Publications by authors named "Rainer Raab"

Anthropogenic activities threaten many wildlife populations by increasing mortality rates, making it crucial to identify the locations and causes of mortality to inform conservation actions. Technological advancements, such as GPS satellite tracking, enable precise recording of wildlife movements. High-resolution data from such devices can facilitate rapid carcass recovery and provide insights into the mortality causes of tagged individuals.

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Most species of migrating birds use a combination of innate vector-based orientation programs and social information to facilitate accurate navigation during their life. A number of various interspecies hybridisations have been reported in birds. The traits of parents are expressed in hybrids in typical ways which are either intermediate, combined or heterotic.

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Article Synopsis
  • Wind energy is important for fighting climate change, but bird collisions with wind turbines can harm bird populations.
  • A study using GPS data from 275 raptors in Europe aimed to understand how turbine height and rotor size affect these collision risks.
  • Results showed that increasing turbine height decreased collision risk for most birds but increased it for the Short-toed Eagle, while larger rotor diameters increased risks across species, highlighting the need to tailor turbine designs based on local bird populations.
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Calls for urgent action to conserve biodiversity under global change are increasing, and conservation of migratory species in this context poses special challenges. In the last two decades the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) has provided a framework for several subsidiary instruments including action plans for migratory bird species, but the effectiveness and transferability of these plans remain unclear. Such laws and policies have been credited with positive outcomes for the conservation of migratory species, but the lack of international coordination and on-ground implementation pose major challenges.

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The gene conferring resistance to last-line antibiotic colistin has been reported globally. Here, we describe the first detection of plasmid-mediated colistin resistance in Russian wildlife, an isolate of sequence type 2280 from a black kite () scavenging raptor. Whole-genome sequencing and plasmid transferability experiments revealed that was located on conjugative IncI2 plasmid pDR164 (59891 bp).

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The genetic diversity, population structure and gene flow of the Great Bustards (Otis tarda) living in Austria-Slovakia-West Hungary (West-Pannonian region), one of the few populations of this globally threatened species that survives across the Palaearctic, has been assessed for the first time in this study. Fourteen recently developed microsatellite loci identified one single population in the study area, with high values of genetic diversity and gene flow between two different genetic subunits. One of these subunits (Heideboden) was recognized as a priority for conservation, as it could be crucial to maintain connectivity with the central Hungarian population and thus contribute to keeping contemporary genetic diversity.

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