
Margarida Santos-ReisUniversity of Lisbon | UL · Center for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Change
Margarida Santos-Reis
PhD
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262
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Publications (262)
Human population growth leads to drastic changes in landscape structure that often result in fragmentation. Fragmentation modifies the landscape and divides it into smaller habitat patches, creating habitat edges. These can affect the distribution and abundance of species and influence interspecific interactions. By comparing edges with habitat int...
Species diversity depends on the capacity of species to coexist, and when these share similar ecological requirements some degree of partitioning of the ecological niche is expected. Within the order Carnivora, direct and indirect interspecific interactions shape community structure and composition. Although strong negative interactions (e.g., inte...
In the Mediterranean, we find a mosaic of natural and cultural landscapes, where a variety of forest management practices created intermediate disturbance regimes that potentially increased biodiversity values. Nonetheless, it is essential to understand the species’ long-term response to the dynamic management in agroecosystems, since the species t...
Small mustelids are an understudied group partly due to the challenges in detecting and monitoring their populations. Despite the classification as Least Concern for several small mustelid species, some studies indicate a population decline in parts of their range. Therefore, efficient and group-specific methods are essential to support monitoring...
Camera‐trapping is considered a cost‐efficient method to monitor wildlife, but relevant performance constraints remain. We assessed performance and cost‐benefit for 2 recent technological innovations: (i) a wireless transmission system where cameras communicate in a network, and (ii) using solar panels as a camera's sole power supply. The maximum d...
Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) is the etiological agent of paratuberculosis, a chronic infection affecting ruminants and other species worldwide. Information on the ecological factors that increase infection risk at the livestock-wildlife-environment interface remains scarce. Thus, this work aimed at determining which factors mod...
1. Mammalian carnivores (Carnivora) are crucial components of landscapes, because of both their top-down effects on lower trophic level species and their sensitivity to bottom-up processes, such as limited food resources (e.g. due to climate instability). To understand their functional role in Iberian ecosystems more clearly, and to define effectiv...
Maximizing the functional performance of urban green infrastructure is important to deliver critical ecosystem services that support human well-being. However, urban ecosystems are impacted by social and ecological filters that affect biodiversity, shaping how species’ traits are functionally expressed, thus affecting ecosystem services supply. Our...
Abstract Carnivore intraguild dynamics depend on a complex interplay of environmental affinities and interspecific interactions. Context‐dependency is commonly expected with varying suites of interacting species and environmental conditions but seldom empirically described. In South Africa, decentralized approaches to conservation and the resulting...
Many species show spatial variation in body size, often associated with climatic patterns. Studying species with contrasting geographical patterns related to climate might help elucidate the role of different drivers. We analysed changes in the body mass of two sympatric medium-sized carnivores—pine marten ( Martes martes ) and stone marten ( Marte...
Theory on intraguild killing (IGK) is central to mammalian carnivore community ecology and top‐down ecosystem regulation. Yet, the cryptic nature of IGK hinders empirical evaluations. Using a novel data source – online photographs of interspecific aggression between African carnivores – we revisited existing predictions about the extent and drivers...
p>Understanding the mechanisms underlying the positive influence of urban biodiversity on dwellers’ well-being is critical to inform sustainable management of urban greenspaces, but studies published to date on the role of biodiversity in mental restoration have provided contradictory results. Both urban greenspace biophysical characteristics and t...
Carnivores social organization varies widely, from strongly social to solitary predators. European badgers are facultative social carnivores that also shows a geographical variation in social structure. These patterns derive mainly from central/west European regions, with an under-representation of Mediterranean populations that face different cons...
South Africa’s decentralized approach to conservation entails that wildlife outside formally protected areas inhabit complex multi-use landscapes, where private wildlife business (ecotourism and/or hunting) co-exist in a human-dominated landscape matrix. Under decentralized conservation, wildlife is perceived to benefit from increased amount of ava...
Cities face growing challenges and urban greenspaces (UGS) play a key role in improving cities liveability. UGS are complex socio-ecological systems and evidence-based and context-sensitive tools are needed to assist planning and manage environmentally sound and socially inclusive UGS. In this paper, we propose an innovative indicator-based tool to...
The montado (in Portugal) or dehesa (in Spain) is an agrosilvopastoral system found in the Iberian Peninsula. Due to its high environmental value, its protection forms part of European biodiversity strategies, but recent management trends are threatening its sustainability. The need to understand the drivers of change and associated impacts means t...
The growing needs for agricultural expansion and intensification will likely continue to reduce and fragment the terrestrial habitats fundamental to mammalian carnivores. Recent research identified benefits of agroecosystems to carnivores recognizing their multifunctionality, mostly for common species. However, the variability of carnivore ecology...
Information about forest background reflectance is needed for accurate biophysical parameter retrieval from forest canopies (overstory) with remote sensing. Separating under- and overstory signals would enable more accurate modeling of forest carbon and energy fluxes. We retrieved values of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of the f...
Abstract The physiological significance of biometric body condition indices (bBCI) is poorly understood. We hypothesized that bBCI are composite metrics of nutritional physiology, physical fitness and health. To test this hypothesis, we first compared the performance of eight bBCI, using 434 Southern European carnivores from six species as a model...
Conservation efforts in South Africa play out across multi‐use landscapes where formal protected areas coexist with private wildlife business (ecotourism and/or hunting) in a human‐dominated matrix. Despite the persistence of highly diverse carnivore guilds, management idiosyncrasies are often orientated towards charismatic large predators and asse...
The aims of this study were to predict the potential distribution of two introduced Mustelidae, Mustela nivalis and M. putorius in the Azores archipelago (Portugal), and evaluate the relative contribution of environmental factors from native and introduced ranges to predict species distribution ranges in oceanic islands. We developed two sets of Sp...
The patterns of species co-occurrence have long served as a primary approach to explore concepts of interspecific interaction. However, the interpretation of such patterns is difficult as they can result from several complex ecological processes, in a scale-dependent manner. Here, we aim to investigate the co-occurrence pattern between European rab...
The urban heat island effect creates warmer and drier conditions in urban areas than in their surrounding rural areas. This effect is predicted to be exacerbated in the future, under a climate change scenario. One way to mitigate this effect is to use the urban green infrastructure as a way to promote the cooling island effect. In this study we aim...
Agriculture and pastureland for cattle grazing are common land uses in Mediterranean landscapes. These activities significantly alter the habitat conditions, affecting the body conditions of wild communities, especially those with low vagility, such as small mammals. We aimed to evaluate how cattle grazing and the habitat composition affected the b...
Mediterranean European landscapes have been shaped by human activities for centuries, particularly by livestock and farming. Traditionally managed montado landscapes have been recognized as having a crucial role in biodiversity conservation, providing habitat complexity and thus, ecological conditions for a variety of species. Biodiversity associat...
Montado is a savannah-like cultural landscape characteristic of the western Iberian Peninsula that is of high ecological and socio-economic value. Montado sites provide a multitude of services including materials (mostly valuable cork), food for free-ranging livestock, agricultural products, game, and tourism. Several stakeholders operate at variou...
The European badger has a wide distribution range, having been the target of many studies regarding e.g. distribution, abundance, population dynamics, ecology and morphological traits.
In a recent study, a correlation was established between badgers body size and latitude with the biggest badgers being those from populations within the core of the...
Biodiversity is recognizably affected by land conversion for agriculture. However, the assessment of impacts on wildlife often lacks information on populations structure and individuals' condition, allowing only a limited view of the problem. Individual body condition/health can influence animal's reproductive success or survival. Eucalyptus globul...
Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) are difficult to assess and are seldom considered by land managers. Geocaching, an outdoor game that uses Global Positioning System (GPS) enabled devices tofind hidden containers (geocaches) in certain locations, has been seldom used as a data source to assess CES. However, contrary to other crowdsourcing databases...
In an increasingly urbanized world, urban green spaces (UGS) are critical for ensuring residents’ health and well-being, due to the ecosystem services provided. Urban planning is being instigated to maximize the potential of UGS to increase responsiveness to major societal and environmental challenges and emerging policy demands. While city-wide pe...
The impact of allergens emitted by urban green spaces on health is one of the main disservices of ecosystems. The objective of this work is to establish the potential allergenic value of some tree species in urban environments, so that the allergenicity of green spaces can be estimated through application of the Index of Urban Green Zones Allergeni...
The ecosystem services approach can inform decision-making by accounting for both short- and long-term benefits from different land use options. Here we used the InVEST toolkit to quantify and map key ecosystem services at the largest publicly-owned agro-silvo-pastoral farmstead in Portugal–a site representative for the montado landscape. We analyz...
Ecosystem services inherently involve people, whose values help define the benefits of nature's services. It is thus important for researchers to involve stakeholders in ecosystem services research. However, a simple and practicable framework to guide such engagement, and in particular to help researchers anticipate and consider key issues and chal...
Human-Induced Rapid Environmental Change (HIREC), particularly climate change and habitat conversion, affects species distributions worldwide. Here, we aimed to (i) assess the factors that determine range patterns of European badger (Meles meles) at the southwestern edge of their distribution and (ii) forecast the possible impacts of future climate...
Across the Mediterranean, conservation programmes often operate concomitantly with hunting interests within game-lands. Carnivore guilds lie at the interface between contrasting management goals, being simultaneously fundamental components of ecosystems and targets of predator control to reduce predation on game species. Here, we evaluate the compo...
Species-specific naïve occupancy estimates in the eight studies / nine study areas selected from the literature review.
Also includes information on type of management (with or without predator control) and sampling design and the estimates for the present study for comparison. Ss–sampling sites.
(DOCX)
Interspecific differences in naïve occupancy between V. vulpes and sympatric mesocarnivores for each of the eight studies / nine study areas selected from the literature review.
Also includes the average difference across species and across studies ± standard deviation. Interspecific differences relative to red fox naïve occupancy obtained in our s...
Literature review of studies reporting data on Iberian mesocarnivores’ occupancy.
(DOCX)
Otter species can be used as flagship to promote the protection of aquatic environments in regions where they are known or regularly seen. In a previous study on the perceptions of local communities about the Neotropical otter (Lontra longicaudis) in Central-South São Paulo State, Brazil, we identified knowledge gaps and population groups with pote...
Sampling wild animal populations using non-invasive techniques is advised when dealing with threatened species. Hair samples provide ecological information like species and individual identification. However, hair trapping is scarcely used in otters, due to their aquatic habits. Most studies are with captive individuals, so there is the need to tes...
European badgers (Meles meles) are considered central-place foragers, whose spatial ecology is predominantly determined by sett location. Many studies have assessed the factors determining sett site selection throughout this species’ range, but these have often been geographically limited and have primarily identified locally dependent factors. To...
With an overarching goal of addressing global and regional sustainability challenges, Long TermSocio-Ecological
Research Platforms (LTSER) aim to conduct place-based research, to collect and synthesize both environmental
and socio-economic data, and to involve a broader stakeholder pool to set the research agenda. To date there have been few studie...
Biocultural diversity is an evolving perspective for studying the interrelatedness between people and their natural environment, not only in ecoregional hotspots and cultural landscapes, but also in urban green spaces. Developed in the 1990s in order to denote the diversity of life in all its manifestations―biological, cultural and linguistic―co-ev...
The growing human population concentrated in urban areas lead to the increase of road traffic and artificial areas, consequently enhancing air pollution and urban heat island effects, among others. These environmental changes affect citizen's health, causing a high number of premature deaths, with considerable social and economic costs. Nature-base...
Agro-silvo-pastoral management practices are the most common promoters of the spatial heterogeneity observed in the Mediterranean landscapes, including Iberian ‘montados’. In these ecosystems, we have witnessed changes in management practices along the years. These changes in the ecosystem structure enhanced the wildlife’s need to adapt to changes...
Urban areas' population has grown during the last century and it is expected that over 60% of the world population will live in cities by 2050. Urban parks provide several ecosystem services that are valuable to the well-being of city-dwellers and they are also considered a nature-based solution to tackle multiple environmental problems in cities....
This report is the final deliverable (D2.3) of WP2 of GREEN SURGE project (2013-2017) as a part of the EU FP7 (ENV.2013.6.2-5-603567). This research aims to illustrate how the Biocultural Diversity (BCD) concept can help urban practitioners, planners and decision-makers to understand the integration between biological diversity in Urban Green Infra...
Urban Parks are spaces of interaction between people and nature. They participate in the provision of Ecosystem Services that generate benefits and well-being. But some of the most frequent tree species growing in urban green areas are involved in allergic reactions.
Download this article in Blog Alex Bager (http://bab.empreendedor-academico.com.br/)
Spatial and temporal aggregation patterns of wildlife-vehicle collisions are recurrently used to inform where and when mitigation measures are most needed. The aim of this study is to assess if such aggre- gation patterns remain in the same locations and periods o...
In the last decades production forests have expanded their range worldwide, and in many regions (e.g., southern Europe) Eucalyptus spp. have been the target species used by foresters. However, Eucalyptus characteristics and management intensity of its plantations may impose constraints to local wildlife, often considered highly harmful for wildlife...
Within the framework of an ecosystem service assessment, social valuation has the potential to make people ́s opinions, beliefs and preferences visible in the decision-making processes.
Set up a tailor-made social valuation procedure for your specific problem:
Be clear about the purpose and specific objectives for your specific problem.
Identify t...
In the multi-functional and biodiverse cork oak landscapes of Iberia (Montado), agro-silvo-pastoral practices promote landscape heterogeneity and create intricate habitat and resource availability patterns. We used camera-traps to investigate the temporal and spatial organisation of a mesocarnivore community in a Montado landscape in central Portug...
Introduced mammalian predators have negatively affected native biota and ecological processes in ecosystems across the globe. The least weasel (Mustela nivalis) is a Holarctic mustelid carnivore that has been considered one of the world’s worst invasive alien species. It has been introduced to several islands in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic O...
Introduced mammalian predators have negatively affected native biota and ecological processes in ecosystems across the globe. The least weasel (Mustela nivalis) is a Holarctic mustelid carnivore that has been considered one of the world’s worst invasive alien species. It has been introduced to several islands in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic O...
Here we share what we have learned from working with stakeholders to elicit demand for
ecosystem services, drawn from experience in seven of the OPERAs Exemplar case studies. We have developed an eight-step framework for identifying and working with stakeholders, identifying and eliciting ecosystem services that stakeholders value, and analyzing an...
Forestry plantations, and particularly those of exotic Eucalyptus, are important man-made systems in Europe, and especially in Portugal, where these represent now the largest fraction of forested areas. Eucalyptus plantations may have impacts on vertebrate communities in Europe; however, these have been seldom assessed. Although it is commonly unde...