Cécile VanpéFrench Biodiversity Agency / Office Français de la Biodiversité (OFB) · Direction de la Recherche et de l'Appui Scientifique (DRAS) - Service Conservation et Gestion des Espèces à Enjeux
Cécile Vanpé
PhD. in Ecology and Evolution
https://sites.google.com/view/cecilevanpepro/home
About
56
Publications
15,833
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1,174
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
I am a researcher in wildlife ecology and a project leader on large carnivores at the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB).
My research focuses on the ecology, genetics, dynamics and conservation of Pyrenean brown bear:
- non-invasive population monitoring
- conservation genetics
- role in ecosystem functioning
- interactions with other species
- functional connectivity
- spatial ecology
- impacts of human activities
- coexistence with humans
https://sites.google.com/view/cecilevanpepro/home
Additional affiliations
January 2020 - December 2021
French Biodiversity Agency / Office Français de la Biodiversité (OFB)
Position
- Researcher
Description
- Project leader for the Pyrenean brown bear project at the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB). Our main aim is : - to monitor the Pyrenean brown bear population, using non-invasive field methods in order to inform management decision-making and monitor conservation status. - to conduct research on the ecology of Pyrenean brown bear and its coexistence with human activities that will provide management authorities with scientifically based knowledge to meet challenges facing this population.
February 2017 - December 2019
National Hunting and Wildlife Office / Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage (ONCFS)
Position
- Researcher
Description
- Assistant leader of the Pyrenean brown bear team at National Hunting and Wildlife Agency. Our main aim is : - to monitor the Pyrenean brown bear population, using non-invasive field methods in order to inform management decision-making and monitor conservation status. - to conduct research on the ecology of Pyrenean brown bear and its coexistence with human activities that will provide management authorities with scientifically based knowledge to meet challenges facing this population.
April 2016 - January 2017
French National Centre for Scientific Research
Position
- Post-doctoral researcher ("AGEX" project ANR funding)
Description
- Subject: Long-term effects of heterozygosity in roe deer. Age-assortative mating and multiple paternity in roe deer.
Education
October 2003 - June 2007
September 2002 - September 2003
September 1999 - June 2000
Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 As part of an International Exchange Program (CREPUQ) with the MSc. in Wildlife and habitat management of the University of Rimouski (UQAR, Canada).
Field of study
- Biology of Populations and Ecosystems
Publications
Publications (56)
Connectivity, in the sense of the persistence of movements between habitat patches, is key to maintain endangered populations and has to be evaluated in management plans. In practice, connectivity is difficult to quantify especially for rare and elusive species. Here, we use spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models with an ecological detection distan...
Connectivity, in the sense of the persistence of movements between habitat patches, is key to maintain endangered populations and has to be evaluated in management plans. In practice, connectivity is difficult to quantify especially for rare and elusive species. Here, we use spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models with an ecological detection distan...
Estimating the size of small populations of large mammals can be achieved via censuses, or complete
counts, of recognizable individuals detected over a time period: minimum detected (population) size
(MDS). However, as a population grows larger and its spatial distribution expands, the risk of underestimating
population size using MDS rapidly incre...
Connectivity is a key driver of the recovery and expansion of endangered populations and has to be evaluated in management plans. In practice, connectivity is difficult to quantify especially for rare and elusive species. Here, we use spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models with an ecological detection distance to identify barriers to movement. We f...
A la demande du Ministère de la Transition Ecologique, l’Office Français de la
Biodiversité (OFB), par le biais du Réseau Ours Brun (ROB) et en collaboration avec ses
homologues aragonais, catalans, navarrais et andorrans, est chargé d’assurer le suivi annuel
de la population d’ours brun présente sur la chaîne pyrénéenne.
Le travail de collecte des...
Abundance of small populations of large mammals may be assessed using complete counts of the different individuals detected over a time period, so-called minimum detected size (MDS). However, as population is growing larger and its distribution is expanding wider, the risk of under-estimating population size using MDS is increasing sharply due to t...
The Pyrenean brown bear population is annually monitored by cross-border wildlife services involving Andorran, Spanish and French teams. In France, the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB), through the Brown Bear Network (BBN), is in charge of this task. The monitoring relies on non-invasive field collection of brown bear presence signs conducted using...
In the Pyrenees, brown bear population abundance is estimated from non-invasive genetic analyses of scat and hair samples. Although such analyses are highly beneficial for population monitoring and research, it can be especially difficult for humans to locate bear scats in the field. To address this, we have incorporated a dog (trained from an earl...
Many species are structured in social groups (SGs) where individuals exhibit complex mating strategies. Yet, most population genetic studies ignore SGs either treating them as small random-mating units or focusing on a higher hierarchical level (the population). Empirical studies acknowledging SGs have found an overall excess of heterozygotes withi...
La population d’ours bruns présente dans les Pyrénées fait l’objet d’un suivi annuel transfrontalier impliquant les services andorrans, espagnols et français. En France, l’OFB, par le biais du Réseau Ours Brun (ROB), est chargé de cette tâche. Le suivi fait appel à des techniques de recherche des indices de présence des ours collectés de façon oppo...
Whether female mating tactics vary with age based on their preference for mates remains
poorly documented. To fill this knowledge gap, we examined how maternal age is related to the age of their mates using detailed individual long‐term monitoring of a genotyped and pedigreed European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus, Linnaeus, 1758) population. We f...
Talk presented at the 29th International Congress for Conservation Biology ICCB : https://conbio.org/mini-sites/iccb-2019/ ) in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) on the 24th of July 2019.
Summary :
The political fragmentation and the high species mobility imply that most European large carnivore populations are transboundary, which makes conservation effort...
The Pyrenean brown bear population is annually monitored by cross-border services involving Andorran, Spanish and French teams. In France, the National Hunting and Wildlife Agency (ONCFS) through the Brown Bear Network (BBN), is in charge of this task. The population monitoring rests on the search of bear presence signs collected both opportunistic...
La France s'est engagée à maintenir la biodiversité sur son territoire et a pris diverses mesures (Stratégie Nationale pour la Biodiversité (SNB) depuis 2004, Loi Grenelle I d’août 2009, loi pour la reconquête de la biodiversité, de la nature et des paysages d’août 2016…) pour se doter des moyens d'y parvenir. Ce maintien passe notamment par la pér...
The Pyrenean brown bear population is annually monitored by cross-border services involving Andorran, Spanish and French teams. In France, the National Hunting and Wildlife Agency (ONCFS) through the Brown Bear Network (ROB) is in charge of this task across the French Pyrenees. The monitoring of the population rests essentially on the search of bea...
Background: Understanding the genetic and environmental mechanisms governing variation in morphology or phenology in wild populations is currently an important challenge. While there is a general consensus that selection is stronger under stressful conditions, it remains unclear whether the evolutionary potential of traits should increase or decrea...
To secure mating opportunities, males often develop and maintain conspicuous traits that are involved in intrasexual and/or intersexual competition. While current models of sexual selection rely on the assumption that producing such traits is costly, quantifying the cost of allocating to secondary sexual traits remains challenging. According to the...
Because avoiding predation is crucial for fitness, foraging animals must trade acquisition of high-quality resources against risk avoidance when the best resources occur in locations with high predation risk. Although optimality models predict the distance at which an animal should initiate vigilance and flight, many studies have shown that animals...
Dispersal is a key life-history trait governing the response of individuals, populations and species to changing environmental conditions. In the context of global change, it is therefore essential to better understand the respective role of condition-, phenotype-, and genetic-dependent drivers of dispersal behaviour. Although the importance of imm...
Behavioural consistency is a key assumption when evaluating how between-individual differences in behaviour influence life history tactics. Hence, understanding how and why variation in behavioural repeatability occurs is crucial. While analyses of behavioural repeatability are common, few studies of wild populations have investigated variation in...
Individual differences in behavior may strongly shape life-history trajectories. However, few empirical studies to date have
investigated the link between behavioral traits and fitness, especially in wild populations. We measured the impact of coping
style in female roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) on early survival of their offspring. Specifically,...
Quantifying accurately the relationship between a phenotypic trait and body mass is a long-standing challenge in evolutionary biology and constitutes the core of allometric analyses. The traditional approach to study allometric relationships (expressed as y = b xa , [[1][1]]) is to fit a linear (or
Although theoretical studies have predicted a link between individual multilocus heterozygosity and dispersal, few empirical studies have investigated the effect of individual heterozygosity on dispersal propensity or distance. We investigated this link using measures of heterozygosity at 12 putatively neutral microsatellite markers and natal dispe...
When individuals disperse, they modify the physical and social composition of their reproductive environment, potentially impacting their fitness. The choice an individual makes between dispersal and philopatry is thus critical, hence a better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the decision to leave the natal area is crucial. We explored h...
Breeding dispersal, defined as the net movement between successive breeding sites, remains a poorly understood and seldom reported phenomenon in mammals, despite its importance for population dynamics and genetics. In large herbivores, females may be more mobile during the breeding season, undertaking short-term trips (excursions) outside their nor...
Allometric relationships between sexually selected traits and bodysize have been
extensively studied in recent decades. While sexually selected traits generally dis-
play positive allometry, a few recent reports have suggested that allometric
relationships are not always linear. In male cervids, having both long antlers
and large size provides bene...
Daily food requirements scale with body mass and activity in animals. While small species of birds have higher mass-specific field metabolic rates than larger species, larger species have higher absolute energy costs. Under energy balance, we thus expect the small species to have a higher energy value diet. Also the weight and time constraints for...
Many lemur species are arboreal, elusive, and/or nocturnal and are consequently difficult to approach, observe and catch. In addition, most of them are endangered. For these reasons, non-invasive sampling is especially useful in primates including lemurs. A key issue in conservation and ecological studies is to identify the sex of the sampled indiv...
The only specialized ant-eating mammal in Australia and New Guinea is the egg-laying short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), and this single species occurs throughout Australia in a wide range of habitats. Despite the diversity of habitats and density and distribution of prey species, home-range sizes throughout Australia seem remarkably sim...
Little is known about traits under sexual selection in territorial mammals with low sexual size dimorphism. We examined the potential for sexual selection on male body mass and antler length in the European roe deer Capreolus capreolus, a territorial ungulate in which males are less than 10% heavier than females. Independently, both body mass and a...
We used three different methods, size-selected genomic library, cross-species amplification of a mammal-wide set of conserved microsatellites and genomic sequencing, to develop a panel of 43 microsatellite loci for the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus). These loci were screened against 13 individuals from three different regions (Tasman...
We investigated age-specific variation in male yearly breeding success (YBS) using genetic estimates obtained from 2 populations of a territorial ungulate, the European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus). YBS in both populations was markedly age-structured, with 3 distinct stages, supporting the dome-shaped pattern of variation commonly reported for ag...
An explanation for female multiple mating when males offer no material benefits but sperm remains elusive, largely because of a lack of empirical support for the genetic benefits hypothesis. We used 21 microsatellite markers to test for multiple paternities among 88 litters of roe deer, Capreolus capreolus, and to investigate the inbreeding avoidan...
Anecdotal evidence has suggested that, during the rutting period, female roe deer may undertake short excursions, outside of their normal home range, possibly to mate with a reproductive partner. To address this question, we analysed the ranging behaviour of 27 female roe deer Capreolus capreolus, equipped with GPS collars, inhabiting a fragmented...
It is commonly assumed that the propensity to disperse and the dispersal distance of mammals should increase with increasing density and be greater among males than among females. However, most empirical evidence, especially on large mammals, has focused on highly polygynous and dimorphic species displaying female-defence mating tactics. We tested...
1. Territoriality is commonly associated with resource defence polygyny, where males are expected to gain access to females by anticipating how resources will influence female distribution and competing for resource-rich sites to establish their zone of dominance. 2. We tested this hypothesis in European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) by simultaneo...
In mammals, species with high sexual size dimorphism tend to have highly polygynous mating systems associated with high variance
in male lifetime reproductive success (LRS), leading to a high opportunity for sexual selection. However, little information
is available for species with weak sexual size dimorphism. In a long-term study population, we u...
1. Climatic variation outside the breeding season affects fluctuations in population numbers of seabirds and marine mammals. A challenge in identifying the underlying biological mechanisms is the lack of information on their foraging strategies during winter, when individuals migrate far from their breeding grounds. 2. We investigated the temporal...
Le but de cette étude était d'utiliser les techniques moléculaires dans deux populations de chevreuil, pour estimer la variance du succès reproducteur des mâles et identifier les principaux déterminants de cette variance.
Comme attendu du fait de son faible dimorphisme sexuel, la variance dans le succès reproducteur à vie des mâles, et donc l'oppor...
The aim of this study was to use for the first time molecular techniques (microsatellite genotyping and paternity analyses), in combination with field ecology studies, to provide data on male breeding success and identify the main determinants of variation in male breeding success in two long-term monitored populations of European roe deer Capreolu...
Identifying factors shaping secondary sexual traits is essential in understanding how their variation may influence male fitness. Little information is available on the allocation of resources to antler growth in territorial ungulates with low sexual size dimorphism. We investigated phenotypic and environmental factors affecting both absolute and r...
Identifying factors shaping secondary sexual traits is essential in understanding how their variation may influence male fitness. Little information is available on the allocation of resources to antler growth in territorial ungulates with low sexual size dimorphism. We investigated phenotypic and environmental factors affecting both absolute and r...
Strong reciprocal relationships have long been suspected between mating systems and sexual
selection, and so different angles of discussion can be pursued to investigate these
relationships. In this essay, mating systems are regarded as one of the factors that may
influence the strength and consequences of sexual selection.
The ungulates show a...
Projects
Projects (3)
The objective of the ECOSYBEAR research program from the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB) is to characterise the multifunctional role of the brown bear in the structure, functioning, dynamics and resilience of Pyrenean (socio-)ecosystems, explicitly including humans and their activities in the food webs as a hyper keystone species modifying the environment and affecting other species and their role in the ecosystems, but also as a beneficiary of goods and services provided by the bear and biodiversity.
The ECOSYBEAR program has 3 main axes:
1. Assessing the role of the brown bear as a mobile link agent (dispersal of seeds, spores, mycorrhizal symbioses, parasites and nutrients).
2. Characterising the trophic and non-trophic interactions (competition, predation, facilitation...) of the brown bear with other species (wild boar, capercaille, red deer, small and medium carnivores, birds of prey...).
3. Identifying the possible interference of human activities (recreational activities, hunting, forestry, road traffic, animal husbandry, etc.) on the movements of the brown bear and consequently on its ecological role.
These information should help to change perceptions of the brown bear and to better conserve and sustainably manage the Pyrenean brown bear population and more widely Pyrenean bidoiversity and ecosystems, in the context of global changes.
The brown bear Ursus arctos almost went extinct in Europe in the past century due to habitat destruction and fragmentation as well as excessive hunting, and is now found in small, isolated populations in Central, Northern and Western Europe. One of the most endangered populations is located in the Pyrenees on the border of France, Andorra and Spain. Only five relict individuals remained in the western side of the mountain range in 1995. In an attempt to save the population, three releases of bears originated from Slovenia totalizing 9 individuals were organized in 1996–1997, 2006 and 2016. As a result, over the last two decades, the Pyrenean population of bears has increased regularly thanks to regular reproduction events, reaching 39 individuals in 2016. But its status is still precarious due to high consanguinity and the fragmentation of the population in two isolated subpopulations.
The aim of the brown bear project of the French National Hunting and Wildlife Agency (ONCFS) is:
- to monitor Pyrenean brown bear population size and trends, distribution, reproduction events and genetic diversity, using non-invasive field methods (in particular hair traps, automatically triggered camera traps, transect sampling and opportunistic monitoring, combined with molecular tools or photo identification) in order to inform management decision-making and monitor population conservation status;
- to conduct research on the ecology of the Pyrenean brown bear population and its coexistance with human activities that will provide management authorities with scientifically based knowledge to meet the main challenges (e.g., social acceptance, habitat fragmentation, consanguinity) facing this population.
The PATCH project is a fundamental research project, coordinated by Cécile Vanpé (postdoctorant) at the CNRS LBBE lab at Lyon. It also involves the CEFS and CBGP INRA laboratories at Toulouse and Montpellier, the Hunting and Wildlife National Agency (ONCFS) and the Swedish lab of Grimsö Wildlife Research Station. The project began in December 2012 and has lasted 40 months. It has benefited from an ANR funding of 373,514 €.
Landscape modifications have been recognized throughout the world as a key issue affecting biodiversity. It is therefore critical to better understand how animal populations respond to environmental change and persist in modified environments. The impact of landscape changes can vary widely between species, depending on their habitat use requirements, diet and mobility. Some native species, called synanthropic species, can even benefit from anthropogenic landscape changes. Yet, although these species are often in expansion and are the object of major societal issues, the influence of habitat loss and fragmentation on these synanthropic species has received very little attention so far. The impact of landscape changes on behaviours remains also largely unknown. Yet, behavioural plasticity plays a key role in species adaptation to the rapid environmental changes caused by anthropogenic activities, because of the high reactivity and lability of behaviours. The PATCH project therefore aims at explaining how behavioural plasticity has enabled a primarily forest-dwelling species, the European roe deer, to colonize and flourish in human-dominated landscapes.