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Introduction
Andréa Presotto currently works at the Department of Geography and Geosciences, Salisbury University. Andréa does research in GIScience and animal navigation, spatial cognition using Geoinformatics (GIS) and Remote Sensing. Her current projects are human-elephant conflicts in Zimbabwe and conservation of primates’ traditions in diverse Brazilian ecosystems.
Additional affiliations
January 2011 - July 2011
April 2009 - November 2010
April 2009 - December 2010
Education
August 2011 - July 2015
January 2005 - March 2009
Publications
Publications (44)
Elephants are drivers for conflict and biodiversity changes. Crop-raiding elephants are often killed as problem animals, pose a considerable threat to human-elephant relations, and reduce the tolerance for wildlife preservation. Our aim is to better understand why free-roaming elephants around Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe raid particular locations and...
Reptile-associated human salmonellosis cases have increased recently in the United States. It is not uncommon to find healthy chelonians shedding Salmonella enterica. The rate and frequency of bacterial shedding are not fully understood, and most studies have focused on captive vs. free-living chelonians and often in relation to an outbreak. Their...
Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) is a global concern that requires geospatial data collection, analysis and geovisualization for decision support and mitigation. Bull African elephants, (Loxodonata africana), are often responsible for breaking fences, raiding crops and causing economic hardship in local communities in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Me...
To increase efficiency in the search for resources, many animals rely on their spatial abilities. Specifically, primates have been reported to use mostly topological and rarely Euclidean maps when navigating in large-scale space. Here, we aimed to investigate if the navigation of wild common marmosets inhabiting a semiarid environment is consistent...
Within comparative psychology, the evolution of animal cognition is typically studied either by comparing indirect measures of cognitive abilities (e.g., relative brain size) across many species or by conducting batteries of decision-making experiments among (typically) a few captive species. Here, we propose a third, complementary approach: inferr...
Habitats with spatial variation in food availability, predation risk, and hunting pressure allow us to study how animals resolve the trade-off between food searching and predator avoidance. We investigated the influence of food availability, predation risk, and the perceived predation risk on habitat use by a primate living under high hunting press...
Animal traditions are increasingly threatened by human impact on natural habitats, posing a challenge to conservation policies. In northeastern Brazil, bearded capuchins (Sapajus libidinosus) inhabiting the Cerrado–Caatinga biome of Fazenda Boa Vista use stone hammers and anvils to crack open palm nuts and other encased foods. The same species inha...
Spatial memory allows animals to retain information regarding the location, distribution, and quality of feeding sites to optimize foraging decisions. Western gorillas inhabit a complex environment with spatiotemporal fluctuations of resource availability, prefer fruits when available, and travel long distances to reach them. Here, we examined move...
Strategies of navigation have been shown to play a critical role when animals revisit resource sites across large home ranges. The habitual route system appears to be a sufficient strategy for animals to navigate while avoiding the cognitive cost of traveling using the Euclidean map. We hypothesize that wild elephants travel more frequently using h...
Wild animal navigation usually provides complex data about the ecological aspects of space usage. Developments in Geography technologies play an important role in animal ecology and behavioral studies. The significant improvement in Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and analytical power of Geographic Information System (GIS) has furthered the discus...
Electrocution from power infrastructure threatens many primate species, yet knowledge of effective evidence-based mitigation strategies is limited. Mitigation planning requires an understanding of the spatial distribution of electrocutions to prioritize high-risk areas. In Diani, a coastal Kenyan town, electrocution is an important cause of death f...
There is evidence that wild animals are able to recall key locations and associate them with navigational routes. Studies in primate navigation suggest most species navigate through the route network system, using intersections among routes as locations of decision-making. Recent approaches presume that points of directional change may be key locat...
In studies of wild primates' spatial cognition by means of natural observation, changes in navigation patterns, particularly travel speed and linearity depending on the spatial target, are usually considered as indicative of the ability of representing and locating spatial goals. However, few investigations have considered whether other factors, su...
Making an appropriate conservation decision often requires understanding the functional connectivity of the landscape for focal species. Graph theory and continuous surface methods have become powerful tools to quantify landscape connectivity for animal movement. However, a key limitation of these methods is the use of thresholding to define either...
Worldwide, Salmonella spp. is a significant cause of disease for both humans and wildlife, with wild birds adapted to urban environments having different opportunities for pathogen exposure, infection, and transmission compared to their natural conspecifics. Food provisioning by people may influence these factors, especially when high-density mixed...
Prediction of serotype diversity.
Rarefaction prediction for serotype diversity of Salmonella isolated from white ibises in Palm Beach, Florida.
(TIF)
Ordination for serotype diversity.
Ordination analysis for serotype diversity and sampling site of Salmonella isolated from white ibises in Palm Beach, Florida. The size of the circles varies in size based on the proportion of wetland land cover within a 1 km radius from the sampling site.
(TIFF)
The ability of remote sensing to represent ecologically relevant features at multiple spatial scales makes it a powerful tool for studying wildlife distributions. Species of varying sizes perceive and interact with their environment at differing scales; therefore, it is important to consider the role of spatial resolution of remotely sensed data in...
The ability of remote sensing to represent ecologically relevant features at multiple spatial scales makes it a powerful tool for studying wildlife distributions. Species of varying sizes perceive and interact with their environment at differing scales; therefore, it is important to consider the role of spatial resolution of remotely sensed data in...
Salmonellosis cases in the in the United States show distinct geographical trends, with the southeast reporting among the highest rates of illness. In the state of Georgia, USA, non-outbreak associated salmonellosis is especially high in the southern low-lying coastal plain. Here we examined the distribution of Salmonella enterica in environmental...
This paper describes a method for predicting the locations and heights of the ten tallest trees in the Tennessee portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Iterative computation tools were utilized to process the data along with the lidar-derived bare earth digital elevation
models and digital surface models to create canopy height models...
Movement patterns of bearded capuchin monkeys (Cebus (Sapajus) libidinosus) in northeastern Brazil are likely impacted by environmental features such as elevation, vegetation density, or vegetation type. Habitat preferences of these monkeys provide insights regarding the impact of environmental features on species ecology and the degree to which th...
Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium is responsible for the majority of salmonellosis cases worldwide. This Salmonella serovar is also responsible for die-offs in songbird populations. In 2009, there was an S. Typhimurium epizootic reported in pine siskins in the eastern United States. At the time, there was also a human outbreak...
Socioecological models assume that primates adapt their social behavior to ecological conditions, and predict that food availability and distribution, predation risk and risk of infanticide by males affect patterns of social organization, social structure and mating system of primates. However, adaptability and variation of social behavior may be c...
An agent-based model was implemented to represent biological and physical environmental factors associated with the ranging behavior of bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) in Brazil. The model incorporates GIS features and data (e.g., coordinate system and multiple data layers), and represents the interaction of capuchins with their envi...
Wild primates occupy large home ranges and travel long distances to reach goals. However, how primates are able to remember goal locations and travel efficiently is unclear. Few studies present consistent results regarding what reference system primates use to navigate, and what kind of spatial information they recognize. We analysed the pattern of...
Brazilwood was the first product found in Terra de Santa Cruz, and the first explored by Portuguese colonization of Brazil. This study aims at the Occidental Cartography and the historical files represented by Portugal's interest on mapping the marketed product found in Brazil. The representation of Brazilwood in maps was possible due to scientific...
Equipamentos de posicionamento global (global positioning systems, GPS) e sistemas de informações geográficas (SIG) têm sido utilizados no apoio aos estudos de comportamento animal auxiliando as demonstrações de como as espécies se utilizam do ambiente e se orientam no espaço. A etologia cognitiva, disciplina que busca analisar como os animais usam...
O objetivo deste trabalho é abordar a questão da identificação de unidades de paisagem, ressaltando para a necessidade absoluta de tal identificação no planejamento paisagístico e, na maioria, dos projetos paisagísticos
Projects
Projects (3)
Brazil is a globally important mangrove holding nation and contains the second most mangrove forest of any nation globally after Indonesia and almost 10 percent of the global mangrove forest area. To put the mangrove holdings of Maranhão into perspective, it contains greater mangrove carbon stocks within its state borders than all nations globally aside from Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua, New Guinea, potentially Australia, Brazil itself. In our area mangroves are being encroached upon by transient dunes, which bury the mangrove forest and cut off the supply of estuarine water. The sand encroachment has progressed to 6 km from the shoreline in this region (Figure 1) and as much as 30 km further north. Aside from its forest importance the mangroves on Maranhão host populations of capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus), performing a rare form of tool use. Capuchins catch the crabs in the mangroves of Rio Preguicas; they then use wood as harmer and tree trunks as anvils to crack open crabs, a unique opportunity presented by the mangrove habitat where they live. Our main goal is developing a protocol for surveying primates in mangroves using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and thermal cameras. Despite efforts, in the fragmented mangroves of our study area we do not have enough information of bearded capuchin population living in the area, which is imperative to understand if their traditional tool use behavior is endangered.
To understand the role of elephants on the biodiversity and human geography of the region.
Elephants are the major driver for wildlife conflict and biodiversity changes in African ecosystems where they persist. Seventy-five percent of Africa’s elephants now live in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA-TFCA) along with three million people. Finding ways to coexist with the elephants is essential to secure the future of Africa's elephants and improve the futures of the people of the region.
While the importance of elephants in the ecosystem is acknowledged by all, there are still many questions as to their specific role, with assumptions often taking the place of hard data. For example, loss of biodiversity is the criteria usually used to determine that there are too many elephants in an area. However, in a four-year study in which we directly observed elephant feeding behavior, we found that breeding herds of elephants do little, if any, unsustainable damage to the environment.
The long-term goal of our project is to provide scientific and management information that helps humans and elephants coexist in a multi-use landscape. This information will be useful not only in Zimbabwe, but in other areas of abundant elephant populations, like Botswana and South Africa. Thus this study may serve as a model for the whole region.
In order to preserve both human and monkey cultures’ biodiversity, this project aims to understand the dynamics of human-primate interface in Brazilian semi-arid habitats where population of wild capuchin monkeys routinely use stone tools to crack encased foods, a finding that have important implications for understanding human evolution. Ecological and ethnographic methods are performed to investigate human–primate interface. Understanding how humans perceive their natural resources allow protecting both human and capuchin culture, and prevent conflicts between them. Effects of this project are addressed to improve the capacity of land-owners and local residents to manage their lands as well as understand the best practices for the survival of wild primates.