Luca Börger

Swansea University | SWAN · Department of Biosciences

Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear[mdash]a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverag...

Understanding the effects of landscape change and environmental variability on ecological processes is important for evaluating resource management policies, such as the emulation of natural forest disturbances. We analyzed time series of detection/nondetection data using hierarchical models in a Bayesian multi-model inference framework to decompos...

1. Habitat filtering (HF, trait convergence) and niche differentiation (ND, trait divergence) are known to impact upon plant community structure. Both processes integrate individual responses to the abiotic environment and biotic interactions. Thus, it is difficult to clearly identify the underlying abiotic and biotic factors that ultimately impact...

Statisticians frequently voice concern that their interactions with applied researchers start only after data have been collected. The same can be said for our experience with home-range studies. Too often, conversations about home range begin with questions concerning estimation methods, smoothing parameters, or the nature of autocorrelation. More...

Quantifying individual differences and the phenotypic correlates of dispersal are of considerable interest for obtaining a better understanding of the mechanisms of dispersal (Bowler and Benton 2005; Clobert et al. 2009; Morales et al. 2010). The aim of the chapter is to present a new approach for modelling animal dispersal, based on net squared di...

Inter‐individual differences are necessary for selection to act, while plasticity (intra‐individual variation) may buffer against selection. Sleep is a critical self‐maintenance behaviour but, unlike most behaviours, the causes and consequences of its inter‐ and intra‐individual variation in wild animals is poorly understood, particularly in neonat...

Understanding how landscape structure influences predator–prey dynamics is critical for conservation. This study analyzed jaguar‐peccary interactions, revealing uncommon close distances and prevalent 3–5 km ranges, especially away from grasslands. Low peccary densities increased interactions. Findings inform conservation strategies, highlighting la...

Animal movement paths display substantial complexity and variability, leading researchers to seek underlying rules that govern these patterns and mathematical models that best describe them. Using high-resolution (≥ 10 Hz) movement from 43 vertebrate species across diverse taxa, mass, and lifestyles, we show that movement paths are universally comp...

Daily, primates take a variety of decisions to establish why, when, and where to move. However, little is known about the factors influencing and shaping primate daily routes. We investigated the decision-making processes linked to route planning in four groups of black lion tamarins (BLT-Leontopithecus chrysopygus). We studied these endangered pla...

Biologging has proven to be a powerful approach to investigate diverse questions related to movement ecology across a range of spatiotemporal scales and increasingly relies on multidisciplinary expertise. However, the variety of animal‐borne equipment, coupled with little consensus regarding analytical approaches to interpret large, complex data se...

Over the past five decades, a large number of wild animals have been individually identified by various observation systems and/or temporary tracking methods, providing unparalleled insights into their lives over both time and space. However, so far there is no comprehensive record of uniquely individually identified animals nor where their data an...

The application of supervised machine learning methods to identify behavioural modes from inertial measurements of bio-loggers has become a standard tool in behavioural ecology. Several design choices can affect the accuracy of identifying the behavioural modes. One such choice is the inclusion or exclusion of segments consisting of more than a sin...

Sleep serves vital physiological functions, yet how sleep in wild animals is influenced by environmental conditions is poorly understood. Here we use high-resolution biologgers to investigate sleep in wild animals over ecologically relevant time scales and quantify variability between individuals under changing conditions. We developed a robust cla...

Understanding how the landscape influences the distribution and behavior of predators and prey gives us insights into the spatial dynamics of their interactions and the factors that shape their populations across space and time. This study analyzed interactions between jaguars (Panthera onca) and white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari) at different...

Untangling the abiotic and biotic feedback mechanisms driving animal movements and ranges is a core question in ecology, yet progress is hampered by inadequate modelling procedures. Here we show how a recently developed process‐based modelling approach, combining step‐selection functions and individual‐based models, enables a flexible method to inf...

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...

Many animals return to their home areas (i.e., ‘homing’) after translocation to sites further away. Such translocations have traditionally been used in behavioral ecology to understand the orientation and migration behavior of animals. The movement itself can then be followed by marking and recapturing animals or by tracking, for example, using GPS...

With the ongoing rise in global average temperatures, animals are expected to increasingly dedicate their time and energy to thermoregulation. In response to high temperatures, animals typically either seek for and move into thermal refuges, or reduce their activity during the hottest hours of the day. Yet, the often lower resource availability in...

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...

1. Biologging has proven to be a powerful approach to investigate diverse questions related to movement ecology across a range of spatiotemporal scales and increasingly relies on multidisciplinary expertise. Advancements in sensor design and analytical techniques continue to push the boundaries of this emerging discipline. However, the growing vari...

Background - Network theory is largely applied in real-world systems to assess landscape connectivity using empirical or theoretical networks. Empirical networks are usually built from discontinuous individual movement trajectories without knowing the effect of relocation frequency on the assessment of landscape connectivity while theoretical netwo...

Background Many animals move back to their home area (i.e., ‘homing’) after translocation to sites further away. Such translocations have traditionally been used in behavioral ecology to understand orientation and migration behavior of animals. The movement itself can then be followed by marking and recapturing of animals or by tracking, e.g., usin...

2 A bstract Quantifying energy expenditure in free-living primates is fundamentally important yet challenging. Acceleration-based metrics such as Dynamic Body Acceleration (DBA), obtained from accelerometers, are potential proxies for energy expenditure, yet have not been previously validated in primates. Here, we validated DBA in black lion tamar...

Aim Historically, climate has been a dominant driver of global vegetation patterns. Recently, ecological understanding has been updated to acknowledge the influence of human land use (the dominant driver of biodiversity change) in shaping global vegetation patterns. We test whether Raunkiær's life form, a plant classification system designed to ref...

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...

Mammals use thermoregulatory behavioural strategies to reduce the cost of physiological thermoregulation. Environmental temperatures should, therefore, impact their decisions. We investigated the effect of environmental temperature on the movement decisions of a large mammal with low capacity for physiological thermoregulation: the giant anteater,...

Dispersal is a central life history trait that affects the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of populations and communities. The recent use of experimental evolution for the study of dispersal is a promising avenue for demonstrating valuable proofs of concept, bringing insight into alternative dispersal strategies and trade‐offs, and testing the...

Expansion of urban areas, landscape transformation and increasing human outdoor activities strongly affect wildlife behaviour. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular led to drastic changes in human behaviour, exposing wildlife around the world to either reduced or increased human presence, potentially altering animal behaviour. Here, w...

The Balkan region has some of the best conserved rivers in Europe, but is also the location of ~3000 planned hydropower dams that are expected to help decarbonise energy production. A conflict between policies that promote renewable hydropower and those that prioritise river conservation has ensued, which can only be resolved with the help of relia...

Uncovering the mechanisms behind animal space use patterns is of vital importance for predictive ecology, thus conservation and management of ecosystems. Movement is a core driver of those patterns so understanding how movement mechanisms give rise to space use patterns has become an increasingly active area of research. This study focuses on a par...

The biomedical literature has consistently highlighted that long-term elevation of glucocorticoids might impair immune functions. However, patterns are less clear in wild animals. Here, we re-explored the stress–immunity relationship considering the potential effects of behavioural profiles. Thirteen captive roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) were moni...

Animals perceive human activities as risky and generally respond with fear‐induced proactive behaviors to buffer the circadian patterns of lethal and nonlethal disturbances, such as diel migrations (DMs) between risky places during safe nighttime and safer places during risky daytime. However, such responses potentially incur costs through movement...

The biomedical literature has consistently highlighted that long-term elevation of glucocorticoids might impair immune functions. However, patterns are less clear in wild animals. Here, we re-explored the stress–immunity relationship considering the potential effects of behavioural profiles. Thirteen captive roe deer ( Capreolus capreolus ) were mo...

The ability to predict animal space use patterns is a fundamental concern in changing environments. Such predictions require a detailed understanding of the movement mechanisms from which spatial distributions emerge. However, these are typically complex, multifaceted, and therefore difficult to uncover. Here, we provide a methodological framework...

Resource selection analysis (RSA) is a cornerstone approach for understanding animal distributions, yet there exists no rigorous quantification of sample sizes required to obtain reliable results. We provide closed-form mathematical expressions for both the number of animals and relocations per animal required for parameterising RSA to a given degr...

1. The energetic gains from foraging and costs of movement are expected to be key drivers of animal decision-making, as their balance is a large determinant of body condition and survival. This fundamental perspective is often missing from habitat selection studies, which mainly describe correlations between space use and environmental features, ra...

Many studies of animal distributions use habitat and climactic variables to explain patterns of observed space use. However, without behavioral information, we can only speculate as to why and how these characteristics are important to species persistence. Animal-borne accelerometer and magnetometer data loggers can be used to detect behaviors and...

Research Highlight: Bond, M. L., Lee, D. E., Ozgul, A., Farine, D. R., & König, B. (2021). Leaving by staying: Social dispersal in giraffes. Journal of Animal Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365‐2656.13582. Dispersal is a key ecological and evolutionary process, which shows marked variability between and within species. The social and kinship str...

There are numerous examples of phenological shifts that are recognized both as indicators of climate change and drivers of ecosystem change. A pressing challenge is to understand the causal mechanisms by which climate affects phenology. We combined annual population census data and individual longitudinal data (1992–2018) on grey seals, Halicheorus...

Habitat-use and distribution models are essential tools of conservation biology. For wide-ranging species, such models may be challenged by the expanse, remoteness and variability of their habitat, these challenges often being compounded by the species’ mobility. In marine environments, direct observations and sampling are usually impractical over...

Wind is fundamentally related to shelter and flight performance: two factors that are critical for birds at their nest sites. Despite this, airflows have never been fully integrated into models of breeding habitat selection, even for well‐studied seabirds. Here, we use computational fluid dynamics to provide the first assessment of whether flow cha...

Mammals are important components of biodiversity that have been drastically and rapidly impacted by climate change, habitat loss, and anthropogenic pressure. Understanding key species distribution to optimize conservation targets is both urgent and necessary to reverse the current biodiversity crisis. Herein, we applied habitat suitability models f...

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...

Few biodiversity indicators are available that reflect the state of broad-sense biodiversity—rather than of particular taxa—at fine spatial and temporal resolution. One such indicator, the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), estimates how the average abundance of the native terrestrial species in a region compares with their abundances in the abse...

The time that animals spend travelling at various speeds and the tortuosity of their movement paths are two of the many things that affect space‐use by animals. In this, high turn rates are predicted to be energetically costly, especially at high travel speeds, which implies that animals should modulate their speed according to path characteristics...

Sample size sufficiency is a critical consideration for estimating resource selection functions (RSFs) from GPS‐based animal telemetry. Cited thresholds for sufficiency include a number of captured animals and as many relocations per animal N as possible. These thresholds render many RSF‐based studies misleading if large sample sizes were truly ins...

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...

The power curve provides a basis for predicting adjustments that animals make in flight speed, for example in relation to wind, distance, habitat foraging quality and objective. However, relatively few studies have examined how animals respond to the landscape below them, which could affect speed and power allocation through modifications in climb...

The power curve provides a basis for predicting adjustments that animals make in flight speed, for example in relation to wind, distance, habitat foraging quality and objective. However, relatively few studies have examined how animals respond to the landscape below them, which could affect speed and power allocation through modifications in climb...

Habitat fragmentation is a principal threat to biodiversity and artificial river barriers are a leading cause of the global decline in freshwater biota. Although the impact of barriers on diadromous fish is well established, impacts on river‐resident fish communities remain unclear, especially for low‐head barriers. We examined the movement of five...

Invasive bivalves can cause widespread ecological damage, but eradication has proved difficult. Identifying the pathways of dispersal is crucial to implementing more effective biocontainment measures. We examined the distribution of the highly invasive zebra mussel (Dreissena polymorpha) in Great Britain through Species Distribution Modelling to de...

The biomedical literature has consistently highlighted that long-term elevation of glucocorticoids might impair immune functions, while short-term elevation might enhance them. In contrast, in wild and free-ranging animals, patterns are less clear. In the present study, we explored the stress-immunity relationship in controlled conditions, taking i...

Evolution should favour plasticity in dispersal decisions in response to spatial heterogeneity in social and environmental contexts. Sex differences in individual optimization of dispersal decisions are poorly documented in mammals, because species where both sexes commonly disperse are rare. To elucidate the sex-specific drivers governing dispersa...

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...

Energetics are a key driver of animal decision-making, as survival depends on the balance between foraging benefits and movement costs. This fundamental perspective is often missing from habitat selection studies, which mainly describe correlations between space use and environmental features, rather than the mechanisms behind these correlations. T...