Christian Ernest Vincenot

University of Luxembourg

Spatial patterns and self-organization of plants has been a subject of fascination because the underlying mechanisms have been hard to determine, raising different explanatory hypotheses. Plant–soil negative feedback (PSNF) – defined as the induction of negative conditions for conspecific establishment – has been widely studied in both field and la...

Flying foxes provide critical ecosystem services by pollinating and disseminating diverse plant species. Yet, they face intensifying threats, particularly on islands. The situation is epitomized by the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. In December 2016, the Mauritian government implemented the second mass cull of a threatened, endemic flying fox sp...

Progress in understanding and managing complex systems comprised of decision-making agents, such as cells, organisms, ecosystems or societies,is—like many scientific endeavours—limited by disciplinary boundaries.These boundaries, however, are moving and can actively be made porous or even disappear. To study this process, I advanced an original bib...

Flying foxes are keystone species on islands and are threatened worldwide, particularly by forest degradation, hunting and culling. They are often persecuted if they are perceived as agricultural pests, but the extent of crop damage from flying foxes and the factors triggering their visits to crops are not well established. This study aimed to inve...

The Overview, Design concepts and Details (ODD) protocol for describing Individual- and Agent-Based Models (ABMs) is now widely accepted and used to document such models in journal articles. As a standard- ized document for providing a consistent, logical and readable account of the structure and dynamics of ABMs, some research groups also find it...

Resource partitioning among tropical bats in agricultural areas of Peninsular Malaysia remains unclear. This study was conducted to evaluate resource partitioning among bats by examining their fecal samples. The main bat species sampled included: Rhinolophus coelophyllus , Rhinolophus malayanus , Rhinolophus pusillus , Rhinolophus refulgens , Tapho...

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected not only individual lives but also the world and global systems, both natural and human-made. Besides millions of deaths and environmental challenges, the rapid spread of the infection and its very high socioeconomic impact have affected healthcare, economic status and wealth, and mental health acros...

Large Old World fruit bats (LOWFBs), species of Pteropus, Acerodon, and related genera of large bats in the pteropodid subfamily Pteropodinae, play important roles as agents of dispersal and pollination across the Paleotropics. LOWFBs are also collectively the most threatened group of bats in the world, with 71% of extant species assessed as threat...

Bats provide us with important ecosystem services including insect population controllers in agricultural areas. Studies on bats and insect abundance in Malaysian rice fields are still lacking. Two harp traps and two mist nets were used to trap bats at the Gunung Keriang while a light trap was used to sample insects in the rice field area at three...

As the incidence of tick-borne diseases has sharply increased over the past decade, with serious consequences for human and animal health, there is a need to identify ecological drivers contributing to heterogeneity in tick-borne disease risk. In particular, the relative importance of animal host dispersal behaviour in its three context-dependent p...

Humanity is facing many grand challenges at unprecedented rates, nearly everywhere, and at all levels. Yet virtually all these challenges can be traced back to the decision and behavior of autonomous agents that constitute the complex systems under such challenges. Agent-based modeling has been developed and employed to address such challenges for...

Abstract Roosting information is crucial to guiding bat conservation and bat‐friendly forestry practices. The Ryukyu tube‐nosed bat Murina ryukyuana (Endangered) and Yanbaru whiskered bat Myotis yanbarensis (Critically Endangered) are forest‐dwelling bats endemic to the central Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. Despite their threatened status, little is k...

Many rare island endemic bats are highly threatened but poorly studied, due partly to the difficulty of capturing them. We used acoustic lures playing synthesised bat social calls on Okinawa Island, Japan, to improve capture success for two of the country’s most endangered endemic bats: the Ryukyu tube-nosed bat (Murina ryukyuana) and Yanbaru whisk...

Large island fruit bats (LIFB), species of Pteropus, Acerodon, and related genera in the pteropodid subfamily Pteropodinae, are keystone species for island conservation in the Palaeotropics, playing critical roles as agents of dispersal and pollination of native island plant communities. This keystone role is crumbling because LIFB are collectively...

The Ryukyu flying fox (Pteropus dasymallus) is distributed throughout the island chain spanning across southern Japan, Taiwan, and possibly the Philippines. Although P. dasymallus is listed as VU (vulnerable) in the IUCN Red List, only few genetic works have been conducted to support its conservation. In this study we analyzed 19 markers (mtDNA hap...

The metabolic shift between respiration and fermentation at high glucose concentration is a widespread phenomenon in microbial world, and it is relevant for the biotechnological exploitation of microbial cell factories, affecting the achievement of high-cell-densities in bioreactors. Starting from a model already developed for the yeast Saccharomyc...

1. Although scientific evidence is critical to prioritising conservation actions, the distribution of research effort does not always align with conservation needs. The conservation of Japanese bats is of global concern, given that 35% of extant species are endemic and 91% of endemics are threatened. However, information on Japanese bats can be ina...

The Ryukyu flying fox ( Pteropus dasymallus ) is distributed throughout the island chain spanning across southern Japan, Taiwan, and possibly the Philippines. Although P. dasymallus is listed as VU (vulnerable) in the IUCN Red List, only few genetic works have been conducted to support its conservation. In this study we analyzed 19 markers (mtDNA h...

The goal of this survey was to elucidate the conservation-related ecology of Myotis yanbarensis and Murina ryukyuana on Okinawa Island. From fall 2017 to summer 2018 we conducted bat capture surveys using synthesized social calls as an acoustic lure. Although the acoustic lure increased the catch rate of Murina ryukyuana, the strength of this effec...

We tested the ecosystem functions of microbial diversity with a focus on ammonification (involving diverse microbial taxa) and nitrification (involving only specialized microbial taxa) in forest nitrogen cycling. This study was conducted on a forest slope, in which the soil environment and plant growth gradually changed. We measured the gross and n...

Les renards volants insulaires (genre Pteropus) font partie des chauves-souris les plus menacées au monde et font face à de nombreuses menaces, notamment des conflits résultant de leur consommation de fruits commerciaux. Maurice a fourni un exemple prononcé d'un tel conflit lorsqu'elle a procédé à des abattages en masses d’individus de la dernière...

Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796–1866) was one of the earliest European naturalists to live in Japan. Through most of the nineteenth century, however, until the 1860s, movement of foreigners within Japan was severely restricted, impairing Siebold’s ability to observe wildlife in the countryside or collect zoological specimens. Among the Japanese mam...

Human-wildlife conflicts pose a growing threat to many species worldwide and require increasingly innovative and multi-disciplinary resolutions. Because of their apparent simplicity and political appeal, lethal approaches like culling are often favoured, decisions to cull are typically poorly supported by scientific evidence and the limitations and...

Systems studied in environmental science, due to their structure and the heterogeneity of the entities composing them, often exhibit complex dynamics that can only be captured by hybrid modeling approaches. While several concurrent definitions of “hybrid modeling” can be found in the literature, it is defined here broadly as the approach consisting...

The conservation status of the Ryukyu flying fox (Pteropus dasymallus), a solitary island fruit bat inhabiting the Ryukyu archipelago in Japan, Green Island in Taiwan, and some islands of the Batanes and Babuyan chain in the Philippines, was last assessed by the IUCN in 2008, when it was upgraded from Endangered (EN) to Near Threatened (NT). We rev...

Several conventional traits, including eggshell thickness, are commonly being improved genetically as a means to increase eggshell strength. At the same time, researchers have come to recognize that factors related to egg geometry, such as egg shape, are important determinants of the variability remaining in eggshell strength, after conventional tr...

Although non-destructive deformation is relevant for assessing eggshell strength, few long-term selection experiments are documented which use non-destructive deformation as a selection criterion. This study used restricted maximum likelihood-based methods with a four-trait animal model to analyze the effect of non-destructive deformation on egg pr...

In simulation models of populations or communities, individual plants have often been obfuscated in favor of aggregated vegetation. This simplification comes with a loss of biological detail and a smoothing out of the demographic noise engendered by stochastic individual-scale processes and heterogeneities, which is significant among others when st...

Supplementary data (Figures 1–8).

Simulation showing the formation of a vegetation ring, ultimately resulting in an expansion into elongated empty branches forming a star/helix pattern. Plants were initially grouped in a single patch, and precipitation varied seasonally (See Section Seasonal Variations for details).

Simulation showing the formation of a labyrinth pattern. Plants were initially scattered randomly in space, and precipitation remained constant at 1.3 mm. Water density in the soil is visible in the background through a color gradient (black to white for increasing values).

Simulation showing the limit cycle reached by vegetation when facing high seasonal variations in precipitation (between 0.5 and 2.1 mm).

Economic losses resulting from poor eggshell quality are critical issue for the poultry industry, challenging researchers to find practical solutions to improve the resistance of eggshells to external pressure. Although many studies have proposed non-destructive methods to improve shell strength, relatively few long-term experiments are documented...

DNA is usually known as the molecule that carries the instructions necessary for cell functioning and genetic inheritance. A recent discovery reported a new functional role for extracellular DNA. After fragmentation, either by natural or artificial decomposition, small DNA molecules (between ˜50 and ˜2000 bp) exert a species specific inhibitory eff...

Computer models are nowadays part of the biologist's toolbox for studying biological dynamics and processes. Tissue development and functioning results from extremely complicated dynamics, that usual analysis does not come very far in terms of understanding the processes underlying those dynamics. In this context, mathematical and numerical models...

Japan hosts the largest population of the threatened Ryukyu flying fox (Pteropus dasymallus), which, in Taiwan, suffered a drastic decline leading to local extinctions and, in the Philippines, remains only on three small islands. Conservation of the species in Japan is therefore crucial. National and international assessments have been based only o...

The success of biological conservation initiatives is not solely reliant on the collection of ecological information, but equally on public adherence to protection programs. Awareness and perception of target species condition the intensity and orientation of public involvement in conservation initiatives. Their evaluation is critical in the case o...

This paper focuses on fire and grazing with an emphasis on work in Mediterranean environments. Fire and grazing accounted for more variation than the combination of all other environmental and spatial variables. Fire and grazing may have antagonistic effects over relatively short timescales. Grazing reduces plant growth and removes available fuel,...

Simulating epidemics in metapopulations is a challenging issue due to the large demographic and geographic scales to incorporate. Traditional epidemiologic models choose to simplify reality by ignoring both the spatial distribution of populations and possible intrapopulation heterogeneities, whereas more recent solutions based on Individual-Based M...

AbstractModeling could be summed up as the task of reproducing the structure and imitating the behavior of complex real-life systems with components interacting with one another at different scales. In many disciplines of ecology, System Dynamics and more recently Individual-Based modeling have emerged as the major tools to support this task. These...