Beatriz Martin

• PhD
• Consultant at Randbee Consultants

Amphibians are commonly occurring inhabitants of most lentic freshwater ecosystems, yet their global populations are in alarming decline. Ponds in particular play a crucial role in supporting amphibian biodiversity. In this study, we identified the main drivers influencing amphibian species richness by conducting a comprehensive ecological characte...

Amphibians are commonly occurring inhabitants of most lentic freshwater ecosystems, yet their global populations are in alarming decline. Ponds in particular play a crucial role in supporting amphibian biodiversity. In this study, we identified the main drivers influencing amphibian species richness by conducting a comprehensive ecological characte...

The Strait of Gibraltar is considered one of the most important sites for migratory birds in the world, especially for soaring birds. Their passage at the Strait is dominated by species that breed in Western Europe and overwinter in the African Sahel or, to a lesser extent, in North Africa. Likewise, the Strait is an important corridor for seabird...

Ponds and “pondscapes” (networks of ponds) are crucial habitats for biodiversity and for delivering multiple benefits to humans, so-called “Nature’s Contribution to People”, such as climate mitigation and adaptation to climate change, creation, and maintenance of habitat for biodiversity, water purification, flood mitigation and cultural benefits (...

The spatial variation in the strength of climate change may lead to different impacts on migratory birds using different breeding areas across a region. We used a long-term data series of White Stork ring recoveries to study the temporal and spatial variation of annual survival rates of White Stork across western Europe between 1960 and 2009 in rel...

Machine learning as a successful approach for predicting complex spatio–temporal patterns in animal species abundance. Our aim was to identify an optimal analytical approach for accurately predicting complex spatio–temporal patterns in animal species distribution. We compared the performance of eight modelling techniques (generalized additive model...

The black kite (Milvus migrans) is one of the most abundant raptors in the world and one of the commonest migratory raptor in the Palaearctic flyways. The species has a very broad distribution, with resident populations in Africa, southern Asia and Australia, and long-distance migratory populations in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. Black...

Currently, there is a demand for more energy-efficient lighting sources, however, light emitted by different lighting systems differs in primary properties such as intensity, propagation direction, and wavelength spectrum, among others, and these properties may affect insect light attraction. Despite the energetic benefits of light-emitting diodes...

Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study des...

Pelagic seabirds are elusive species which are difficult to observe, thus determining their spatial distribution during the migration period is a difficult task. Here we undertook the first long-term study on the distribution of migrating shearwaters from data gathered within the framework of citizen science projects. Specifically, we collected dai...

The present publication describes the movement ecology of white storks (Ciconia ciconia) across the complete annual cycle: breeding and wintering seasons, and both migratory periods between wintering and breeding grounds. It is the fifth monograph published in the context of the Migra program (www.migraciondeaves.org/en/) run by SEO/BirdLife since...

An increasing number of wildlife-vehicle collisions occur each year worldwide, which involves extensive economic costs and constitutes one of the main anthropogenic causes of animal mortality. Because of this, there is an urgent need to identify the factors leading to collision hotspots and thus implementing effective mitigation measures. By using...

Here, we provide evidence that the number of Western European ospreys wintering in the Iberian Peninsula has been increasing over nearly two decades due to a reduction of the migration distances. We compared trends in wintering and breeding populations of ospreys in the Iberian Peninsula and western Europe, respectively, and we provide a detailed d...

The aim of this study was to estimate global population trends of abundance of two endemic migratory seabird species breeding in the Mediterranean Sea, Balearic and Scopoli's shearwaters, from migration counts at the Strait of Gibraltar. Specifically, we assessed how regional environmental conditions (i.e. sea surface temperature, chlorophyll a con...

An increasing number of wildlife-vehicle collisions occur each year worldwide, which involves extensive economic costs and constitutes one of the main anthropogenic causes of animal mortality. Because of this, there is an urgent need to identify the factors leading to collision hotspots and thus implementing effective mitigation measures. By using...

T he interdisciplinary research project AQUACROSS supports European efforts to protect biodiversity in Europe’s lakes, rivers, coasts and oceans. The case study at the IBRM Andalusia (Spain) and Morocco contains nine different realms and five biotic groups. In addition, fifteen ecosystem services have been assessed, including provisioning, regulati...

Foraging tests of the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma (IPD) show animals defect, contrary to evolutionary models that predict cooperative animals will prevail and spread in populations. This contradiction could be due to IPD rules that could be too challenging to understand for most animals. We explored this hypothesis relaxing the payoff matrix of the...

Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) is a network designed and planned to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services and to protect biodiversity. Existing GBI designs lacked a systematic method to allocate restoration zones. This study proposes a novel approach for systematically selecting cost-effective areas for restoration on the basis of biodive...

Animal-vehicle collisions have become a serious traffic safety issue. Collisions have steadily increased over the last few decades, as have their associated socio-economic costs. Here, we explore the spatial and temporal patterns of animal-vehicle collisions reported to authorities in the province of Seville, southern Spain. Most animal-vehicle col...

Species involved in animal-vehicle collisions reported to authorities in the province of Seville (Spain) in the years 2014 and 2015. Collision data were provided by the Provincial Directorate of Traffic of Seville (DGT). (PDF)

Distribution of dog-vehicle collisions in Andalusia. Collisions are shown in relation to (a) the month and (b) night-light levels used as a proxy of the distance to urban areas (see main text for further details). Black color indicates points without night-light whereas white color shows points with the highest night-light levels. The inset map ind...

This is work I presented at the 3rd International Congress on Bird Migration and Global Change, the results of which we described in Ardea.

Magnitude, composition and spatiotemporal patterns of vertebrate roadkill at regional scales: a study in southern Spain. Although roadkill studies on a large scale are challenging, they can provide valuable information to assess the impact of road traffic on animal populations. Over 22 months (between July 2009–June 2010, and April 2011–March 2012)...

Western Osprey was extinct in Portugal, mainland Spain and Turkey in the 1990s. In the Mediterranean region only a few small breeding populations (about 100 breeding pairs). After divers projects a reintroduction than 20 pairs now breed in Spain. Ospreys breeding in Europe mainly winter in sub-Saharan Africa, except for some individuals, whose numb...

Collision with turbines at wind farms is expected to have a greater impact on birds at particular sites where high concentrations of individuals occur, such as migration bottleneck areas. The Strait of Gibraltar (southern Spain) has long been recognized as the most important bottleneck in western Europe for soaring bird migration. Moreover, this ar...

In the Strait of Gibraltar the prenuptial migration of Booted Eagles (Aquila pennata) lasts 127 days, from Feb- ruary 2 to June 8 (80% of birds from March 22 to May 3, maximum March 31). The postnuptial migration lasts 88 days, from July 21 to October 16 (80% from September 1 to September 29, maximum September 19). As other gliding birds do, their...

Data has been collected mainly through remote monitoring in Spain and Africa during the last decade. Most of the data comes from the Migra program of SEO/BirdLife, although some data from bird banding and tagging with conventional radio-tracking was used. For the study of spatial ecology and movements of the Booted Eagle, 21 birds were captured a...

The Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) is an emblematic example of conservation. Currently, the species is progressively recovering in population size and range after dramatic reductions as a consequence of human persecution and the use of pesticides in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Here, we analysed the population trend and productivity in relat...

Effects of natural and artificial light on the nocturnal behaviour of the wall gecko. In the present study, we evaluated the effects of nocturnal light level (i.e. lunar phase and artificial lighting) on the activity of wall geckos (Tarentola mauritanica) of different ages in an anthropic environment. Data on individual behaviour were collected by...

A growing body of work shows that climate change is the cause of a number of directional shifts in the spring phenology of migratory birds. However, changes in autumn phenology are less well studied and their consistency across species, as well as their association with population trends, remains uncertain. We investigate changes in the autumn migr...

Our goal in this study was to identify age- and population-specific responses to climate change in the autumn migration phenology of a long-lived bird species, the white stork Ciconia ciconia, at the macroscale of its entire migration route in western Europe. We used a 40 yr data series of ring recoveries of adult (>1 yr) and juvenile (<1 yr) white...

While alteration of the migratory habits of birds is widely regarded as one of the most evident ecological effects of climate change, studies reporting shifts in migration phenology for long-lived, long-distance migrants have been few. Using time series of count data collected in southern Spain during autumn migration, we examined the magnitude and...

ABSTRACT: We studied the dynamics and trend of the last extant population of great bustards Otis tarda in Africa. Moroccan great bustards are the southernmost population of this species, and thus show the characteristics of a peripheral population: small size, isolation and low gene flow. Available counts indicate a severe population decline (62% i...

Migration monitoring may allow us to detect population trends over large geographic areas because the pattern of change in migrant counts may be expected to follow the pattern of change in population size. We analysed recent regional European population trends of migratory soaring birds from rates of change in migration counts over the Strait of Gi...

Migration is a significant event in the annual cycle of many avian species. During migration birds face many challenges, including unfamiliar foraging and refuge habitats, resulting in a much higher rate of mortality during migration than during other seasons of the year. Weather may significantly affect a bird’s decision to initiate migration, the...

While alteration of the migratory habit of birds is widely regarded as one of the most evident ecological effects of climate change, studies reporting shifts in migration phenology for long-lived, long-distance migrants have been few. We set forth to analyze the effects of local and regional weather conditions on the migration counts and evaluate t...

We examined the relationships between different environmental factors and the alpha and betadiversity of terrestrial vertebrates (birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles) in a Mediterranean region at the landscape level. We investigated whether the mechanisms underlying alpha and betadiversity patterns are influenced by energy availability, habitat...

Among the different effects of climate change there are phenological shifts of birds activity. These changes are often performed by birds attempting an optimization in the resourse exploitation. In the northern hemisphere this means a change in the migratory dates for several species of birds. This study investigates the changes in the migratory da...

ABSTRACT: We examined the autumn migratory behavior of the common buzzard Buteo buteo from recoveries of 2157 ringed individuals across Europe over the last 50 yr, as well as from birds migrating through Sweden and Spain between 1976 and 2008. A generalized linear model analysis showed evidence of a shortening of the distance between areas of commo...

This study examines the responses to human presence of the most abundant shorebird species in an important coastal migration staging area (Los Lances Beach, southern Spain). Long-term census data were used to assess the relationship between bird abundances and human densities and to determine population trends. In addition, changes in individual bi...

Predictive species' distribution models may answer ecological questions about habitat selection, co-occurrence of species and competition between them. We studied the habitat preferences and segregation of two sympatric species of de-clining sandgrouse, the black-bellied sandgrouse (Pterocles orientalis) and the pin-tailed sandgrouse (Pterocles alc...

Because of the urgency engendered by climate change and habitat loss, biodiversity must often be assessed indirectly, through the use of indicators. Recent studies have provided evidence of the usefulness of raptor species as indicators of high species richness. However, other studies have shown that presence of similar species of predators does no...

Recent studies suggest that parental resource allocation may be the most important factor explaining differences in reproductive output among parents. That said at least two different hypotheses of balance between parental foraging effort and resource allocation have been proposed. First, parents with high foraging effort have high reproductive suc...

We update and present relevant information regarding the abundance and distribution of the great bustard Otis tarda in Castilla y León (Spain) in 2008, compare it with previous census results, and analyse the effects of agricultural changes on the provincial abundance and distribution of the species. The study area was surveyed from four-wheel driv...

Collision with electric power lines is a conservation problem for many bird species. Although the implementation of flight diverters is rapidly increasing, few well-designed studies supporting the effectiveness of this costly conservation measure have been published. We provide information on the largest worldwide marking experiment to date, includ...

We modelled great bustard abundance patterns and their spatial structure in relation to habitat and landscape variables. We developed Generalized Linear Models (GLM) using long term data series – years 1997–2006 – during the breeding season in Madrid region, central Spain. Our main goal was to assess spatial and temporal variability effects on habi...

We investigated the spatial arrangement of Great Bustard Otis tarda nests relative to leks in 55 females captured at four lek sites and radio-tracked through 1-6 years in a protected area in central Spain. Although females showed a tendency to nest close to the lek centers where they were observed during the mating season (29% did it at < 2 km), le...

Great Bustards Otis tarda have expanded their habitat range from historical occupancy of natural steppes to arable farmland, where the species initially benefited from favourable feeding conditions. More recently, the species has suffered severe declines due partly to agricultural intensification. Nest losses and juvenile mortality are amongst the...

The Great Bustard (Otis tarda) is one of the heaviest flying birds and the most sexually dimorphic living bird. Adult males weighed 2.48x more than females, and their linear measurements were 18-30% larger. Weight increased between the pre-breeding and breeding seasons by 16% in females and 20% in males. Sexual size dimorphism emerges very early in...

We explored migration patterns in Great bustards (Otis tarda), a species that shows strong sexual selection and the most extreme sexual size dimorphism among birds. The aim was to explain differential migration, examining whether Great bustards fulfil the main predictions of bird migration theory hypotheses and sexual segregation theory hypotheses....

Durante los últimos 18 años se ha estudiado, desde una perspectiva científica, la ecología y comportamiento de la avutarda en diferentes poblaciones ibéricas, lo que ha dado lugar a la publicación de diversos trabajos sobre dispersión juvenil y sus causas próximas y últimas, movimientos estacionales de hembras y de machos, la composición de la diet...

1. We investigated the causes of natal dispersal in four Spanish areas where 35 breeding groups of the polygynous great bustard Otis tarda were monitored intensively. A total of 392 juveniles were radio-tracked between 1991 and 2006 by ground and via aeroplane to avoid potential biases derived from the non-detection of long-distance dispersers. 2....

We explored sex-biased mortality patterns in a species showing the most extreme sexual dimorphism among birds, the great bustard Otis tarda. Between 1991 and 2005 we studied juvenile and immature survival in a sample of 361 great bustards radio-tagged at two different populations in Spain, Villafáfila and Madrid. Mortality decreased with age, from...

—The Great Bustard Otis tarda in Andalusia, southern Spain: status, distribution and trends. Aims: Between 2001 and 2004 the first comprehensive census of Great Bustards Otis tarda was carried out in Andalusia, southern Spain. This region holds one of the most endangered populations of the Iberian Peninsula. The aims were to establish the locations...

We studied factors that affect prey selection by a generalist predator that opportunistically attacks prey species, and the associated inter- and intra-specific responses of prey to this type of predation. Our model system was a guild of ground-foraging birds that are preyed upon by magpies ( Pica pica) during the breeding season. We found that mag...

Between 1998 and 2002 we carried out five spring censuses of the Great Bustard population of Madrid region. The average count was 1148 individuals (337 males and 811 females) distributed in 13 leks. The species' distribution is highly fragmented, due to the presence of urban areas and infrastructures. Comparison with earlier censuses suggests that...

Current theory of risk-sensitive foraging predicts that forages should choose feeding sites on the basis of variation in as well as mean reward rate when there is a shortfall in their food supply or a decrease in their. energy budget. For a given mean reward delay, they should choose high variance feeding sites if they al e running below energy req...