring the chicks before they leave Europe for their first journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

Award! "J Benedí" fellowship to A. Sola Galindo

A. Sola Galindo was awarded (here) with a "Javier Benedí" fellowship by the IMEDEA within the "JAE Intro ICUs” program of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC). Alfonso will (re)-join the GEDA for three months. His work, supervised by A. Sanz-Aguilar, will deal with seabird movements in relation to oceanic variables. The research will be highly interdisciplinary with collaborations with other three groups of the IMEDEA.

Urban Ecology on the air, each saturday at BFC

Each Saturday morning at "Balear Fa Ciencia", Alvaro Luna will share his experience on the study the ecology of those animals that live in the urban enviornment. Here his last interview of Saturday 20th of July 2019 (at 32'45'') about the decrease of once common species.

GEDA at the first ATIt summer school!

Last week GEDA was invited to the first Summer School on Small Mammal Study organized by the small mammals specialist group of the Italian Mammal Society  (ATIt), at the botanic garden of Capracotta - Isernia (here). 

Participants have learnt concepts and techniques to monitor small mammal populations. 

The location was great and the hospitality incredible (thank to Carmen!!). Overall, the event was a success (more pics here).  We look forward to the second!

Benidorm beaches and Storm Petrel!

The Benidorm City Council has prepared panels to inform people what to do when they recover Storm Petrels stranded on city's beaches attracted by the artificial lights. A good initiative promoted by Ana Sanz-Aguilar and the long-term project of Storm Petrel at Benidrom Island.
More here.

Gulls' summer vacation : a new route to the Atlantic!

Gulls began to move north to colder waters (or better landfills).The Ebro route is confirmed, but one gull showed us a new route to the Atlantic !!! Something we have suspected in the past but never proved : the route Narbonne-Toulouse-Bordeaux.

Urban ecology on Air!

Álvaro Luna at "Balears Fa Ciència" (here, min 27) speaking on Urban Ecology and Urban Evolution. Álvaro is finishing his PhD at the University of Sevilla, co-supervised by M. Carrete from the University of Sevilla and A. Sanz-Aguilar from the GEDA (IMEDEA -CSIC/UIB). 
His research is focussing on the adaptation and the ecology of urban fauna. Here is a previous post on Alvaro's book, with an interview by E. Soto.

New Publication on poaching related mortality !

Corlatti, L., Sanz-Aguilar, A., Tavecchia, G., Giugiatti A., and Pedrotti, L., 2019 Unrevelling the sex- and age-specific impact of poaching mortality with multievent modeling Frontiers in Zoology, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12983-019-0321-1

Abstract:  Poaching is a prominent source of ‘hidden hurdles’, cryptic impacts of human activities that may hinder the conservation of animal populations. Estimating poaching mortality is challenging, as the evidence for illegal killing is not outwardly obvious. Using resighting and recovery data collected on 141 marked red deer Cervus elaphus within the Stelvio National Park (central Italian Alps), we show how multievent models allow to assess the direct impacts of illegal harvesting on age- and sex-specific survival, accounting for uncertainty over mortality causes.

Mortality caused by poaching was consistently higher for males than for females in all age classes. In males, the probability of dying from poaching was higher for extreme age classes, while in females all age classes showed fairly similar values of poaching mortality. The strong bias in sex-specific poaching mortality was possibly due to trophy killing in adult males and ‘bushmeat-like’ killing for private or commercial gain in young males and in females.

A robust assessment of age- and sex-specific prevalence of poaching in wildlife populations is pivotal when illegal killing is of conservation concern. This provides timely information on what segment of the population is most likely to be affected. Besides obvious demographic consequences on small populations, age- and sex-biased poaching prevalence may contrast with the need to maintain ecosystem complexity and may alter behavioral responses to human presence. The information provided by multievent models, whose flexibility makes them adaptable to many systems where individual-based data is part of population monitoring, offers a support to design appropriate strategies for the conservation of wildlife populations.