Publications by authors named "Ana Ceia-Hasse"
The native biodiversity of oceanic islands is threatened by human-driven disturbance and by the growing number of species introductions which often interfere with natural ecological processes. Here, we aim to evaluate the effect of anthropogenic disturbance on plant-pollinator interactions in the native forest communities of an oceanic island (Terceira, Azores, Portugal). We found that native species predominated in preserved sites compared to disturbed ones and that the extant plant-pollinator interactions were mostly dominated by generalist species.
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- Long-term observational data is scarce, limiting the prediction of ecological variations using traditional statistical or machine-learning methods.
- A new framework utilizes citizen-science data and machine-learning to model ecological observations based on environmental conditions, enhancing prediction accuracy.
- This approach demonstrates the potential of using citizen-science data for real-time predictions of ecological events across large areas, making it accessible for ecologists and practitioners.
Mountain ecosystems are important biodiversity hotspots and valuable natural laboratories to study community assembly processes. Here, we analyze the diversity patterns of butterflies and odonates in a mountainous area of high conservation value-Serra da Estrela Natural Park (Portugal)-and we assess the drivers of community change for each of the two insect groups. The butterflies and odonates were sampled along 150 m transects near the margins of three mountain streams, at three elevation levels (500, 1000, and 1500 m).
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- The study examines how different environmental and spatial factors affect ant β-diversity (the diversity of species and their functions) in Mediterranean drylands, focusing on both taxonomic (species) and functional ( traits) aspects.
- It was found that local environmental variables were the primary drivers of patterns in ant β-diversity, with significant percentages of variation explained in both taxonomic and functional diversity.
- The results suggest that niche-based processes, where species are filtered by their environments, play a key role in shaping community composition, but further research is needed to explore other factors like competition and resource use.
Opportunistic citizen science databases are becoming an important way of gathering information on species distributions. These data are temporally and spatially dispersed and could have limitations regarding biases in the distribution of the observations in space and/or time. In this work, we test the influence of landscape variables in the distribution of citizen science observations for eight taxonomic groups.
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