News on urban ecology!

A new press release by E. Soto at B@leópolis on Urban Ecology, inspired by the work of Alvaro Luna. Alvaro is a Ph.D student supervised by A. Sanz-Aguilar (from the GEDA) and M. Carrete (from the EBD-CSIC). In his book (available here and here) Alvaro compiles the most incredible cases of wild animals living in the urban enviornment, the new colonizations and the adaptations. The book identifies our cities as a new ecosystem to study and to explore.

GEDA on the news!

Here a press release by E. Soto on the use of APHIS to identify individuals from digital image. Photo-identification techniques are becoming more and more popular in monitoring individual behaviour and life-history tactics. They allow an economic and not invasive method of indiviudal recongnition, particularly useful to study small species or for those that cannot be marked without potentially harm individuals or change their behaviour. The software, APHIS developped by the GEDA and the "Fundación Bit" in 2015 (here), is freely available (here) and it is increasingly being used in may taxa such as invertebrates, mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians.

New research into the Mallorcan Midwife Toad

The work by S. Pinya, in collaboration with the GEDA, is under the spotlight. A new press release by E. Soto appeared yesterday on the Spanish news (here). The work describing the first population model for the species (only one population, helas!) can be found here.

Photo: Samuel Pinya

ABSTRACT: Amphibian populations are declining worldwide, but for many taxa, robust estimates of demographic parameters to assess population state or trends are scarce or absent. We provide robust estimates of adult apparent survival of the endemic Mallorcan midwife toad Alytes muletensis using individual capture-recapture data collected over 4 yr in a 60 m² cistern. Moreover, we combined the vital rates into a stage-structured population model to estimate the expected long-term growth rate of the population. Apparent survival estimates of males and females were similar (0.737 ± 0.042 and 0.726 ± 0.045, respectively) indicating that the egg-carrying behavior of males, typical of this species, does not reduce its survival probability. We found evidence of a low local survival of juveniles compared with adults, most likely due to permanent dispersal. Adult population size estimation provided higher tadpole:adult ratios than previously reported for this endangered species, suggesting an overestimation of the previous adult population size. Model projections suggested a stable population, since λ, the expected asymptotic growth rate of the population, was close to 1.00.