Emily BennittUniversity of Botswana | UB · Okavango Research Institute
Emily Bennitt
PhD
About
35
Publications
16,579
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Introduction
I'm working on herbivore ecology in Botswana, with a large range of projects on many different species and ecosystems. Generally, my work focuses on applied science, the results of which can be used to inform conservation efforts.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
June 2012 - December 2012
Education
August 2007 - May 2012
September 2001 - June 2004
Publications
Publications (35)
Because it can lead to retaliatory killing, livestock depredation by large carnivores is among the foremost threats to carnivore conservation, and it severely impacts human well‐being worldwide. Ongoing climate change can amplify these human–wildlife conflicts, but such issues are largely unexplored, though are becoming increasingly recognized. Her...
Most herbivores must balance demands to meet nutritional requirements, maintain stable thermoregulation and avoid predation. Species‐specific predator and prey characteristics determine the ability of prey to avoid predation and the ability of predators to maximize hunting success. Using GPS collar data from African wild dogs, lions, impala, tsesse...
Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species’ population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate ‘intactness scores’: the remaining proportion of...
https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1iNqmcZ3WyHFv
One of iconic Africa's Big Five, the African buffalo is the largest African bovine or antelope that occurs throughout most of sub-Sahara and in a wide range of ecosystems from savanna to rainforest. The African buffalo is also one of the most successful large African mammals in terms of abundance and biomass. This species thus represents a powerful...
Some aspects of the well-described planet- and satellite-like framework of, respectively, mixed herds and bachelor groups of buffalo recently were challenged. Associations of female buffalo are now considered more fluid than the initial idea of a stable mixed herd defined by a home range. Within mixed herds, adult female associations are unstable a...
Dehorning is a conservation measure used to protect rhinoceroses (‘rhinos’) from being poached by removing most of the visible horn and thus reducing the monetary reward for the risk that a poacher takes. Rhinos use their horns in comfort and aggressive social behaviours. The loss of the horn might result in a decrease in aggressive and affiliative...
Translocations can be a useful management tool to support endangered species. Translocated white rhinoceroses sometimes disperse from their release sites and leave protected areas, requiring sedation and return transport by vehicles. To avoid stressful transportation, less invasive management tools are needed to get animals back to the release site...
Evaluating translocation success is essential for wildlife management and conservation; short‐term success can be evaluated by analysing settlement behaviour after release. We analysed GPS collar data from 47 white (Ceratotherimum simum simum, Burchell, 1817 ) and 25 black (Diceros bicornis minor, Drummond, 1876 ) rhinoceros translocated to the Oka...
In migratory tropical ecosystems governed by water availability, artificially altering water availability can affect herbivore distribution and movement. The Makgadikgadi Pans, Botswana, sustains approximately 10,000 blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) and 24,000 plains zebra (Equus quagga) migrating between a dry season range with permanent wa...
This study investigated the accuracy of animal identification based on herd behaviour from drone camera footage. We evaluated object detection algorithms and point pattern analysis, using footage from drone altitudes ranging from 15 m to 130 m. We applied transfer learning to state-of-the-art lightweight object detection algorithms (Tensorflow and...
Aim
Assessing the distribution and persistence of species across their range is a crucial component of wildlife conservation. It demands data at adequate spatial scales and over extended periods of time, which may only be obtained through collaborative efforts, and the development of methods that integrate heterogeneous datasets. We aimed to combin...
Many species rear offspring in fixed sites, returning frequently to provision them, and the selection of these sites is a critical decision in the life cycle, as they may in some instances increase susceptibility to predators. African wild dogs are a groupliving large carnivore that rear their offspring in fixed sites, provisioning dependent pups i...
In social species, the transmission and maintenance of infectious diseases depend not only on the contact patterns among individuals
within groups but also on the interactions between groups. In southern
Africa, the Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer) is a vector for many
pathogens that can infect sympatric livestock. Whilst intra-group contact
p...
Migration of ungulates (hooved mammals) is a fundamental ecological process that promotes abundant herds, whose effects cascade up and down terrestrial food webs. Migratory ungulates provide the prey base that maintains large carnivore and scavenger populations and underpins terrestrial biodiversity (fig. S1). When ungulates move in large aggregati...
Water is often the most limiting resource in semi-arid environments, but many such ecosystems are managed through artificial water provision that can alter the distribution and composition of the mammalian community. In addition, tourist lodges in semi-arid environments often establish artificial water points to attract wildlife for visitors withou...
Animals need to navigate between resources such as water, food and shelter, and how they achieve this is likely to vary with species. Here, using high-accuracy GPS data, we studied repeated journeys made by wild plains zebra ( Equus quagga ) through a naturally vegetated environment to explore whether they consistently follow the same route through...
Nationwide aerial animal censuses of Botswana between 1992 and 2012, conducted by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, have highlighted a 71% decline in the national springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) population and a contraction of their range. The reasons for this decline remain unknown. We investigated possible drivers of this decline...
• Nearly 90% of the world's large herbivore diversity occurs in Africa, yet there is a striking dearth of information on the movement ecology of these organisms compared to herbivores living in higher latitude ecosystems.
• The environmental context for movements of large herbivores in African savanna ecosystems has several distinguishing features....
Sympatric herbivores experience similar environmental conditions but can vary in their population trends. Identifying factors causing these differences could assist conservation efforts aimed at maintaining fully functional ecosystems. From 1996–2013, tsessebe and wildebeest populations in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, declined by 73% and 90%, resp...
Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) are increasingly being used recreationally, commercially and for wildlife research, but very few studies have quantified terrestrial mammalian reactions to UAS approaches. We used two Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) UAS to approach seven herbivore species in the Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana, after securing the re...
Large mammals that live in arid and/or desert environments can cope with seasonal and local variations in rainfall, food and climate¹ by moving long distances, often without reliable water or food en route. The capacity of an animal for this long-distance travel is substantially dependent on the rate of energy utilization and thus heat production d...
The fastest and most manoeuvrable terrestrial animals are found in savannah habitats, where predators chase and capture running prey. Hunt outcome and success rate are critical to survival, so both predator and prey should evolve to be faster and/or more manoeuvrable. Here we compare locomotor characteristics in two pursuit predator-prey pairs, lio...
Fission-fusion social dynamics allow animals to respond to short-term environmental changes by temporarily adjusting group size. The drivers of such complex social dynamics are thought to relate to resource availability, density effects, and social interactions. During 2008-2009, we collared 15 Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer) cows in differen...
Wildlife populations in semi‐arid regions require unrestricted mobility along ecological gradients and across large landscapes to enable adaptive responses to seasonal variability and patchy resources. In the Kalahari region of Botswana, herbivore populations historically depended on seasonal access to the nutrient‐rich Schwelle area in the wet sea...
Populations of large herbivores frequently display divergent migratory strategies, a likely consequence of the trade-off between the costs and benefits of migration. Globally, physical and environmental barriers disrupt migrations, leading to increased residency, which can have detrimental consequences. In the Okavango Delta, Botswana, veterinary c...
In many social species, groups of animals defend a shared territory against rival conspecifics. Intruders can be detected
from a variety of cues, including fecal deposits, and the strength of response is expected to vary depending on the identity
of the rival group. Previous studies examining differences in response to neighbor and stranger groups...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146782.].
Bats frequently roost in historic churches, and these colonies are of considerable conservation value. Inside churches, bat droppings and urine can cause damage to the historic fabric of the building and to items of cultural significance. In extreme cases, large quantities of droppings can restrict the use of a church for worship and/or other commu...
Studies of habitat use by animals must consider behavioural resource requirements at different scales, which could influence the functional value of different sites. Using Cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer caffer) in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, we tested the hypotheses that behaviour affected use between and within habitats, hereafter referred to as...
Seasonal fluctuations in water availability cause predictable changes in the profitability of habitats in tropical ecosystems, and animals evolve adaptive behavioural and spatial responses to these fluctuations. However, stochastic changes in the distribution and abundance of surface water between years can alter resource availability at a landscap...
Questions
Question (1)
Greetings
I am working on a dataset of vegetation characteristics recorded over three seasons in two different areas used by buffalo.
I have run generalised linear mixed models to determine whether vegetation biomass changes seasonally in different areas used by individual buffalo. I have run every possible combination of model and used AIC to identify the one with the best fit, which includes a fixed effect of season.
Within the best-fitting model, I would like to know which seasons differ from each other, and for this I used a post-hoc Tukey test from the multcomp package in R to compare pairs of seasons, and identified season pairs that differed significantly based on p-values. Note that I did not use p-values to select models, but to distinguish between levels of one predictor variable.
I have been told that using the AIC model selection and the post-hoc tests based on p-values is mixing two types of analysis methods and is therefore not viable. Is this correct?
I have searched the literature and cannot find any statistical papers that refer to this specific question, but I have found some research papers that have used this method. Can anyone direct me to relevant publications that can help me with this?
If indeed I cannot mix the two methods, does anyone have a suggestion for another way to look at differences between factor levels of a fixed effect?
Many thanks
Emily
