Clara Mendes FerreiraUniversität Potsdam · Institute of Biochemistry and Biology
Clara Mendes Ferreira
MSc
About
15
Publications
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104
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Additional affiliations
January 2014 - September 2018
Education
October 2018 - October 2022
October 2011 - October 2013
September 2007 - September 2010
Publications
Publications (15)
Genetic non-invasive sampling (gNIS) may provide valuable information for population monitoring, as it allows inferences of population density and key behavioural traits such as dispersal, kinship and reproduction. Despite its enormous potential, gNIS has
rarely been applied to small mammals, for which live-trapping is still the most commonly used...
Estimating the size of animal populations is essential for understanding the demography and conservation status of species. Genetic Non-Invasive Sampling (gNIS) combined with Spatially Explicit Capture-Recapture (SECR) modelling may provide a practical tool to obtain such estimates. Here we evaluate for the first time the potential and limitations...
Despite growing efforts to halt biodiversity loss, knowledge of species diversity and distribution is highly geographically biased, leaving some areas unexplored. Taxa distributed in remote, desert areas, such as hedgehogs (Mammalia; Eulipotyphla) in North Africa, are good examples of current knowledge gaps in systematics and biogeography. Here we...
Although important to guide conservation management, detailed demographic studies on rare or elusive species inhabiting fragmented, human-dominated landscapes are often hampered by the species' low densities, and the logistic and ethical constraints in obtaining reliable information covering large areas. Genetic non-invasive sampling (gNIS) provide...
Monitoring the occupancy and abundance of wildlife populations is key to evaluate their conservation status and trends. However, estimating these parameters often involves time and resource-intensive techniques, which are logistically challenging or even unfeasible for rare and elusive species that occur patchily and in small numbers. Hence, survey...
Perceived predation risk varies in space and time. Foraging in this landscape of fear alters forager‐resource interactions via cascading nonconsumptive effects. Estimating these indirect effects is difficult in natural systems. Here, we applied a novel measure to quantify the diversity at giving‐up density that allows to test how spatial variation...
As continued growth in gut microbiota studies in captive and model animals elucidates the importance of their role in host biology, further pursuit of how to retain a wild‐like microbial community is becoming increasingly important to obtain representative results from captive animals. In this study, we assessed how the gut microbiota of two wild‐c...
Foraging by consumers acts as a biotic filtering mechanism for biodiversity at the trophic level of resources. Variation in foraging behaviour has cascading effects on abundance, diversity, and functional trait composition of the community of resource species. Here we propose diversity at giving-up density (DivGUD), i.e. when foragers quit exploiti...
Foraging by consumers acts as a biotic filtering mechanism for biodiversity at the trophic level of resources. Variation in foraging behaviour have cascading effects on abundance, diversity, and functional trait composition of the community of resource species. Here we propose diversity at giving-up density (DivGUD), when foragers quit exploring a...
Foraging by consumers has direct effects on the community of their resource species, and may serve as a biotic filtering mechanism of diversity. Determinants of foraging behaviour may thus have cascading effects on abundance, diversity, and functional trait composition of the resource community. Here we propose giving-up diversity (GUDiv) as a nove...
Despite growing efforts to halt biodiversity loss, knowledge of species diversity and distribution is highly geographically biased, leaving some areas unexplored. Taxa distributed in remote, desert areas, such as hedgehogs (Mammalia; Eulipotyphla) in North Africa, are good examples of current knowledge gaps in systematics and biogeography. Here we...
Population density is a key parameter to assess the status of threatened species. However, accurate density estimates are often difficult to obtain, particularly in the case of rare and patchily distributed species, for which sampling is constrained by time, finance, and manpower. Knowledge of the most cost-effective sampling and modeling technique...
Projects
Project (1)
Studies of the effects of habitat fragmentation on biodiversity have revealed large impacts on species distribution and abundance patterns. Although they provide important conservation guidelines to counteract the negative impacts of habitat fragmentation, inferences from these studies are mostly correlative, and inherently unable to identify causation. A greater focus on the demographic and behavioural processes that determine species vulnerability to fragmentation is thus required to properly understand population viability in human-dominated landscapes. Key, relevant, within-population processes affecting reproductive success and thus population persistence include social interactions, mating systems, and the formation of kin-structures.
Our thesis is that the impacts of habitat fragmentation on species social and mating systems predict how individual behaviours impact population viability. We expect fragmentation will critically affect the population performance of species employing monogamous mating system, because such species are notoriously more susceptible to stochasticity and prone to extinction events than those species exhibiting polygamous or polygynous mating systems.
In this project we will use parentage and genetic relatedness analysis combined with non-invasive genetics to answer fundamental questions with populations of the monogamous Iberian endemic Cabrera vole in SW Portugal fragmented landscapes. In particular, we will use species-specific microsatellite markers and genotyping protocols recently developed and optimized for faecal samples to test the general prediction that habitat fragmentation impacts on the social structure and mating systems, reducing reproductive success, and thus the likelihood of population long-term persistence. We will deploy these techniques on a large number of archived as well as newly collected samples from landscapes differing in fragmentation levels. We will then use both empirical- and simulation-based modelling techniques to commend conservation prescriptions for defeating the impacts of habitat fragmentation on social interactions and mating strategies employed by monogamous species in fragmented landscapes.
