Subtle stressors-Strong responses. Consistent negative effects of avian blood parasites on phenotypic and demographic traits across songbirds.

Stressors that subtly yet persistently deplete energetic resources-such as heat, pollutants or parasites-are well studied in laboratory and clinical settings, where their physiological effects are often well understood, yet their influence on phenotypic and demographic traits in free-living populations remains critically understudied. A prominent example is pathogens and parasites that cause sublethal infections, often considered as relatively benign, particularly in species adapted to their presence. However, parasite-induced effects on phenotypic and demographic traits are often inconsistent, leaving researchers uncertain about their impact and whether they have meaningful fitness consequences.

A minimum data standard for wildlife disease research and surveillance.

Rapid and comprehensive data sharing is vital to the transparency and actionability of wildlife infectious disease research and surveillance. Unfortunately, most best practices for publicly sharing these data are focused on pathogen determination and genetic sequence data. Other facets of wildlife disease data - particularly negative results - are often withheld or, at best, summarized in a descriptive table with limited metadata.

Considering landscape heterogeneity improves the inference of inter-individual interactions from movement data.

Background: Animal movement is influenced by both the physical environment and social environment. The effects of both environments are not independent from each other and identifying whether the resulting movement trajectories are shaped by interactions between individuals or whether they are the result of their physical environment, is important for understanding animal movement decisions.

Methods: Here, we assessed whether the commonly used methods for inferring interactions between moving individuals could discern the effects of environment and other moving individuals on the movement of the focal individual.

Exploring the ecological feasibility of restoring Eurasian lynx to Great Britain using spatially explicit individual-based modelling.

Ecological restoration offers a multitude of benefits for the human-nature system, which has put it at the forefront of international initiatives opposing environmental degradation. In Great Britain, the reintroduction of Eurasian lynx has been proposed to help improve ecosystem health, raising the question; what is the ecological feasibility of lynx reintroduction in Great Britain? Combining a lynx-specific spatially explicit individual-based model and contemporary habitat suitability mapping would shed new light on this question. We hypothesised potential drivers of reintroduction success, including demographic parameters, behavioural responses in habitat selection, and management strategies.

Opportunities and challenges for monitoring terrestrial biodiversity in the robotics age.

With biodiversity loss escalating globally, a step change is needed in our capacity to accurately monitor species populations across ecosystems. Robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) offer technological solutions that may substantially advance terrestrial biodiversity monitoring, but this potential is yet to be considered systematically. We used a modified Delphi technique to synthesize knowledge from 98 biodiversity experts and 31 RAS experts, who identified the major methodological barriers that currently hinder monitoring, and explored the opportunities and challenges that RAS offer in overcoming these barriers.

The 4th Dimension in Animal Movement: The Effect of Temporal Resolution and Landscape Configuration in Habitat-Selection Analyses.

Understanding how animals use their habitat is essential to understand their biology and support conservation efforts. Technological advances in tracking technologies allow us to follow animals at increasingly fine temporal resolutions. Yet, how tracking devices' sampling intervals impact results remains unclear, as well as which method to use.

The spatiotemporal ecology of Oropouche virus across Latin America: a multidisciplinary, laboratory-based, modelling study.

Background: Latin America has been experiencing an Oropouche virus (OROV) outbreak of unprecedented magnitude and spread since 2023-24 for unknown reasons. We aimed to identify risk predictors of and areas at risk for OROV transmission.

Methods: In this multidisciplinary, laboratory-based, modelling study, we retrospectively tested anonymised serum samples collected between 2001 and 2022 for studies on virus epidemiology and medical diagnostics in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru with nucleoprotein-based commercial ELISAs for OROV-specific IgG and IgM antibodies.

Pathogen-induced alterations in fine-scale movement behaviour predict impaired reproductive success.

Pathogens play an important role in ecosystems and may impair fitness-enhancing activities such as foraging. However, the sublethal effects of pathogens on host movement behaviour and their subsequent impacts on reproductive success are poorly understood. In this study, we used high-resolution tracking to examine the movements of free-ranging European starlings () associated with sublethal avian blood parasite infections.

Changes in community composition and functional diversity of European bats under climate change.

Climate change is predicted to drive geographical range shifts that will result in changes in species diversity and functional composition and have potential repercussions for ecosystem functioning. However, the effect of these changes on species composition and functional diversity (FD) remains unclear, especially for mammals, specifically bats. We used species distribution models and a comprehensive ecological and morphometrical trait database to estimate how projected future climate and land-use changes could influence the distribution, composition, and FD of the European bat community.

Sick without signs. Subclinical infections reduce local movements, alter habitat selection, and cause demographic shifts.

In wildlife populations, parasites often go unnoticed, as infected animals appear asymptomatic. However, these infections can subtly alter behaviour. Field evidence of how these subclinical infections induce changes in movement behaviour is scarce in free-ranging animals, yet it may be crucial for zoonotic disease surveillance.

Aberrant microbiomes are associated with increased antibiotic resistance gene load in hybrid mice.

Antibiotic resistance is a priority public health problem resulting from eco-evolutionary dynamics within microbial communities and their interaction at a mammalian host interface or geographical scale. The links between mammalian host genetics, bacterial gut community, and antimicrobial resistance gene (ARG) content must be better understood in natural populations inhabiting heterogeneous environments. Hybridization, the interbreeding of genetically divergent populations, influences different components of the gut microbial communities.

Host weight, seasonality and anthropogenic factors contribute to parasite community differences between urban and rural foxes.

Pathogens often occur at different prevalence along environmental gradients. This is of particular importance for gradients of anthropogenic impact such as rural-urban transitions presenting a changing interface between humans and wildlife. The assembly of parasite communities is affected by both the external environmental conditions and individual host characteristics.

Mammal responses to global changes in human activity vary by trophic group and landscape.

Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive in the Anthropocene, so it is critical to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. We used camera trapping as a lens to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 163 species sampled in 102 projects around the world, changes in the amount and timing of animal activity varied widely.

Resource asynchrony and landscape homogenization as drivers of virulence evolution: The case of a directly transmitted disease in a social host.

Throughout the last decades, the emergence of zoonotic diseases and the frequency of disease outbreaks have increased substantially, fuelled by habitat encroachment and vectors overlapping with more hosts due to global change. The virulence of pathogens is one key trait for successful invasion. In order to understand how global change drivers such as habitat homogenization and climate change drive pathogen virulence evolution, we adapted an established individual-based model of host-pathogen dynamics.

Mosquito community composition shapes virus prevalence patterns along anthropogenic disturbance gradients.

Previously unknown pathogens often emerge from primary ecosystems, but there is little knowledge on the mechanisms of emergence. Most studies analyzing the influence of land-use change on pathogen emergence focus on a single host-pathogen system and often observe contradictory effects. Here, we studied virus diversity and prevalence patterns in natural and disturbed ecosystems using a multi-host and multi-taxa approach.

Hypotheses in urban ecology: building a common knowledge base.

Urban ecology is a rapidly growing research field that has to keep pace with the pressing need to tackle the sustainability crisis. As an inherently multi-disciplinary field with close ties to practitioners and administrators, research synthesis and knowledge transfer between those different stakeholders is crucial. Knowledge maps can enhance knowledge transfer and provide orientation to researchers as well as practitioners.

Wind energy production in forests conflicts with tree-roosting bats.

Many countries are investing heavily in wind power generation, triggering a high demand for suitable land. As a result, wind energy facilities are increasingly being installed in forests, despite the fact that forests are crucial for the protection of terrestrial biodiversity. This green-green dilemma is particularly evident for bats, as most species at risk of colliding with wind turbines roost in trees.

Environmental factors associated with the prevalence of ESBL/AmpC-producing in wild boar .

Antimicrobial resistances (AMR) in bacteria, such as ESBL/AmpC-producing , are a burden to human and animal health. This burden is mainly driven by the consumption and release of antimicrobial substances into the environment. The pollution and contamination of habitats by AMR in bacteria and antimicrobial substances can lead to the transmission of bacterial AMR to wildlife.

How do terrestrial wildlife communities respond to small-scale plantations embedded in harvested tropical forest?

To offset the declining timber supply by shifting towards more sustainable forestry practices, industrial tree plantations are expanding in tropical production forests. The conversion of natural forests to tree plantation is generally associated with loss of biodiversity and shifts towards more generalist and disturbance tolerant communities, but effects of mixed-landuse landscapes integrating natural and plantation forests remain little understood. Using camera traps, we surveyed the medium-to-large bodied terrestrial wildlife community across two mixed-landuse forest management areas in Sarawak, Malaysia Borneo which include areas dedicated to logging of natural forests and adjacent planted forests.

Bat responses to climate change: a systematic review.

Understanding how species respond to climate change is key to informing vulnerability assessments and designing effective conservation strategies, yet research efforts on wildlife responses to climate change fail to deliver a representative overview due to inherent biases. Bats are a species-rich, globally distributed group of organisms that are thought to be particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change because of their high surface-to-volume ratios and low reproductive rates. We systematically reviewed the literature on bat responses to climate change to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge, identify research gaps and biases and highlight future research needs.

Personality drives activity and space use in a mammalian herbivore.

Background: Animal personality has emerged as a key concept in behavioral ecology. While many studies have demonstrated the influence of personality traits on behavioral patterns, its quantification, especially in wild animal populations, remains a challenge. Only a few studies have established a link between personality and recurring movements within home ranges, although these small-scale movements are of key importance for identifying ecological interactions and forming individual niches.

Coastal onshore wind turbines lead to habitat loss for bats in Northern Germany.

Wind energy production is particularly rewarding along coastlines, yet coastlines are often important as migratory corridors for wildlife. This creates a conflict between energy production from renewable sources and conservation goals, which needs to be considered during environmental planning. To shed light on the spatial interactions of a high collision risk bat species with coastal wind turbines (WT), we analysed 32 tracks of 11 common noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) in Northern Germany with miniaturized global positioning system units yielding 6266 locations.

Spatiotemporal interactions of a novel mesocarnivore community in an urban environment before and during SARS-CoV-2 lockdown.

Studying species interactions and niche segregation under human pressure provides important insights into species adaptation, community functioning and ecosystem stability. Due to their high plasticity in behaviour and diet, urban mesocarnivores are ideal species for studying community assembly in novel communities. We analysed the spatial and temporal species interactions of an urban mesocarnivore community composed of the red fox Vulpes vulpes and the marten Martes sp.