About
28
Publications
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Introduction
Postdoctoral Researcher in movement ecology at University College Dublin. I use tracking technology to investigate animal behaviour and movement.
Additional affiliations
May 2019 - August 2019
April 2019 - April 2019
April 2018 - March 2019
Education
October 2016 - February 2018
September 2011 - May 2015
Publications
Publications (28)
Zoonotic diseases represent a significant societal challenge in terms of their health and economic impacts. One Health approaches to managing zoonotic diseases are becoming more prevalent, but require novel thinking, tools and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is one example of a costly One Health challenge with a complex...
Gut microbes shape many aspects of organismal biology, yet how these key bacteria transmit among hosts in natural populations remains poorly understood. Recent work in mammals has emphasized either transmission through social contacts or indirect transmission through environmental contact, but the relative importance of different routes has not bee...
An individual's future behaviour and fitness are strongly influenced by early life experience. Within the suite of factors that underpin juvenile development, sleep plays a particularly important role, fulfilling vital physiological and cognitive functions. Sleep ontogeny is the process by which sleep time becomes shorter and more consolidated into...
Foraging is a key driver of animal movement patterns, with specific challenges for predators which must search for mobile prey. These patterns are increasingly impacted by global changes, principally in land use and climate. Understanding the degree of flexibility in predator foraging and social strategies is pertinent to wildlife conservation unde...
Background: The attachment of electronic tags to animals has led to data collection that has hugely enhanced our understanding of wild animal behavioural ecology and physiology. However, animals are normally captured and restrained/sedated so that the tags can be attached, which is stressful for the animals and threatens to compromise the quality o...
Although variation in effect sizes and predicted values among studies of similar phenomena is inevitable, such variation far exceeds what might be produced by sampling error alone. One possible explanation for variation among results is differences among researchers in the decisions they make regarding statistical analyses. A growing array of studi...
The conservation and management of large carnivores is a challenging task for researchers seeking to foster human-wildlife coexistence. Agent-based models (ABMs) allow researchers to design realistic simulations of their study system, including environmental, anthropogenic and ecological agents and their characteristics to examine interactions at l...
Gut microbes shape many aspects of organismal biology, yet how these key bacteria transmit among hosts in natural populations remains poorly understood. Recent work in mammals has emphasized either transmission through social contacts or indirect transmission through environmental contact, but the relative importance of different routes has not bee...
Foraging is a key driver of animal movement patterns, with specific challenges for predators which must search for mobile prey. These patterns are increasingly impacted by global changes, principally in land use and climate. Understanding the degree of flexibility in predator foraging and social strategies is pertinent to wildlife conservation unde...
Background: Zoonotic diseases represent a significant societal challenge in terms of their health and economic impacts. One Health approaches to managing zoonotic diseases are becoming more prevalent, but require novel thinking, tools and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is one example of a costly One Health challenge wit...
The gut microbiome performs many important functions in mammalian hosts, with community composition shaping its functional role. However, the factors that drive individual microbiota variation in wild animals and to what extent these are predictable or idiosyncratic across populations remains poorly understood. Here, we use a multi-population datas...
1. The gut microbiome performs many important functions in mammalian hosts, with community composition shaping its functional role. However, what factors drive individual microbiota variation in wild animals and to what extent these are predictable or idiosyncratic across populations remains poorly understood.
2. Here, we use a multi-population dat...
Background
Understanding what animals do in time and space is important for a range of ecological questions, however accurate estimates of how animals use space is challenging. Within the use of animal-attached tags, radio telemetry (including the Global Positioning System, ‘GPS’) is typically used to verify an animal’s location periodically. Strai...
1. De Araujo et al. (Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13516) described the development and application of a wire foot snare trap for the capture of jaguars Panthera onca and cougars Puma concolor. Snares are a commonly used and effective means of studying large carnivores. However, the article presented insu...
Background
Fine-scale data on animal position are increasingly enabling us to understand the details of animal movement ecology and dead-reckoning, a technique integrating motion sensor-derived information on heading and speed, can be used to reconstruct fine-scale movement paths at sub-second resolution, irrespective of the environment. On its own...
Background
Understanding what animals do in time and space is important for a range of ecological questions, however accurate estimates of how animals use space is challenging. Within the use of animal-attached tags, radio telemetry (including the Global Positioning System (GPS)) is typically used to verify an animal’s location periodically. Straig...
Zoos are valuable resources for research, providing scientists with access to rare and elusive species in an easy to observe environment. Animal-attached loggers (aka biologgers) offer profound insight into animal behaviour. Their use in zoos has high yet largely untapped potential to collect data relevant for wild animal research and conservation...
Zoos are valuable resources for research, providing scientists with access to rare and elusive species in an easy to observe environment. Animal-attached loggers (aka biologgers) offer profound insight into animal behaviour. Their use in zoos has high yet largely untapped potential to collect data relevant for wild animal research and conservation...
Background
Fine-scale data on animal position are increasingly enabling us to understand the details of animal movement ecology and dead-reckoning, a technique integrating motion sensor-derived information on heading and speed, can be used to reconstruct fine-scale movement paths at sub-second resolution, irrespective of the environment. On its own...
Investigating the range and population dynamics of introduced species provides insight into species behavior, habitat preferences, and potential of becoming established. Here, we show the current population status of the red‐necked wallaby (Notamacropus rufogriseus) in Britain based on records from an eleven‐year period (2008–2018). Records were ob...
The paradigm‐changing opportunities of biologging sensors for ecological research, especially movement ecology, are vast, but the crucial questions of how best to match the most appropriate sensors and sensor combinations to specific biological questions and how to analyse complex biologging data, are mostly ignored.
Here, we fill this gap by revie...
The way an animal moves reveals key aspects of its ecology. Carnivore forelimbs are adapted to their predation style, and the structure of the elbow joint can indicate hunting strategy. In this issue, Figueirido (2018) investigates phenotypic disparity, or morphological variation, in domestic dog breeds, the canid family, and the carnivore order us...
The energetics underlying specific behaviours can yield information on decisions made by animals regarding how they move in space and time. Modern biologgers featuring tri-axial accelerometers and magnetometers offer powerful insights on movement and behaviour of species. However, accurately identifying behaviour from high-frequency, multi-channell...
Biologging devices incorporating accelerometers and magnetometers can facilitate the quantification of animal behaviour and fine scale movement patterns. Swansea University’s Daily Diary features a tri-axial accelerometer and tri-axial magnetometer, as well as temperature, pressure and light sensors. Behavioural observations carried out on individu...
Despite our close relationship with the domestic dog (Canis familiaris), humans have frequently been in conflict with other members of the canid family. Due to the adaptable nature of the canids, they have been capable of living in close proximity to us in human dominated landscapes for centuries. This proximity has contributed to our complicated r...