Andres OrdizUniversidad de León | UNILEON · Biodiversidad y Gestión Ambiental
Andres Ordiz
PhD in Conservation Biology
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113
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Introduction
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November 2023 - November 2028
October 2018 - September 2028
Publications
Publications (113)
Large terrestrial carnivores are now widely recognized as essential components of ecosystems. However, the management of large carnivores varies greatly at national and international scales, and some management decision processes do not seem to be informed by scientific evidence. We discuss the ongoing debate on wolf management in Europe, the recen...
La educación superior necesita adaptarse constantemente a un entorno cambiante y dinámico que demanda una constante evolución en la forma de entender el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje, y es en este contexto que surge la innovación docente como un elemento clave para asegurar la calidad y el progreso de la educación superior y, por lo tanto, el éx...
Wolves are one of the most studied wildlife species in the world, yet we only have an emerging picture of how humans affect wolf social dynamics. This chapter provides an overview of wolf social dynamics, including the fundamentals of how they live, breed, hunt, and survive, the advantages and disadvantages that coincide with group living, and how...
Globally, climate is changing rapidly, which causes shifts in many species' distributions, stressing the need to understand their response to changing environmental conditions to inform conservation and management. Northern latitudes are expected to experience strongest changes in climate, with milder winters and decreasing snow cover. The wolverin...
While wildlife and cultural preservation goals can be either complimentary or counteractive, the goals of large carnivore conservation and traditional pastoralist lifestyles are often at odds. Livestock depredation can negatively impact the economies of livestock herders, while subsequent lethal removals contribute to local carnivore population dec...
The mechanisms determining habitat use in animal populations have important implications for population dynamics, conservation, and management. Here, we investigated how an increase in annual numbers of brown bear females with cubs of the year (FCOY) in a growing, yet threatened population, could explain differences in the habitat characteristics a...
As wolves recolonize areas of Europe ranging from moderate to high anthropogenic impact, fear of wolves is a recurring source of conflict. Shared tools for evaluating wolf responses to humans, and comparing such responses across their range, can be valuable. Experiments in which humans approach wild wolves can increase our understanding of how wolv...
Wolf management in Spain is remarkably different at regional scales. South of Douro river, wolves are protected, north of Douro wolves can be hunted, and culling occurs on both sides. After a formal request to include wolves in the Spanish Red List of Threatened Species, wolves have been “listed,” but not as a vulnerable species. Recreational hunti...
Competition between apex predators can alter the strength of top‐down forcing, yet we know little about the behavioral mechanisms that drive competition in multipredator ecosystems. Interactions between predators can be synergistic (facilitative) or antagonistic (inhibitive), both of which are widespread in nature, vary in strength between species...
Los animales salvajes pueden actuar como reservorios de patógenos (virus, bacterias, protozoos y hongos) potencialmente peligrosos para el ser humano. De hecho, la gran mayoría de las enfermedades emergentes son zoonosis (es decir, son transmitidas por animales) y todo apunta a que el nuevo SARS-CoV-2, el virus responsable de la actual pandemia de...
In northern Eurasia, large carnivores overlap with semi-domestic reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) and moose (Alces alces). In Scandinavia, previous studies have quantified brown bear (Ursus arctos) spring predation on neonates of reindeer (mostly in May) and moose (mostly in June). We explored if habitat selection by brown bears changed following resou...
Our limited understanding of visual communication in certain animal groups, such as mammals, has limited our expectations about its use and function. Even so, there is evidence to suggest that in some species this means of communication is more widely used than previously thought. Such is the case of the visual marking of trees by brown bears when...
Coexistence of humans and large carnivores is a major challenge for conservation and management, especially in human-modified landscapes. Ongoing recovery of some large carnivore populations is good conservation news, but it also brings about increased levels of conflict with humans. Compensation payments and preventive measures are used worldwide...
Threat to human safety is the most dramatic conflict between humans and large carnivores. Although carnivore attacks are generally rare, bears are relatively often involved. Here, we reveal an association between human encroachment into the landscape, that is, increasing road density, and brown bear-caused human casualties (injuries and fatalities)...
Species assemblages often have a non‐random nested organization, which in vertebrate scavenger (carrion‐consuming) assemblages is thought to be driven by facilitation in competitive environments. However, not all scavenger species play the same role in maintaining assemblage structure, as some species are obligate scavengers (i.e., vultures) and ot...
The rather limited human ability to understand animal vision and visual signalling has frequently clouded our expectations concerning the visual abilities of other animals. But there are multiple reasons to suspect that visual signalling is more widely employed by animals than previously thought. Because visibility of visual marks depends on the ba...
Large carnivores play a key ecological role in nature, yet quantifying the effects of predation at large spatiotemporal scales remains challenging. Wolves and brown bears have recovered in Sweden, where they share the same staple prey, moose. This ecosystem is representative of the Eurasian boreal realm, and makes an interesting case study for expl...
The effects of human disturbance spread over virtually all ecosystems and ecological
communities on Earth. In this review, we focus on the effects of human disturbance on terrestrial apex predators. We summarize their ecological role in nature and how they respond to different sources of human disturbance. Apex predators control their prey and smal...
Scent-mediated communication is considered the principal communication channel in many mammal species. Compared with visual and vocal communication, odors persist for a longer time, enabling individuals to interact without being in the same place at the same time. The brown bear (Ursus arctos), like other mammals, carries out chemical communication...
Reliable data and methods for assessing changes in wildlife population size over time are necessary for management and conservation. For most species, assessing abundance is an expensive and labor-intensive task that is not affordable on a frequent basis. We present a novel approach to reconstructing brown bear population dynamics in Slovenia in th...
Large carnivores, such as brown bears (Ursus arctos), wolves (Canis lupus), and tigers (Panthera tigris), can play a key ecological role from their apex position in trophic systems. Within the overall context of bottom-up and top-down regulation of ecosystems, predation by large carnivores often induces demographic and behavioral changes in prey sp...
Humans disturb bears in many ways, either directly when they encounter humans or indirectly by changing their behavior and way of life to avoid humans, human activity, and infrastructure. Here we summarize research on how brown bears normally react when encountering humans, what a human encounter may entail for a bear, and whether bears habituate o...
Bears have fascinated people since ancient times. The relationship between bears and humans dates back thousands of years, during which time we have also competed with bears for shelter and food. In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats, climate change, and illegal trade in their body parts, including t...
Bears have fascinated people since ancient times. The relationship between bears and humans dates back thousands of years, during which time we have also competed with bears for shelter and food. In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats, climate change, and illegal trade in their body parts, including t...
Brown bears Ursus arctos were historically persecuted and almost eradicated from southern Europe in the twentieth century as a result of hunting and direct persecution. The effects of human-induced mortality were exacerbated by other threats, such as habitat loss and fragmentation, due to the expansion of human populations. As a result, nowadays th...
The media and scientific literature are increasingly reporting an escalation of large carnivore attacks on humans, mainly in the so-called developed countries, such as Europe and North America. Although large carnivore populations have generally increased in developed countries, increased numbers are not solely responsible for the observed rise in...
Significance
We are experiencing the accelerated loss and reconfiguration of biological diversity. Meanwhile, those charged with natural resource management are struggling to meet the challenges of monitoring and managing wildlife populations across vast areas crisscrossed by political borders. What if, akin to weather maps, we could track and fore...
Coexistence of humans and large carnivores is a major challenge for conservation and management, especially in human‐modified landscapes. Ongoing recovery of some large carnivore populations is good conservation news, but it also brings about increased levels of conflict with humans. Compensation payments and preventive measures are used worldwide...
Several large carnivore populations are recovering former ranges, and it is important to understand interspecific interactions between overlapping species. In Scandinavia, recent research has reported that brown bear presence influences gray wolf habitat selection and kill rates. Here, we characterized the temporal use of a common prey resource by...
Habitat selection of animals depends on factors such as food availability, landscape features, and intra- and interspecific interactions. Individuals can show several behavioral responses to reduce competition for habitat, yet the mechanisms that drive them are poorly understood. This is particularly true for large carnivores, whose fine-scale moni...
Expansion of human activities into large carnivore habitats and of large carnivore ranges into anthropogenic settings increase the potential for human-wildlife conflicts. Future carnivore survival and recovery depend on both their ability to adapt to human-modified landscapes and the application of adequate conservation strategies. We review human-...
The organization of ecological assemblages has important implications for ecosystem functioning, but little is known about how scavenger communities organize at the global scale. Here, we test four hypotheses on the factors affecting the network structure of terrestrial vertebrate scavenger assemblages and its implications on ecosystem functioning....
Group living is an important behavioral feature in some species of mammals, although somewhat uncommon in the Order Carnivora. Wolves Canis lupus are highly social and cooperative carnivores that live in family groups, i.e. packs. The number of wolves in a pack affects social, reproductive and predatory behavior, thus conditioning population dynami...
The recovery of large carnivores in human-dominated landscapes comes with challenges. In general, large carnivores avoid humans and their activities, and human avoidance favors coexistence, but individual variation in large carnivore behavior may occur. The detection of individuals close to human settlements or roads can trigger fear in local commu...
Areas used by female brown bears (Ursus arctos) with cubs-of-the-year (hereafter, FCOY) during the first months after den exit are crucial for offspring survival, primarily because of the risk of infanticide by male bears. Therefore, FCOY may avoid areas frequented by adult males during the mating season. The main aim of this study was to identify...
Reliable methods to measure stress-related glucocorticoid responses in free-ranging animals are important for wildlife management and conservation. Such methods are also paramount for our ability to improve our knowledge of the ecological consequences of physiological processes. The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large carnivore of ecological, cult...
We compiled, summarized and reviewed 338 cases of people killed or injured by brown bears from 1932 to 2017 in Russia,
home of about half of the world’s brown bears. During the Soviet period, 1932–1990, hunters and outdoor workers
were injured/killed by bears more frequently than people engaged in other activities, 28% and 19% among all incidents,...
Poco se sabe sobre la subpoblación oriental de osos
cantábricos, una cenicienta moderna en el escenario de la
conservación de las especies amenazadas. Para el Grupo
de Investigación del Oso Cantábrico, la recuperación tan
lenta de este núcleo osero podría estar relacionada con
la mortalidad directa inducida por el hombre.
La comunicación mediada por olores se considera el principal canal de comunicación en muchas especies de mamíferos. En comparación con la comunicación visual y acústica, los olores persisten durante más tiempo, lo que permite a los individuos interactuar sin necesidad de superponerse simultáneamente en el espacio y el tiempo. El oso pardo (Ursus ar...
El rascado en los árboles juega un papel fundamental en la comunicación intraespecífica de los osos pardos (Ursus arctos), cuyas áreas de campeo a menudo se encuentran solapadas. A través de estos mensajes, los osos son capaces de reconocer a todos los individuos de su zona sin necesidad de interacciones directas. Se ha demostrado que los osos pard...
El Grupo de Investigación del Oso Cantábrico, establecido en el Principado de Asturias desde 2014, cuenta en la actualidad con 19 personas (investigadores del CSIC y la Universidad de Oviedo, investigadores pre y postdoctorales, técnicos de campo). Desde sus comienzos el grupo ha recibido financiación para 4 proyectos, entre ellos un Proyecto de Ex...
Background
Understanding animal movement facilitates better management and conservation. The link between movement and physiology holds clues to the basic drivers of animal behaviours. In bears, heart rate increases with the metabolic rate during the active phase. Their movement and heart rate change at seasonal and daily scales, and can also depen...
PDF of submitted version available for free at:
http://publish.illinois.edu/maxallen/files/2019/06/Sebastian-Gonzalez-et-al.-MS.pdf
Understanding the distribution of biodiversity across the Earth is one of the most challenging questions in biology. Much research has been directed at explaining the species latitudinal pattern showing that communi...
There is a need to quantify and better understand how wildlife interact with linear features, as these are integral elements of most landscapes. One potentially important aspect is linear feature tracking (LFT), yet studies rarely succeed in directly revealing or quantifying this behavior. In a proof-of-concept study, we employed short-term intensi...
Anthropogenic hybridization is widely perceived as a threat to the conservation of biodiversity. Nevertheless, to date, relevant policy and management interventions are unresolved and highly convoluted. While this is due to the inherent complexity of the issue, we hereby hypothesize that a lack of agreement concerning management goals and approache...
Natal habitat preference induction (NHPI) occurs when characteristics of the natal habitat influence the future habitat selection of an animal. However, the influence of NHPI after the dispersal phase has received remarkably little attention. We tested whether exposure to humans in the natal habitat helps understand why some adult wolves Canis lupu...
Several large carnivore populations are increasing in human-dominated landscapes, but this good conservation news includes management challenges. Because of existing fear and negative human attitudes towards carnivores and potential carnivore habituation to people, better knowledge on carnivore behavior is needed to favor human-carnivore coexistenc...
In previous centuries, wolves were extirpated across much of their range worldwide, but they started to recover in Europe since the end of last century. A general pattern of this recovery is the expansion of the range occupied by local populations. The Iberian wolf population, shared by Portugal and Spain, reached its lowest extent and abundance ar...
Natal dispersal is an important mechanism for the viability of
populations. The influence of local conditions or experience
gained in the natal habitat could improve fitness if dispersing
individuals settle in an area with similar habitat characteristics.
This process, defined as ‘natal habitat-biased dispersal’
(NHBD), has been used to explain dis...
Large carnivores are recolonizing parts of their historical range in Europe, a heavily modified human landscape. This calls for an improvement of our knowledge on how large carnivores manage to coexist with humans, and on the effects that human activity has on large carnivore behaviour, especially in areas where carnivore populations are still enda...
We investigated whether the degree of natal exposure to anthropogenic influences could explain some of the variation in the selection of habitat with regard to anthropogenic factors in Scandinavian wolves. In the first part of the study we tested whether anthropogenic influences in the natal habitat might affect the choice of a breeding territory....
Large carnivores are often persecuted due to conflict with human activities, making their conservation in human-modified landscapes very challenging. Conflict-related scenarios are increasing worldwide, due to the expansion of human activities or to the recovery of carnivore populations. In general, brown bears Ursus arctos avoid humans and their s...
Set of top candidate models (ΔAICc <2) with combinations of the variables that could influence the probability and the intensity of damage of apiaries by brown bears in the Cantabrian Mountains, Spain.
Variables include environmental factors, apiary features, and spatial and temporal factors. Note that the variables Probability-1, Prevention, Human...
Identifying how sympatric species belonging to the same guild coexist is a major question of community ecology and conservation. Habitat segregation between two species might help reduce the effects of interspecific competition and apex predators are of special interest in this context, because their interactions can have consequences for lower tro...
Human disturbance causes behavioral responses in wildlife, including large carnivores. Previous research in Scandinavia has documented that brown bears (Ursus arctos) show a variety of behavioral reactions to different human activities. We investigated how proximity to human settlements and roads, as proxies of human influence, affected brown bears...
Large carnivores are challenging to manage, partly because they are wide-ranging and therefore have large distribution ranges that may cross political or administrative boundaries. Moreover, large carnivores are conflict prone in relation with some human activities, which results in diverse conservation and management policies. The conservation and...
Predation risk modulates the population dynamics and habitat use of animals, forcing them to invest in antipredator behavior, e.g., trading off foraging efficiency and vigilance, potentially with fitness costs. Human-induced mortality and disturbance can be interpreted in this predator-prey framework, and it is well documented that they can affect...
Human persecution and habitat loss have endangered large carnivore populations worldwide, but some are recovering, exacerbating old conflicts. Carnivores can injure and kill people; the most dramatic form of wildlife-human conflict. In Scandinavia, the brown bear (Ursus arctos) population increased from ~500 bears in 1977 to ~3300 in 2008, with an...
Summary from the course “Säkrare björnjakt”.
(DOCX)