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...

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...

1. 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. 2. This study focuses on...

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...

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...

1. 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. 2. Here we provide a methodological frame...

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 between risky places during safe nighttime and safer places during risky daytime. However, such responses potentially incur costs through movement or r...

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...

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...

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...

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...

1. 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 M ≥ 30 and as many relocations per animal N as possible. These thresholds render many RSF‐based studies misleading if large sample sizes were...

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...

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...

Habitat fragmentation is a principal threat to biodiversity and artificial river barriers are a leading cause of the global decline in freshwater biota. Whilst 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 c...

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...

Sample size sufficiency is a critical consideration for conducting Resource-Selection Analyses (RSAs) from GPS-based animal telemetry. Cited thresholds for sufficiency include a number of captured animals M ≥ 30 and as many relocations per animal N as possible. These thresholds render many RSA-based studies misleading if large sample sizes were tru...

Restoring river connectivity is a global conservation priority but quantifying river fragmentation has proved difficult due to the paucity of good barrier records, duplicate entries, and other sources of biases. Here we present some tools to help overcome some of these challenges and illustrate their application with case studies drawn across diffe...

Step selection analysis (SSA) is a fundamental technique for uncovering the drivers of animal movement decisions. Its typical use has been to view an animal as “selecting” each measured location, given its current (and possibly previous) locations. Although an animal is unlikely to make decisions precisely at the times its locations are measured, i...

The flight speeds that animals should adopt to minimise energy expenditure in different scenarios can be predicted by the curve of power against speed. However, relatively few studies have examined how animals respond to the landscape below them, which could affect speed through modifications in climb rate and perceived predation risk. We equipped...

Wind is a fundamental driver of the distribution and energy expenditure of birds at sea. Wind can also influence mortality at the nest. Yet airflows have never been fully integrated into models of breeding habitat selection. We use computational fluid dynamics to provide the first assessment of whether and how airflows predict the distribution of s...

Artificial barriers cause widespread impacts on freshwater fish. Swimming performance is often used as the key metric in assessing fishes' responses to river barriers. However, barrier mitigation is generally based on the swimming ability of salmonids and other strong swimmers because knowledge of swimming ability for most other freshwater fish is...

Rivers support some of Earth’s richest biodiversity1 and provide essential ecosystem services to society2, but they are often fragmented by barriers to free flow3. In Europe, attempts to quantify river connectivity have been hampered by the absence of a harmonized barrier database. Here we show that there are at least 1.2 million instream barriers...

Animal movement paths are variously tortuous, with high turn rates predicted to be energetically costly, especially at high speeds. Animals travel most efficiently at the speed that gives the lowest cost of transport (COT), a well-defined point for movement in fluid media. However, theoretically, land animals should travel at their maximum speed to...

Step selection analysis (SSA) is a fundamental technique for uncovering the drivers of animal movement decisions. Its typical use has been to view an animal as “selecting” each measured location, given its current (and possibly previous) locations. Although an animal is unlikely to make decisions precisely at the times its locations are measured, i...

• Conservation and population management decisions often rely on population models parameterized using census data. However, the sampling regime, precision, sample size, and methods used to collect census data are usually heterogeneous in time and space. Decisions about how to derive population‐wide estimates from this patchwork of data are complic...

• Animal behavior is elicited, in part, in response to external conditions, but understanding how animals perceive the environment and make the decisions that bring about these behavioral responses is challenging. • Animal heads often move during specific behaviors and, additionally, typically have sensory systems (notably vision, smell, and hearin...

1. Macrophytes play important functional roles in river ecosystems, providing habitat and food, as well as influencing flow, water chemistry, and sediment dynamics. They also represent an important component of river biodiversity. 2. Artificial river barriers have the potential to disrupt macrophyte dispersal, and compromise their distribution and...

Estimating animal home ranges and understanding the processes that influence home range behavior are important components of ecological investigations. While ecologists have been interested in the concept of home range for many decades, turning this conceptinto a usable statistical model or quantifiable metric for scientific purposes has been quite...

In isolated or declining populations, viability may be compromised further by loss of genetic diversity. Therefore, it is important to understand the relationship between long-term ecological trajectories and population genetic structure. However, opportunities to combine these types of data are rare, especially in natural systems. Using an existin...

1.The paradigm‐changing opportunities of bio‐logging 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 bio‐logging data, are mostly ignored. 2.Here, we fill this gap b...

Artificial barriers are one of the main threats to river ecosystems, resulting in habitat fragmentation and loss of connectivity. Yet, the abundance and distribution of most artificial barriers, excluding high-head dams, is poorly documented. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the distribution and typology of artificial barriers in Great Brit...

Artificial barriers are one of the main threats to river ecosystems, resulting in habitat fragmentation and loss of connectivity. Yet, the abundance and distribution of most artificial barriers, excluding high-head dams, is poorly documented. We provide a comprehensive assessment of the distribution and typology of artificial barriers in Great Brit...

Biologging devices are used ubiquitously across vertebrate taxa in studies of movement and behavioural ecology to record data from organisms without the need for direct observation. Despite the dramatic increase in the sophistication of this technology, progress in reducing the impact of these devices to animals is less obvious, notwithstanding the...

Freshwater ecosystems rank among the most endangered ecosystems in the world and are under increasing threat from aquatic invasive species (AIS). Understanding the range expansion of AIS is key for mitigating their impacts. Most approaches rely on Species Distribution Models (SDMs) to predict the expansion of AIS, using mainly environmental variabl...

1.It is fundamentally important for many animal ecologists to quantify the costs of animal activities, although it is not straightforward to do so. The recording of triaxial acceleration by animal‐attached devices has been proposed as a way forward for this, with the specific suggestion that dynamic body acceleration (DBA) be used as a proxy for mo...

Tracking progress towards biodiversity targets requires indicators that are sensitive to changes at policy-relevant scales, can easily be aggregated to any spatial scale and are simple to understand. The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), which estimates the average abundance of a diverse set of organisms in a given area relative to their referen...

Decomposing the life track of an animal into behavioral segments is a fundamental challenge for movement ecology. The proliferation of high‐resolution data, often collected many times per second, offers much opportunity for understanding animal movement. However, the sheer size of modern data sets means there is an increasing need for rapid, novel...

Vultures are thought to form networks in the sky, with individuals monitoring the movements of others to gain up-to-date information on resource availability. While it is recognized that social information facilitates the search for carrion, how this facilitates the search for updrafts, another critical resource, remains unknown. In theory, birds c...