Esther Sebastián-González

University of Alicante | UA · Ecology

The distributional patterns of actively moving animals are influenced by the cues that the individuals use for choosing sites into which they settle. Individuals may gather information about habitat quality using two types of strategies, either directly assessing the relevant environmental factors, or using the presence of conspecifics or heterospe...

We aim to characterize the macroecological patterns in the structure of mutualistic seed-dispersal networks. Tropical areas hold more species than temperate ones. This difference in species number may favour ecological processes that minimize interspecific competition in species-rich areas. There is theoretical evidence that both modularity (i.e. t...

Disentangling the processes that shape the organization of ecological assemblages and its implications for species coexistence is one of the foremost challenges of ecology. Although insightful advances have recently related community composition and structure with species coexistence in mutualistic and antagonistic networks, little is known regardi...

Natural wetland ecosystems continue to suffer widespread destruction and degradation. Many recent studies argue that artificial or restored wetlands compensate for wetland loss and are valuable for waterbird conservation. However, detailed comparisons of the value of natural, artificial and restored wetlands are lacking. Our aim was to assess if th...

PDF of submitted version available for free at: http://publish.illinois.edu/maxallen/files/2019/06/Sebastian-Gonzalez-et-al.-MS.pdf Understanding the distribution of biodiversity across the Earth is one of the most challenging questions in biology. Much research has been directed at explaining the species latitudinal pattern showing that communi...

Understanding the factors that allow multiple species to coexist and share resources is an outstanding question in community ecology. Animals that share resources tend to use different strategies to decrease potential competition, through morphological adaptations, establishment of hierarchies, behavioral adaptations or spatial or temporal segregat...

Rural abandonment and subsequent vegetation regeneration ('passive rewilding') are expected to increase worldwide, producing cascades of dynamic socioeconomic, landscape and biological changes. Although landscape characteristics strongly influence the structure and functioning of scavengers, little is known about the ecological consequences of pass...

Invasive Alien Species (IAS) alter ecosystems, disrupting ecological processes and driving the loss of ecosystem services. The common carp Cyprinus carpio is a hazardous and widespread IAS, becoming the most abundant species in many aquatic ecosystems. This species transforms ecosystems by accumulating biomass to the detriment of other species, thu...

There is broad consensus that increasing the use of renewable energies is effective to mitigate the global climate crisis. However, the development of renewables may carry environmental impacts, and their expansion could accelerate biodiversity loss (1). However, Dunnett et al. (2) have recently estimated a minimal overlap between renewable energy...

Palms, like all plants, show coevolutionary relationships with animals that have been traditionally categorized as mutualistic (seed dispersers and pollinators) or antagonistic (seed predators). This dual perspective, however, has prevented a full understanding of their true interactions with some animal groups, mainly those that do not ingest enti...

Carrion production is one of the most crucial yet neglected and understudied processes in food webs and ecosystems. In this study, we performed a large-scale estimation of the maximum potential production and spatial distribution of ungulate carrion biomass from five major sources in penin-sular Spain, both anthropogenic (livestock, big game huntin...

Carrion consumption by scavengers is a key component of both terrestrial and aquatic food webs. However, there are few direct comparisons of the structure and functioning of scavenging communities in different ecosystems. Here, we monitored the consumption of 23 fish (seabream Sparus aurata) and 34 bird (yellow-legged gull Larus michahellis) carcas...

Nature's contributions to people (NCP) may be both beneficial and detrimental to humans' quality of life. Since our origins, humans have been closely related to wild ungulates, which have traditionally played an outstanding role as a source of food or raw materials. Currently, wild ungulates are declining in some regions, but recovering in others t...

The INCREMENTO project attempts to evaluate the consequences of a progressive increase of wild ungulate (red deer, Cervus elaphus) abundance on the structure and functioning of two Mediterranean environments (Quintos de Mora, Toledo and Muela de Cortes, Valencia). We are conducting a manipulative approach based on the release of herds of female red...

Species assemblages often have a non‐random nested organization, which in vertebrate scavenger (carrion‐consuming) assemblages is thought to be driven by facilitation in competitive environments. However, not all scavenger species play the same role in maintaining assemblage structure, as some species are obligate scavengers (i.e., vultures) and ot...

Scavenging is widespread among vertebrates, being very important for maintaining certain ecosystem functions. Despite this, the scavenger communities remain poorly known in some biomes, especially in the Neotropics. Our main objective was to describe for the first time the scavenger community and identify the factors affecting scavenging efficiency...

When acoustic signals sent from individuals overlap in frequency and time, acoustic interference and signal masking may occur. Under the acoustic niche hypothesis (ANH), signaling behavior has evolved to partition acoustic space and minimize overlap with other calling individuals through selection on signal structure and/or the sender’s ability to...

Background Electrocution and collisions on power lines are among the leading causes of non-natural mortality for birds. Power lines are exponentially increasing, particularly in developing countries, but mitigation strategies to prevent bird mortality are questionable. Mongolia combines a recently increased power line network, an abundant raptor po...

Despite the essential role that vertebrate scavengers play in ecosystems, most studies have been conducted in Europe and North America, and there is a lack of information on vertebrate scavengers in vast regions of the world. Our aim was to describe the functioning and composition of the unknown vertebrate scavenger assemblage in the Gobi Desert, M...

Plant–animal interactions are key to sustaining whole communities and ecosystem function. However, their complexity may limit our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and the species involved. The ecological effects of epizoochory remain little known compared to other seed dispersal mechanisms given the few vectors identified. In addition, ep...

Scavenging is key to understanding ecosystem structure and functioning, both in terrestrial and aquatic environments. Here, we compare the structure and carrion consumption efficiency of the scavenger communities occurring in terrestrial and shallow marine habitats on and around a Mediterranean island. During July 2018, we monitored the consumption...

Intentional poisoning is a global wildlife problem and an overlooked risk factor for public health. Managing poisoning requires unbiased and high-quality data through wildlife monitoring protocols, which are largely lacking. We herein evaluated the biases associated with current monitoring programmes of wildlife poisoning in Spain. We compared the...

Identifying the most appropriate bait for a camera trap study is an important step in sampling design, as some baits may perform better than others in attracting different animal species. In this study, we compare the vertebrate communities detected using five different widely used baits (i.e., fruit, sardines, valerian extract, a mix of sweet frui...

Testing how plant restoration influences animal taxonomic and functional diversity can shift restoration projects beyond mainly plant community considerations. We incorporated multi-trophic interactions into restoration by describing an ongoing functional trait-based restoration experiment in Hawaiian lowland tropical wet forest (Liko Nā Pilina Exp...

• The restoration of degraded areas and the creation of artificial ecosystems have partially compensated for the continuing loss of natural wetlands. However, the success of these wetlands in terms of the capacity of supporting biodiversity and ecosystem functions is unclear. Research is needed to improve our understanding of the value of restored...

When acoustic signals sent from individuals overlap in frequency and time, acoustic interference and signal masking may occur. Under the acoustic niche hypothesis (ANH), signaling behavior has evolved to minimize overlap with other calling individuals through selection on signal structure and the sender’s ability to adjust the timing of signals. In...

The organization of ecological assemblages has important implications for ecosystem functioning, but little is known about how scavenger communities organize at the global scale. Here, we test four hypotheses on the factors affecting the network structure of terrestrial vertebrate scavenger assemblages and its implications on ecosystem functioning....

Frugivory is widely recognized as vital for the dispersal of many plants. Moreover, plant species and their frugivorous dispersers form seed‐dispersal assemblages whose structure has important implications for the persistence and stability of the community. However, dispersal interactions between plants and non‐frugivorous animal groups such as wat...

Vertebrate scavenger communities vary in species composition across the globe. They include a wide array of species with diverse ecological strategies and life‐histories that support essential ecosystem functions, such as carrion removal. While previous studies have mostly focussed on how community aspects such as species richness and composition a...

El uso ilegal del veneno es una de las principales amenazas para la conservación de especies, particularmente de carroñeros y depredadores. Aunque no existe información fiable sobre el impacto real del veneno en España, entre 1992 y 2013 se ha estimado que podrían haber muerto unos 185.000 animales entre aves y mamíferos. A pesar del elevado número...

Oscine passerine birds learn their songs principally through cultural transmission. However, habitat fragmentation might induce cultural variation in song, leading to restrictions in the transmission of cultural information. In this study, we aim to evaluate individual responsiveness to conspecific vocalisations within and between two nearby bird p...

Vertebrate scavenger communities vary in species composition across the globe, and include a wide array of species with diverse ecological strategies and life-histories that support essential ecosystem functions, such as carrion removal. While previous studies have mostly focussed on how community aspects such as species richness and composition af...

El desarrollo de la red eléctrica es a la vez consecuencia y motor del desarrollo económico de cada país, pero también es una fuente importante de impactos ambientales. La electrocución y la colisión en tendidos eléctricos se encuentra entre las primeras causas de declive para numerosas aves amenazadas, especialmente rapaces. En la última década, n...

El cerrado brasileño es un bioma que alberga una gran biodiversidad. El objetivo principal de este trabajo fue determinar la comunidad de aves carroñeras albergada en un área del cerrado brasileño del Parque Nacional Nascentes do Parnaiba (Piauí, Brasil). Para ello colocamos un total de 59 carroñas, distinguiendo entre carroñas de gran tamaño (n=11...

The Brazilian cerrado is a biome considered a major hotspot of biodiversity. However, it remains little explored and highly vulnerable to human driven land use changes. We aimed to evaluate the distribution and abundance of raptors (Families Accipitridae, Cathartidae and Falconidae) in cerrado ecosystems in the area of Nascentes do Parnaiba Nationa...

Anecdotic citations of food wasting have been described for parrots, but we lack a comprehensive knowledge about the extent of this behaviour, and its ecological and evolutionary implications. Here, we combine experimental and observational approaches to evaluate the spatial, temporal, typological and taxonomic extent of food wasting by parrots, to...

The effects of population decline on culturally transmitted behaviours in animals have rarely been described, but may have major implications to population viability. Learned vocal signals in birds are of critical importance to behaviours associated with reproduction, intrasexual interactions and group cohesion, and the complexity of vocal signals...

A scavenger is an animal that feeds on the carcass or remains of any dead animal which it did not participate in its killing. Scavenging is pervasive across the animal kingdom and almost all predator species use carrion to a certain extent in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. There is a group of animals, the obligate scavengers, which rely (...

Women underrepresentation in science has frequently been associated with women being less productive than men (i.e. the gender productivity gap), which may be explained by women having lower success rates, producing science of lower impact and/or suffering gender bias. By performing global meta-analyses, we show that there is a gender productivity...

Interactions between plants and their root‐associated fungi (RAF) may influence the relative abundance of tree species and determine forest community diversity. Such plant‐soil feedbacks in turn depend on the degree to which spatial distance and phylogenetic relatedness of host trees structure pathogen and mutualist communities, but research detail...

Waterbird communities are prone to strong temporal changes both seasonally and annually, but little is known about how this affects their functional diversity and community assembly. Detecting temporal trends in taxonomic and functional diversity within (alpha diversity) and between (beta diversity) communities in breeding and wintering seasons cou...

Obtaining accurate information on the distribution, density, and abundance of animals is an important first step towards their conservation. Methodological approaches using automatic acoustic recorders for species that communicate acoustically are gaining increased interest because of their advantages over traditional sampling methods. In this stud...

Diversionary feeding (i.e. supplementary feeding used to mitigate damage to human activities) is a management tool widely employed to avoid human-wildlife conflicts, which could alter the spatial behaviour of target species and can also affect other species present in the area, among other effects. We evaluated the effect of diversionary feeding in...

The adverse effects of wind farms on wildlife, mainly the mortality of flying animals at turbines, should be carefully studied to reconcile renewable energy production and biodiversity conservation. The growing consensus about the aggregated pattern of this mortality at particular turbines suggests that the identification of high-mortality turbines...

Waterbirds have a major functional role in wetlands, and understanding how functional traits of waterbirds depend on environmental characteristics can facilitate management of ecosystems and their services. We investigate how the waterbird community in a Neotropical river-floodplain system responds to environmental gradients, identifying how they a...

Top-ranked candidate models explaining variation in waterbird species richness in the floodplain lakes. AICc = Akaike Information Criteria corrected for small sample sizes. Model terms are coded as: 1, Area (ha); 2, AVdiv = aquatic vegetation diversity index; 3, Floating; 4, Emergent. df: Degrees of freedom. (DOCX)

Species found in the sampled area and lakes where they were recorded. (DOCX)

Functional trait values for each species used in this study. (DOCX)

Top-ranked candidate models explaining variation in waterbird FDis in the floodplain lakes. AICc = Akaike Information Criteria corrected for small sample sizes. Model terms are coded as: 1, Emergent; 2, Grass; 3, Mdepth.margin; 4, NoVeg; 5, Transparency; 6, VCdepth.margin (variation coefficient of margin depth). df: Degrees of freedom. (DOCX)

Interactions between plants and root-associated fungi can affect the assembly, diversity, and relative abundances of tropical plant species. Host-symbiont compatibility and some degree of host specificity are prerequisites for these processes to occur, and these prerequisites may vary with host abundance. However, direct assessments of whether spec...

The acoustic adaptation hypothesis (AAH) states that animals communicating acoustically adapt their vocalizations to the local conditions to optimize signal transmission. We tested select predictions of the AAH by studying the relationships between avian acoustics and forest structural parameters for a community of forest birds, including native an...

Acoustic signaling is a form of information transmission that in many animal species may be behaviorally learnt and transmitted between individuals, creating flows of cultural traits (i.e. memes) across the landscape. The biogeography of memetic traits can have major implications for avian population evolution, ecology and conservation. We characte...

The competition-relatedness hypothesis of Darwin (1859) states that competition is greater among species that are phylogenetically closely-related, and such species will tend to appear in separate communities (i.e. the species within communities will be phylogenetically overdispersed). Many studies have tested (and mainly refuted) this hypothesis f...

Species phenotypic traits affect the interaction patterns and the organization of seed‐dispersal interaction networks. Understanding the relationship between species characteristics and network structure help us understand the assembly of natural communities and how communities function. Here, we examine how species traits may affect the rules lead...