Javier Fernandez-de-Simon

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Lecturer (Part-time) at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha

The global biodiversity crisis is driven by habitat changes to meet escalating food demands and is particularly evident in Mediterranean Europe through agricultural intensification and rural abandonment. Commercial hunting of red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) may benefit biodiversity where hunting estates manage for habitat quality. This approa...

Overabundant populations of wild boar (Sus scrofa) are frequent where anthropogenic food is easily available and where hunting is limited. Improving recreational hunting efficacy may contribute to manage these populations. However, we do not know the factors modulating hunting efficacy in a hunting day (i.e., proportion of individuals culled from a...

Many game species are prey species and evolved to cope with significant mortality by natural predators. In the absence of predation or hunting, these game populations will be limited by resource depletion or disease. Both situations may fall within the overabundance definition. We review drivers of game species overabundance, considering if recreat...

Bromadiolone is an anticoagulant rodenticide (AR) commonly used as a plant protection product (PPP) against rodent pests in agricultural lands. ARs can be transferred trophically to predators/scavengers when they consume intoxicated live or dead rodents. ARs exposure in weasels Mustela nivalis, small mustelids specialized on rodent predation, is po...

This book, aimed at professionals in the sector such as veterinarians, livestock farmers or wildlife managers, is the first volume of a manual that lists and details the different sources of risk of tuberculosis for cattle. In each section, the risk is described, its epidemiological role is detailed and control measures are proposed, providing a co...

Anticoagulant rodenticides (AR) resistance has been defined as “a major loss of efficacy due to the presence of a strain of rodent with a heritable and commensurately reduced sensitivity to the anticoagulant”. The mechanism that supports this resistance has been identified as based on mutations in the Vkorc1 gene leading to severe resistance in rat...

Optimal foraging theory predicts that in situations of high prey abundance, predators will select the largest ones if the cost of capture is similar. This relationship is not clear in species of large owls. We aimed to evaluate the selection by the Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) of different body sizes of a profitable prey, the European Rabbit (Oryctolagus...

Understanding pesticide impacts on populations of target/non‐target species and communities is a challenge to applied ecology. When predators that otherwise regulate pest densities ingest prey contaminated with pesticides, this can suppress predator populations by secondary poisoning. It is, however, unknown how species relationships and protocols...

Assessments of terrestrial carnivore diet are often required for ecological management and conservation purposes. Analysis and identification of food remains in scats is an important method often employed for these objectives. Proportions of consumed biomass estimated from scat samples may provide an accurate approximation of the actual diet when c...

Background The use of pesticides can affect non‐target species by causing population declines through indirect intoxication. Small mustelids (SMs; weasels, Mustela nivalis L.; stoats, Mustela erminea L.) consume water voles (WVs, Arvicola scherman S.) and can be exposed to bromadiolone, an anticoagulant rodenticide used in some countries to reduce...

How foraging behaviour of predators is influenced by prey abundance is often not clear. Predators may behave as generalist or specialist depending on the relationship between the predator feeding behaviour and prey abundance, known as functional response. The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a key species for most Iberian vertebrate preda...

Widespread generalist predators may affect declining keystone prey populations. However, this phenomenon is not well understood. In this paper, we assessed whether the abundance and population growth of European rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus, a keystone prey species in Mediterranean Iberia, was related to the abundance and diet of red foxes, Vulpes...

The E uropean rabbit O ryctolagus cuniculus was designated as a protected species in S pain and P ortugal following sharp declines in many populations. The ongoing decline highlights the need to implement cost‐effective management strategies for this staple prey and important small game species of Iberian Mediterranean ecosystems. Habitat managemen...

European rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus are a keystone species in Iberian Mediterranean ecosystems. However, the reliability of methods for estimating rabbit abundance, particularly when at low numbers, is not well understood. Further, better standardization of these methodologies would allow abundance estimates to be more reliably compared between...

The European rabbit Oryctolagus cuniculus is a key species in Mediterranean ecosystems of the Iberian Peninsula, and reliable methods for monitoring its abundance are urgently required. Although clearance plot pellet counts may be useful in monitoring rabbit populations, such counts are potentially affected by variation in the persistence of rabbit...

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La pérdida de hábitat favorable está considerada como una de las causas principales del declive de numerosas especies, como el conejo de monte. Para fomentar la recuperación de las poblaciones de esta especie, incluso antes de la irrupción de la última enfermedad viral, ya se consideraba necesaria la gestión del hábitat (ej. construcción de refugio...

Distribution models are commonly used to generalise across species distributions, to project future potential range changes, and to identify potential areas for species reintroductions and recovery plans. Building several models that incorporate different potential causal factors is a useful way of formalising alternative hypotheses. We developed a...

La disponibilidad de alimento es un factor determinante en la biología reproductiva y ecología poblacional de las aves rapaces, e influye directamente en su distribución y abundancia. En los ecosistemas mediterráneos el conejo de monte Oryctolagus cuniculus es una especie clave, de la que dependen varias especies de rapaces. Partiendo de estos prec...

We investigate the feeding responses of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) at a regional scale to different densities of European wild rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in central–southern Spain. Rabbit abundance indices were obtained in 86 localities during summer 2002. The diet of the fox was studied by analysis of 114 scats collected in 47 of these locali...