Christopher Beirne

Osa Conservation

The only known population of Sira curassow Pauxi koepckeae resides within the Sira Communal Reserve, a chain of isolated and high-elevation outcrops of the Peruvian Andes. The species has previously been detected on just a handful of occasions, is thought to number less than 400 adult individuals and is Critically Endangered according to the Intern...

Tropical areas are facing a bushmeat crisis involving the systematic over-exploitation of large-bodied mammals for both subsistence and commercial purposes. We hypothesize that because hunting generally originates from villages, it will create "halos of defaunation" where abundances of large mammals increase with distance away from villages. Whilst...

Aim: Community-level assessments of how biodiversity responds to disturbance within forest habitats are often biased towards terrestrial-based surveys. However, recent research suggests that arboreal communities of several indicator groups (ants, amphibians, beetles and butterflies) are more susceptible to human disturbance than their terrestrial...

Hunting for bushmeat represents a complex social–ecological system ill-suited to top-down management. Community participatory management is an alternative approach with increasing support for both ethical and pragmatic reasons. Key to a community approach is long-term monitoring: this can both catalyse local ownership of and cohesion around managem...

The restoration of habitats degraded by industrial disturbance is essential for achieving conservation objectives in disturbed landscapes. In boreal ecosystems, disturbances from seismic exploration lines and other linear features have adversely affected biodiversity, most notably leading to declines in threatened woodland caribou. Large‐scale rest...

Corridors are essential tools for promoting biodiversity resilience under climate change. However, corridor design studies are often conducted at spatial scales too coarse to guide implementation by local conservation practitioners. We mapped potential climate-resilient corridors linking lowland to highland protected areas within a highly biodivers...

The sparsity of post-translocation monitoring data for rehabilitated felids leaves a pressing gap in our current understanding of their integration into and use of novel landscapes. Remote monitoring tools such as GPS collars can provide crucial insights into animal movement behavior and habitat selection following translocation and assist in the d...

Compound effects of anthropogenic disturbances on wildlife emerge through a complex network of direct responses and species interactions. Land‐use changes driven by energy and forestry industries are known to disrupt predator–prey dynamics in boreal ecosystems, yet how these disturbance effects propagate across mammal communities remains uncertain....

Climate adaptation corridors are widely recognized as important for promoting biodiversity resilience under climate change. Central America is part of the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot, but there have been no regional-scale analyses of potential climate adaptation corridors in Central America. We identified 2375 potential corridors throughout C...

Funding is critical in ecology and related fields, as it enables research and sustains livelihoods. However, early-career researchers (ECRs) from diverse backgrounds are disproportionately underrepresented as funding recipients. To help funding programs self-evaluate progress towards increasing equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in their fundin...

Understanding how diverse assemblages of scavengers can coexist on shared ecological resources is a fundamental challenge in community ecology. However, current approaches typically focus on behaviour at carcass provisioning sites, missing how important differences in movement behaviour and foraging strategies can facilitate sympatric species coexi...

Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive in the Anthropocene, so it is critical to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. We used camera trapping as a lens to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 163 species sampled in 102 projects around the world, changes in the amo...

Feeding by Critically Endangered forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis in rural plantations is a conservation issue in Gabon, but studies characterizing drivers of spatiotemporal patterns of human–elephant interactions remain sparse, hindering mitigation. In this study, we use GPS tracking data from two elephants to characterize temporal patterns of...

Outdoor recreation is widespread, with uncertain effects on wildlife. The human shield hypothesis (HSH) suggests that recreation could have differential effects on predators and prey, with predator avoidance of humans creating a spatial refuge 'shielding' prey from people. The generality of the HSH remains to be tested across larger scales, wherein...

We propose a monitoring method to assess the population of the critically endangered Sira Curassow in Peru, using occupancy models with camera traps

Individual motivation for the rural use of common‐pool resources (CPRs) can be fluid, with the line between subsistence and commercial often unclear and in flux. Implications of fluid motivation are understudied yet important for social–ecological systems (SESs), such as bushmeat hunting throughout Central Africa that is essential to local protein/...

1. Understanding how diverse assemblages of scavengers can coexist on shared ecological resources is a fundamental challenge in community ecology. However, current approaches typically focus on behaviour at carcass provisioning sites, missing how important differences in movement behaviour and foraging strategies can facilitate sympatric species co...

The Amazon is one of the most diverse biomes around the globe, currently threatened by economic and industrial development and climate change. Large mammals are keystone species, playing an important role in ecosystem structure and function as ecological engineers, while being highly susceptible to deforestation, habitat degradation , and human exp...

Given the rate of biodiversity loss, there is an urgent need to understand community-level responses to extirpation events, with two prevailing hypotheses. On one hand, the loss of an apex predator leads to an increase in primary prey species, triggering a trophic cascade of other changes within the community, while density compensation and ecologi...

Human disturbance directly affects animal populations and communities, but indirect effects of disturbance on species behaviors are less well understood. For instance, disturbance may alter predator activity and cause knock‐on effects to predator‐sensitive foraging in prey. Camera traps provide an emerging opportunity to investigate such disturbanc...

Human disturbance directly affects animal populations but indirect effects of disturbance on species behaviors are less well understood. Camera traps provide an opportunity to investigate variation in animal behaviors across gradients of disturbance. We used camera trap data to test predictions about predator-sensitive behavior in three ungulate sp...

Camera traps are increasingly used to answer complex ecological questions. However, the rapidly growing number of images collected presents technical challenges. Each image must be classified to extract data, requiring significant labor, and potentially creating an information bottleneck. We applied an object detection model (MegaDetector) to camer...

Camera traps are increasingly used to answer complex ecological questions. However, the rapidly growing number of images collected presents technical challenges. Each image must be classified to extract data, requiring significant labour, and potentially creating an information bottleneck. We applied an object-detection model (MegaDetector) to came...

By dispersing seeds long distances, large, fruit-eating animals influence plant population spread and community dynamics. After fruit consumption, animal gut passage time and movement determine seed dispersal patterns and distances. These, in turn, are influenced by extrinsic, environmental variables and intrinsic, individual-level variables. We si...

Understanding how human modification of the landscape shapes vertebrate community composition is vital to understanding the current status and future trajectory of wildlife. Using a participatory approach, we deployed the largest camera-trap network in Mesoamer-ica to date to investigate how anthropogenic disturbance shapes the occupancy and co-occ...

Arboreal camera trapping is a burgeoning method providing a novel and effective technique to answer research questions across a variety of ecosystems, and it has the capacity to improve our understanding of a wide range of taxa. However, while terrestrial camera trapping has received much attention, there is little guidance for dealing with the uni...

The critically endangered African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) plays a vital role in maintaining the structure and composition of Afrotropical forests, but basic information is lacking regarding the drivers of elephant movement and behavior at landscape scales. We use GPS location data from 96 individuals throughout Gabon to determine how f...

Vegetation phenology and productivity drive resource use by wildlife. Vegetation dynamics also reveal patterns of habitat disturbance and recovery. Monitoring these fine‐scale vegetation patterns over large spatiotemporal extents can be difficult, but camera traps (CTs) commonly used to survey wildlife populations also collect data on local habitat...

Accurate and ecologically relevant wildlife population estimates are critical for species management. One of the most common survey methods for forest mammals – line transects for animal sign with distance sampling – has assumptions regarding conversion factors that, if violated, can induce substantial bias in abundance estimates. Specifically, for...

Riparian zones are one of the most productive ecosystems in the world, but are at risk due to agricultural expansion and climate change. To maximize return on conservation investment in mixed-use landscapes, it is important to identify the minimum intact riparian forest buffer sizes to conserve riparian ecosystem services. The minimum riparian fore...

The development of agriculture on degraded lands is increasingly seen as a strategy to boost food availability and economic productivity while minimizing environmental degradation and loss of forests. To understand the effects of agricultural production on forest carbon, we quantify the aboveground carbon (AGC) of a degraded forest in northeast Gab...

• Dung beetles are frequently used to assess tropical biodiversity patterns and recovery in human‐modified forests. We conducted a comprehensive dung beetle survey (coprophagous and necrophagous communities) within five habitat types, across a land‐use gradient, in the ecologically biodiverse Osa Peninsula, located in Costa Rica's south Pacific. •...

Hunting for wild meat in the tropics provides subsistence and income for millions of people. Methods have remained relatively unchanged since the introduction of shotguns and battery‐powered incandescent flashlights, but the short battery life of such flashlights has limited nocturnal hunting. However, hunters in many countries throughout the tropi...

Aim Large trees [≥ 70 cm diameter at breast height (DBH)] contribute disproportionately to aboveground carbon stock (AGC) across the tropics but may be vulnerable to changing climate and human activities. Here we determine the distribution, drivers and threats to large trees and high carbon forest. Location Central Africa. Time period Current. M...

As a keystone megafaunal species, African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) influence the structure and composition of tropical forests. Determining the links between food resources, environmental conditions and elephant movement behavior is crucial to understanding their habitat requirements and their effects on the ecosystem, particularly in...

Camera traps deployed in grids or stratified random designs are a well‐established survey tool for wildlife but there has been little evaluation of study design parameters. We used an empirical subsampling approach involving 2225 camera deployments run at 41 study areas around the world to evaluate three aspects of camera trap study design (number...

Accurate estimations of animal populations are necessary for management, conservation, and policy decisions. However, methods for surveying animal communities disproportionately represent specific groups or guilds. For example, transect surveys can provide robust data for large arboreal species but underestimate cryptic or small‐bodied terrestrial...

The sleeping site behavior of Ateline primates has been of interest since the 1980s, yet limited focus has been given to their influence upon other rainforest species. Here, we use a combination of arboreal and terrestrial camera traps, and dung beetle pitfall traps, to characterize spider monkey sleeping site use and quantify the impact of their a...

Seed gut passage times, the time from ingestion to defecation, and frugivore movement patterns determine patterns of seed deposition across the landscape and are thus crucial parameters to quantify in wild populations. Recent advancements in satellite and telemetry technologies mean that animal movement patterns are readily quantifiable in increasi...

Mitigation of climate change depends on accurate estimation and mapping of terrestrial carbon stocks, particularly in carbon dense tropical forests. Allometric equations can be used to robustly estimate biomass of tropical trees, but often require tree height, which is frequently unknown. Researchers and practitioners must, therefore, decide whethe...

The Cerros del Sira in Peru is known to hold a diverse composition of endemic birds, amphibians and plants as a result of its geographical isolation, yet its mammalian community remains poorly known. There is increasing awareness of the threats to high-elevation species but studying them is often hindered by rugged terrain. We present the first cam...

Deforestation and hunting are the leading human-driven disturbances causing population declines of the vulnerable Great Curassow (Crax rubra) and the near threatened Great Tinamou (Tinamus major). These threats typically co-occur, with synergistic effects. We investigated habitat use of Great Curassows and Great Tinamous in the Matapalo corridor of...

Poaching of forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) for ivory has decimated their populations in Central Africa. Studying elephant movement can provide insight into habitat and resource use to reveal where, when, and why they move and guide conservation efforts. We fitted 17 forest elephants with global positioning system (GPS) collars in 2015 and 20...

Anuran attempted predation event.

Field Guide to the Reptile of the Cerros del Sira

Field guide to the Amphibians of the Cerros del Sira

Traditionally, arboreal rainforest mammals have been inventoried using ground-based survey techniques. However, given the success of camera traps in detecting secretive terrestrial rainforest mammals, camera trapping could also be a valuable tool for inventorying arboreal species. Here we assess, for the first time, the effectiveness of arboreal ca...

Senescence has been hypothesized to arise in part from age-related declines in immune performance, but the patterns and drivers of within-individual age-related changes in immunity remain virtually unexplored in natural populations. Here, using a long-term epidemiological study of wild European badgers (Meles meles), we (i) present evidence of a wi...

Ecological and reproductive information on tropical amphibians remains sparse—particularly with respect to the use of phytotelm breeding sites. Phytotelmatas, such as leaf axils, bromeliads, brazil-nut husks, tree cavities, and bamboo internodes are important breeding sites for several amphibians throughout the tropics. Bamboo internodes are one of...

Males and females frequently differ in their rates of ageing, but the origins of these differences are poorly understood. Sex differences in senescence have been hypothesized to arise, because investment in intra-sexual reproductive competition entails costs to somatic maintenance, leaving the sex that experiences stronger reproductive competition...

Roads are an increasingly common feature of forest landscapes all over the world, and while information accumulates regarding the impacts of roads globally, there remains a paucity of information within tropical regions. Here we investigate the potential for biodiversity impacts from an unmarked road within a rainforest protected area in Western Am...

Immunosenescence, the deterioration of immune system capability with age, may play a key role in mediating age-related declines in whole-organism performance, but the mechanisms that underpin immunosenescence are poorly understood. Biomedical research on humans and laboratory models has documented age and disease related declines in the telomere le...

One of the key drivers of worldwide species loss is habitat change, defined as habitat deforestation, fragmentation and deterioration. We studied the effects of structural habitat change on herpetological richness and diversity in the Yachana Reserve, Amazonian Ecuador, using pitfall traps and visual encounter surveys between 2009 and 2010, recordi...

Scientists and conservationists increasingly rely on contributions by volunteers recruited from the wider public to work over large and ecologically meaning-ful spatial scales. Optimizing working in partnership with unpaid, volunteer citizen scientists and conservationists requires an understanding of the deter-minants of volunteer retention rates...