Clara Grilo

• PhD in Conservation Biology
• Principal Researcher at CIBIO | InBIO | BIOPOLIS

Roads can have diverse impacts on wildlife species, and while some species may adapt effectively, others may not. Studying multiple species' responses to the same infrastructure in a given area can help understand this variation and reveal the effects of disturbance on the ecology of wildlife communities. This study investigates the behavioural res...

In tropical forests, about 60%–80% of woody plant species depend on animal–plant interactions for dispersal. The dependence on animal species for dispersal makes this interaction very fragile in the face of anthropogenic changes in land use. Disrupting seed‐dispersal processes, principally zoochoric dispersal, could significantly alter the long‐ter...

Roads are the second largest anthropogenic cause of mortality for most vertebrates. Previous research has analyzed the factors influencing roadkill either by species or by group of species based on some species-specific characteristics. However, to gain a comprehensive understanding on the consistency of findings within and between taxa, it is nece...

Transportation infrastructure is one of the biggest concerns for biodiversity worldwide. Roads affect ecological processes by creating barriers to animal movement, causing habitat loss and fragmentation, and increasing pollution and habitat degradation by promoting human access to new areas. For many species, mortality due to collision with vehicle...

Roads impact wildlife around the world; however, dedicated studies are lacking in many biodiverse areas such as the Amazon. Identifying which species are more often hit by vehicles and which landscape and road-related features promote roadkill is essential to guide future development and ensure adequate mitigation actions. For six months, we monito...

The rapidly expanding global road network poses threats to wildlife, including direct mortality. Given limited knowledge and resources, strategic allocation is critical. We introduce a method to identify areas and taxa affected by vehicle collisions as priorities to study and protect. The method is illustrated using Latin America as a case study. I...

The rapidly expanding global road network poses threats to wildlife, including direct mortality. Given limited knowledge and resources, strategic allocation is critical. We introduce a method to identify priority areas and taxa to study and protect affected by vehicle collisions using Latin America as a case study. In this region high biodiversity...

Roads impact wildlife around the world; however, dedicated studies are lacking in many biodiverse areas such as the Amazon. Identifying which species are more often hit by vehicles and which landscape and road-related features promote roadkill is essential to guide future development and ensure adequate mitigation actions. For six months, we monito...

Aim Roads are a major threat for wildlife, degrading habitat and causing mortality via wildlife–vehicle collisions. In Latin America, the conjunction of high biodiversity and a rapidly expanding road network is reason for concern. We introduce an approach that combines species traits and habitat preferences to describe vulnerability and map areas o...

A data set of terrestrial, volant, and marine mammal occurrences in Portugal

Mammals are threatened worldwide, with ~26% of all species being included in the IUCN threatened categories. This overall pattern is primarily associated with habitat loss or degradation, and human persecution for terrestrial mammals, and pollution, open net fishing, climate change, and prey depletion for marine mammals. Mammals play a key role in...

Mammals are threatened worldwide, with ~26% of all species being included in the IUCN threatened categories. This overall pattern is primarily associated with habitat loss or degradation, and human persecution for terrestrial mammals, and pollution, open net fishing, climate change, and prey depletion for marine mammals. Mammals play a key role in...

Roads pose an imminent threat to wildlife directly through mortality and changes in individual behavior, and also indirectly through modification of the amount and configuration of wildlife habitat. However, few studies have addressed how these mechanisms interact to determine species response to roads. We used structural equation modeling to asses...

Supplementary information of the article "The lost road: do transportation networks imperil wildlife population persistence?"

The global road network is rapidly growing associated with human economic development. This growthalso entails a high toll for biodiversity, with several well-documented negative impacts on differentspecies. However, there is still a great lack of knowledge about the effects of roads on the persistenceof wildlife populations. Here, we aimed to summ...

Aim The road network is increasing globally but the consequences of roadkill on the viability of wildlife populations are largely unknown. We provide a framework that allows us to estimate how risk of extinction of local populations increases due to roadkill and to generate a global assessment that identifies which mammalian species are most vulner...

Road networks form the basic transportation system for most of the world's inhabitants, stimulating local and regional economies. Scientific advances in recent years have revealed that this vast, growing, planetary construction boom has been occurring mostly in non-urban environments, and most aggressively in developing frontiers of tropical region...

The negative effects of roads on wildlife populations are a growing concern. Movement corridors and road-kill data are typically used to prioritize road segments for mitigation measures. Some research suggests that locations where animals move across roads following corridors coincide with locations where they are often killed by vehicles. Other re...

Roads represent a threat to biodiversity, primarily through increased mortality from collisions with vehicles. Although estimating roadkill rates is an important first step, how roads affect long‐term population persistence must also be assessed. We developed a trait‐based model to predict roadkill rates for terrestrial bird and mammalian species i...

Biodiversity in Latin America is at risk today due to habitat loss, land conversion to agriculture and urbanization. To grow their economies the developing countries of Latin America have begun to invest heavily in new road construction. An assessment of research on the impacts of roads on wildlife in Latin America will help define science-based co...

Rapidly expanding road networks have been a key driver of the fragmentation and isolation of many wildlife species, and are a source of significant mortality due to collisions with vehicles. But not all animals are affected equally by transportation infrastructure, and in most cases little is known about the population-scale consequences of roads f...

Universidade Federal de Lavras, CP 3037, Lavras, MG, CEP 37200-000, Brasil. Potential movement corridors and road-kill likelihood models have been used as analytical tools to identify areas for placing road-effect mitigation measures. Our main goal was to identify road segments for placing mitigation measures for felids in Brazil using these two di...

Report prepared for the objectives of the EnVeROS Intellectual Output 1 (IO1): WVC framework analysis/ Needs assessment report.

Human-Induced Rapid Environmental Change (HIREC), particularly climate change and habitat conversion, affects species distributions worldwide. Here, we aimed to (i) assess the factors that determine range patterns of European badger (Meles meles) at the southwestern edge of their distribution and (ii) forecast the possible impacts of future climate...

Mortality from collision with vehicles is the most visible impact of road traffic on wildlife. Mortality due to roads (hereafter road-kill) can affect the dynamic of populations of many species and can, therefore, increase the risk of local decline or extinction. This is especially true in Brazil, where plans for road network upgrading and expansio...

Os animais se movimentam para satisfazer os requisitos básicos de sobrevivência e para se adaptarem às diferentes pressões ambientais e antrópicas. A compreensão destes movimentos é crucial para determinar o uso do espaço pelas espécies e como respondem às alterações da estrutura da paisagem. Uma das técnicas mais utilizadas para alcançar tais obje...

Road networks can have serious ecological consequences for many species, mainly through habitat fragmentation and mortality due to collisions with vehicles. One example of a species impacted by roads is the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), currently listed as Vulnerable by IUCN. Here we analysed the relative effect of fragmentation and mor...

Common worldwide and encroaching on even the most remote locations, roads negatively affects wildlife through habitat loss, fragmentation and direct mortality. Reducing these effects requires mitigation, including wildlife crossing structures and fencing. However, mitigation measures are expensive and vary in their success level, especially when co...

Mortality from collision with vehicles is the most visible impact of road traffic on wildlife. Mortality due to roads (hereafter road‐kill) can affect the dynamic of populations of many species and can, therefore, increase the risk of local decline or extinction. This is especially true in Brazil, where plans for road network upgrading and expansio...

Mortality from collision with vehicles is the most visible impact of road traffic on wildlife. Mortality due to roads (hereafter road-kill) can affect the dynamic of populations of many species and can, therefore, increase the risk of local decline or extinction. This is especially true in Brazil, where plans for road network upgrading and expansio...

Mortality from collision with vehicles is the most visible impact of road traffic on wildlife. Mortality due to roads (hereafter road-kill) can affect the dynamic of populations of many species and can, therefore, increase the risk of local decline or extinction. This is especially true in Brazil, where plans for road network upgrading and expansio...

Mortality from collision with vehicles is the most visible impact of road traffic on wildlife. Mortality due to roads (hereafter road-kill) can affect the dynamic of populations of many species and can, therefore, increase the risk of local decline or extinction. This is especially true in Brazil, where plans for road network upgrading and expansio...

Road networks can have serious ecological consequences for many species, mainly through habitat fragmentation and mortality due to collisions with vehicles. One example of a species impacted by roads is the giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), currently listed as Vulnerable by IUCN. Here we analysed the relative effect of fragmentation and mor...

The aim of this study is to provide an overview of wildlife train collisions (WTC), which are, in contract to crashes with animals on roads, insufficiently studied in the Czech Republic. For this purpose we collected and analyzed data on collisions with animals on railways from various sources. The primary data source were databases of the Czech Ra...

European badgers (Meles meles) are considered central-place foragers, whose spatial ecology is predominantly determined by sett location. Many studies have assessed the factors determining sett site selection throughout this species’ range, but these have often been geographically limited and have primarily identified locally dependent factors. To...

Aim Collisions between wildlife and vehicles are recognized as one of the major causes of mortality for many species. Empirical estimates of road mortality show that some species are more likely to be killed than others, but to what extent this variation can be explained and predicted using intrinsic species characteristics remains poorly understoo...

Despite severe population declines and an overall range contraction, some populations of large carnivores have managed to survive in human‐modified landscapes. From a conservation perspective, it is important to identify the factors allowing for this coexistence, including the relevant habitat characteristics associated with the presence of large c...

There are several primate species with high risk of extinction in small forest fragments disturbed by human activities. However, some species exhibit high ecological plasticity, which allows them to persist in human-modified landscapes. The main goal of this study is to examine the relative roles of vegetation (mean distance among trees and mean ca...

The barrier effect is a pervasive impact of road networks. For many small mammals individual avoidance responses can be the mechanism behind the barrier effect. However, little attention has been paid to which species and road characteristics modulate road avoidance and mortality risk. We measured the strength of the barrier effect imposed by the r...

In this chapter, we review the level of disturbance caused by railways due to noise and vibration, air, soil and water pollution, and soil erosion. There is evidence that soil and hydrology contamination may affect vegetation and aquatic fauna while noise can affect terrestrial vertebrates. In fact, noise, light, and vibration due to railways have...

Aim Land‐use change is a major threat to biodiversity globally. Roads cause direct mortality and limitation of individual movements, which may isolate populations and affect their viability in the long term. Here we provide the first comprehensive global assessment of the exposure of terrestrial mammalian carnivores to roads using an integrated mod...

Roads are always associated with progress and human development but also represent an important source of mortality and habitat fragmentation that affect many animal populations. The giant-anteater Myrmecophaga tridactyla is considered the most threatened mammal of Central America. The southern part of South America is already critical for the gian...

Roads affect a wide range of species with direct mortality caused by collision with vehicles as the most conspicuous impact. However, species are not equally affected by road traffic and several studies have suggested that some species' traits (e.g. body mass, diet) are associated with increased vulnerability to roads. The main goal of this study i...

Several studies document that species perceives or responds to its environment at different spatial scales. Knowledge on which spatial scale should be used to assess the importance of environmental variables to explain road mortality risk is still scarce. Roads cause a particular impact on large carnivores, since they usually have large home ranges...

Forests can be divided into smaller fragments by road construction, which can affect the availability of refuge and food resources for many species and limit their daily and dispersal movements. Although there are several primate species with high risk of extinction in small forest fragments disturbed by anthropogenic activities, some species exhib...

Felids and roads interaction in Brazil

Roads are widely recognized to represent a barrier to individual movements and, conversely, verges can act as potential corridors for the dispersal of many small mammals. Both barrier and corridor effects should generate a clear spatial pattern in genetic structure. Nevertheless, the effect of roads on the genetic structure of small mammal populati...

DOWNLOAD this article in Blog Alex Bager (http://bab.empreendedor-academico.com.br/). We aimed to evaluate the role of spatial units with different shapes and sizes on road-kill modeling for small vertebrate species. We used the road-kill records of two reptiles, water snake (Helicops infrataeniatus) and D’Orbigny's slider turtle (Trachemys dorbign...

The identification of populations and spatial genetic patterns is important for ecological and conservation research, and spatially explicit individual-based methods have been recognised as powerful tools in this context. Mammalian carnivores are intrinsically vulnerable to habitat fragmentation but not much is known about the genetic consequences...

Tables A-D, Figs A-D. Information on the Martes foina samples analysed in this study (Table A). Information on the Vulpes vulpes samples analysed in this study (Table B). Total and within-subpopulation microsatellite genetic diversity in Portuguese stone martens (Table C). Summary statistics for microsatellite loci in Portuguese red foxes (Table D)...

Microsatellite genotypes. Microsatellite genotypes of the stone marten samples (Table A). Microsatellite genotypes of the red fox samples (Table B). (XLS)

Conservation at the cross-roads: how roads and other linear infrastructure influence conservation symposium at the International Congress of Conservation Biology and the European Congress of Conservation Biology 6th August 2015.

Previous studies have found that the relationship between wildlife road mortality and traffic volume follows a threshold effect on low traffic volume roads. We aimed at evaluating the response of several species to increasing traffic intensity on highways over a large geographic area and temporal period. We used data of four terrestrial vertebrate...

Roads and traffic are typically more of a threat to the conservation of birds rather than a safety issue for motorists. Some bird species have biological features and life history traits that make them particularly vulnerable to habitat loss from roads and mortality due to wildlife-vehicle collisions (WVC). Road planning that proactively considers...

Carnivores are a diverse group of wildlife that occur in most environments around the world. Large, wide‐ ranging carnivores play key ecological roles in natural systems. They regulate population sizes of herbivores and other small‐ and medium‐sized carnivores that in turn affect the growth, structure and composition of plant communities and habita...

Global road length, number of vehicles and rate of per capita travel are high and predicted to increase significantly over the next few decades.2The ‘road-effect zone’ is a useful conceptual framework to quantify the negative ecological and environmental impacts of roads and traffic.3The effects of roads and traffic on wildlife are numerous, varied...

Efforts to reduce the negative impacts of roads on wildlife may be hindered if individuals within the population vary widely in their responses to roads and mitigation strategies ignore this variability. This knowledge is particularly important for medium-sized carnivores as they are vulnerable to road mortality, while also known to use available r...

Several studies suggest that species' mortality rates are positively related with local population abundances. Because owls have shown both high road mortality rates and road avoidance behaviours, we hypothesize that road-kill likelihood is not always directly linked to their occurrence. In this study, we examined the relationship between the likel...

The influence of human aesthetic appreciation of animal species on public attitudes towards their conservation and related decision-making has been studied in industrialized countries but remains underexplored in developing countries. Working in three agropastoralist communities around Amboseli National Park, southern Kenya, we investigated the rel...

The main goal of this study was to update the current understanding of the spatial behaviour and abundance of small mammals in the vicinity of roads through a complete literature review to identify knowledge gaps. We also examined spatial patterns of small mammals taking into account the biological and road-related factors to provide recommendation...

DOWNLOAD this article in Blog Alex Bager (http://bab.empreendedor-academico.com.br/).

Drainage culverts are known to be used by a diverse number of species. To date, most studies looking at culvert usage have been restricted to the dry season. This seasonal bias has limited our understanding of how different species respond to culverts and, consequently, our ability to find effective ways to promote the use of culverts as aids to sp...

The Mediterranean Basin has an important conservation value given its high biodiversity and high number of endemic species, which have co-existed with human traditional practices for centuries. However, northern areas as the Iberian Peninsula have experienced intensification in livestock production in recent past, with consequent reduction in habit...

Understanding the ecological consequences of roads and developing ways to mitigate their negative effects has become an important goal for many conservation biologists. Most mitigation measures are based on road mortality and barrier effects data. However, studying fine-scale individual spatial responses in roaded landscapes may help develop more c...

Summary of the candidate habitat selection models for barn owl and stone marten: AIC (Akaike Information Criterion), ΔAIC (AICi -minAIC), Wi (Akaike weight). (DOCX)

Summary of the candidate movements directionality next to the highway models for barn owl and stone marten: AIC (Akaike Information Criterion), ΔAIC (AICi -minAIC), Wi (Akaike weight). (DOCX)

Summary of the candidate models on barn owl and stone marten movements directionality within home-range: AIC (Akaike Information Criterion), ΔAIC (AICi -minAIC), Wi (Akaike weight). (DOCX)