Maryline Pellerin

• PhD
• Engineer at Office Français de la Biodiversité

Although global change and landscape modifications have degraded natural habitats, some species are able to thrive in anthropized landscapes by exploiting agricultural subsidies. In heterogeneous agroecosystems, spatial variation in landscape composition is predicted to impact demographic performance of wildlife depending on predominant agricultura...

The risk of viral transmissions from domestic and wild animals to humans is of high concern for human health. Humans can also transmit viral infections back to domestic and wild animals, which can then act as reservoir for the maintenance of viruses, with the risk of epidemic diseases re-emergence. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus...

Sex chromosomes differ in their inheritance properties from autosomes, and hence may encode complementary information about past demographic events. We compiled and analysed a range-wide resequencing dataset of the red deer (Cervus elaphus), one of the few Eurasian herbivores of the Late Pleistocene megafauna still found throughout much of its hist...

In most polygynous vertebrates, males must allocate energy to growing secondary sexual characteristics, such as ornaments or weapons, that they require to attract and defend potential mates, impacting body condition and potentially entailing fitness costs. We investigated sex differences in over winter body mass change across five intensively monit...

The recent emergence of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in Europe has become a new public health risk for monitoring of wild and farmed cervids. This disease, due to prions, has proliferated in North America in a contagious manner. In several mammalian species, polymorphisms in the prion protein gene ( PRNP ) play a crucial role in the susceptibility...

Immunosenescence corresponds to the progressive decline of immune functions with increasing age. Although it is critical to understand what modulates such a decline, the ecological and physiological drivers of immunosenescence remain poorly understood in the wild. Among them, the level of glucocorticoids (GCs) during early life are good candidates...

Most chemical elements are crucial for life maintenance, but the intake of non-essential elements or inadequate concentrations of essential ones can have major consequences on wildlife health. However, concentrations of minor and trace elements remain largely unknown in free-ranging animals. This study aimed to establish the first reference values...

In the current context of increase in number and geographic expansion of wild ungulates combined with the decreasing hunting pressure, wildlife managers need efficient tools for better control of populations. In general, managers use theoretical maximal growth rates of population and/or abundance estimates to set hunting plans. Concerning the use o...

Changes in the risk of exposure to infectious disease agents can be tracked through variations in antibody prevalence in vertebrate host populations. However, information on the temporal dynamics of the immune status of individuals is critical. If antibody levels persist a long time after exposure to an infectious agent, they could enable the effic...

It is now broadly admitted that female reproductive senescence – a decline in reproductive performance with increasing age – occurs in most species, at least among birds and mammals. Although information is more limited, male reproductive senescence has been regularly inferred from the decline in the size or performance of phenotypic traits that un...

Environmental fluctuations force animals to adjust glucocorticoids (GCs) secretion and release to current conditions. GCs are a widely used proxy of an individual stress level. While short-term elevation in GCs is arguably beneficial for fitness components, previous studies have documented that the relationship between long-term baseline GCs elevat...

Living in variable and unpredictable environments, organisms face recurrent stressful situations. The endocrine stress response, which includes the secretion of glucocorticoids, helps organisms to cope with these perturbations. Although short-term elevations of glucocorticoid levels are often associated with immediate beneficial consequences for in...

Environmental fluctuations force animals to adjust glucocorticoids (GCs) secretion and release to current conditions. GCs are a widely used proxy of an individual stress level. While short-term elevation in GCs is arguably beneficial for fitness components, previous studies have documented that the relationship between long-term baseline GCs elevat...

In polygynous vertebrates, males must allocate energy to growing the secondary sexual characteristics, such as ornaments or weapons, that they require to attract and defend potential mates, impacting body condition and potentially entailing fitness costs. We investigated sex differences in over winter body mass change across five intensively monito...

Living in variable and unpredictable environments, organisms face recurrent stressful situations. The endocrine stress response, which includes the secretion of glucocorticoids, helps organisms to cope with these perturbations. Although short-term elevations of glucocorticoid levels are often associated with immediate beneficial consequences for in...

DNA methylation-based biomarkers of aging (epigenetic clocks) promise to lead to new insights into evolutionary biology of ageing. Relatively little is known about how the natural environment affects epigenetic aging effects in wild species. In this study, we took advantage of a unique long-term (>40 years) longitudinal monitoring of individual roe...

The fitting of tracking devices to wild animals requires capture and handling which causes stress and can potentially cause injury, behavioural modifications that can affect animal welfare and the output of research. We evaluated post capture and release ranging behaviour responses of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) for five different capture method...

In vertebrates, offspring survival often decreases with increasing maternal age. While many studies have reported a decline in fitness‐related traits of offspring with increasing maternal age, the study of senescence in maternal effect through age‐specific changes in offspring physiological condition is still at its infancy. We assessed the influen...

While evidence that telomere length is associated with health and mortality in humans and birds is accumulating, a large body of research is currently seeking to identify factors that modulate telomere dynamics. We tested the hypothesis that high levels of glucocorticoids in individuals under environmental stress should accelerate telomere shorteni...

DNA methylation-based biomarkers of aging (epigenetic clocks) promise to lead to new insights in the evolutionary biology of ageing. Relatively little is known about how the natural environment affects epigenetic aging effects in wild species. In this study, we took advantage of a unique long-term (>40 years) longitudinal monitoring of individual r...

Understanding how wild animals adapt to perturbations and their consequences for life history traits and population dynamics is a current focus of attention in ecology and conservation biology. Here, we analysed variation in the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (N:L ratio), a proxy of stress level, in wild roe deer Capreolus capreolus from three popu...

Bluetongue virus (BTV) is a Culicoides-borne pathogen infecting both domestic and wild ruminants. In Europe, the Red Deer (Cervus elaphus) (RD) is considered a potential BTV reservoir, but persistent sylvatic cycle has not yet been demonstrated. In this paper, we explored the dynamics of BTV1 and BTV8 serotypes in the RD in France, and the potentia...

Whether female mating tactics vary with age based on their preference for mates remains poorly documented. To fill this knowledge gap, we examined how maternal age is related to the age of their mates using detailed individual long‐term monitoring of a genotyped and pedigreed European roe deer (Capreolus capreolus, Linnaeus, 1758) population. We f...

La question d’affourager les cerfs est revenue en force récemment. L’apport de nourriture en période hivernale est en effet utilisé pour divers objectifs : augmenter la survie des animaux en cette période de disette et leur succès reproducteur, les fixer en un lieu pour faciliter leur chasse ou leur observation, les détourner de certaines routes po...

According to the principle of allocation, trade-offs are inevitable when resources allocated to one biological function are no longer available for other functions. Growth, and to a lesser extent, immunity are energetically costly functions that may compete with allocation to reproductive success and survival. However, whether high allocation to gro...

Background: Understanding the genetic and environmental mechanisms governing variation in morphology or phenology in wild populations is currently an important challenge. While there is a general consensus that selection is stronger under stressful conditions, it remains unclear whether the evolutionary potential of traits should increase or decrea...

With the surge of GPS-technology, many studies uncovered space use of mobile animals and shed light on the underlying behavioral mechanisms of habitat selection. Habitat selection and variation in either occurrence or strength of functional responses (i.e. how selection changes with availability) have given new insight into such mechanisms within p...

To secure mating opportunities, males often develop and maintain conspicuous traits that are involved in intrasexual and/or intersexual competition. While current models of sexual selection rely on the assumption that producing such traits is costly, quantifying the cost of allocating to secondary sexual traits remains challenging. According to the...

In animals, physiological mechanisms underlying reproductive and actuarial senescence remain poorly understood. Immunosenescence, the decline in the ability to display an efficient immune response with increasing age, is likely to influence both reproductive and actuarial senescence through increased risk of disease. Evidence for such a link has be...

Telomere length (TL) represents a promising biomarker of overall physiological state and of past environmental experiences, which could help us understand the drivers of life-history variation in natural populations. A growing number of studies in birds suggest that environmental stress or poor environmental conditions are associated with shortened...

La longueur de la patte arrière (LPA) des chevrillards est un indicateur de changement écologique (ICE) qui permet de détecter, à l’échelle d’une population, les variations de la condition physique des animaux qui la composent. Pour être opérationnel, cet ICE, comme tous les autres, doit être mesuré avec un maximum de précision. Mais qu’en est-il s...

Individual body mass often positively correlates with survival and reproductive success, whereas fitness costs of growing large are rarely detected in vertebrates in the wild. Evidence that adult body mass progressively declines with increasing age is accumulating across mammalian populations. Growing fast to a large body can increase the cellular...

Plant dispersal is crucial to maintaining plant community dynamics, especially in the current context of rapid environmental changes such as global warming and landscape fragmentation. We seized the opportunity to carry out a pilot study on endozoochorous dispersal by the endangered Pyrenean brown bear. We based our study on faeces collected by the...

Despite being a widespread and important game species in Europe, scientifically reliable, easy applicable and cost effective methods for monitoring abundance of roe deer Capreolus capreolus populations do not yet exist. The currently recommended kilometric index (AI-p) captures temporal variation in the relative abundance of populations; however, b...

Herbivorous ungulates are key species in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, and their recent demographic and geographic expansion in some temperate regions is likely to influence ecological processes, particularly if we consider plants and the frequency of mobile links among plant populations. In forests, long-distance seed dispersal essent...

Suivre les modifications de la végétation en réponse à l'abroutissement des ongulés sauvages est un volet important pour comprendre l’évolution du système forêt-gibier. Aujourd’hui, de nombreux gestionnaires forestiers souhaitant développer ces suivis sur des unités de grande surface se heurtent aux moyens en personnels de terrain nécessaires à leu...

Dans l’écrin exceptionnel du château de Chambord, ce colloque co-organisé par l’ONCFS, la Fédération nationale des chasseurs et la Fondation François Sommer, avec la participation du Domaine national de Chambord, l’Office national des forêts et l’Association nationale des chasseurs de grand gibier, a rassemblé quelque 370 participants issus de tous...

Suivre les variations de l’abondance relative des populations de chevreuils

Suivre les variations de l’abondance relative des populations de chevreuils

Suivre les variations de l’abondance relative des populations de cerfs

Suivre les variations de l’abondance relative des populations de chamois et d’isards

Suivre les variations de l’abondance relative des populations de mouflons

Suivre les variations de l’abondance relative des populations de mouflons

Suivre les variations de l’abondance relative des populations de bouquetins

Suivre les variations de la condition physique des cerfs, chevreuils, chamois, isards et mouflons

Suivre les variations de la condition physique des cerfs et des chevreuils

Suivre les variations de la condition physique des chevreuils

Suivre les variations de la condition physique des cerfs

Suivre les variations de la condition physique des populations de cerfs

Le suivi de l’abondance des populations de chevreuils repose sur l’un des tout premiers indicateurs de changement écologique (ICE) : l’indice kilométrique pédestre. Afin de faciliter le suivi de cette espèce à de plus larges échelles de gestion, nous avons validé un indicateur, déjà souvent employé sur le terrain : l’indice kilométrique voiture. A...

Breeding dispersal, defined as the net movement between successive breeding sites, remains a poorly understood and seldom reported phenomenon in mammals, despite its importance for population dynamics and genetics. In large herbivores, females may be more mobile during the breeding season, undertaking short-term trips (excursions) outside their nor...

Nous avons eu l’opportunité de mener une étude pilote sur la dispersion endozoochore par l’ours brun (Ursus arctos) des Pyrénées, à partir des relevés d’indices de présence effectués par l’Équipe Ours et le Réseau Ours Brun et des données de localisation par GPS de 3 individus slovènes relâchés en 2006. Nous avons examiné 39 échantillons répartis s...

Les populations d’ongulés sauvages ont progressé depuis les années 80 au point aujourd'hui de poser des problèmes économiques, sociaux et environnementaux. Une gestion durable des forêts suppose de trouver un compromis entre les effets nuisibles (économiques, sanitaires et écologiques) et les services rendus (économiques, patrimoniaux et écologique...

Depuis près de trois décennies, le massif forestier du Donon (Massif vosgien) se singularise pour les obstacles qui s’opposent à une conciliation entre la production de bois et la présence du cerf. Les sylviculteurs y déplorent d’importants dégâts forestiers qui perturbent, entre autre, la régénération du sapin pectiné. Les gestionnaires de la faun...

Cet article support de la fête de la Science 2013 décrit le projet de Recherche DIPLO mené en Région centre sur le rôle des ongulés forestiers dans la dispersion des plantes. Les premiers résultats montrent que les ongulés sont à l'origine de la dispersion dans leur pelage d'au moins une plante sur 7. Sachant que ces espèces animales effectuent d'i...

A participatory network was set up to study tree phenology in the Western Alps. We used data collected in 2006 and 2007 on birch, ash, hazel, spruce and larch to assess how local air temperature, altitude and other topographic variables influenced dates of budburst and leaf unfolding. Altitude was, as expected, a main predictor variable of budburst...

Le potentiel de disperser à longue distance est déterminant pour expliquer les migrations passées et la distribution actuelle des plantes ainsi que pour prédire leur répartition future, notamment sous la contrainte des changements globaux. Les animaux, le vent, l'eau et les activités humaines sont les principaux vecteurs qui pourraient permettre au...

In most previous studies of habitat selection, the use of a given habitat type is assumed to be directly proportional to its availability. However, the use and (or) the selection of a given habitat may be conditional on the availability of that habitat. We aim here to (i)identify the environmental variables involved in habitat selection, (ii)identi...

A 3-year field experiment with paired exclosure (fenced areas, excluding deer) and control plots (unfenced areas, free access to deer), with two treatments with and without woody debris, was carried out at two sites in a temperate forest in eastern France. The aim of the experiment was to assess the effect of browsing by roe deer (Capreolus capreol...

Les tempêtes qui ont frappé la France en décembre 1999 nous ont donné une opportunité sans précédent de quantifier l'impact de perturbations climatiques majeures sur les populations de vertébrés.

A heterogeneous environment includes several levels of resource aggregation. Individuals do not respond to this heterogeneity in the same way and their responses depend on the scale at which they perceive it, and they develop different foraging tactics accordingly. The development of methods to analyse animal movements has enabled the study of fora...

In this study, we compared kernel estimates of home-range size between VHF and GPS monitoring. We used three types of data to assess the monthly estimates of individual home-range size (VHF data based on 17 locations, subsampled GPS data based on 17 locations (with 1,000 replicates) and GPS data based on 720 locations) using three estimation method...

Identifier les facteurs régissant les variations spatio-temporelles des traits d’histoire de vie et des densités d’individus est indispensable, aussi bien pour comprendre le fonctionnement d’une population de vertébrés que pour définir les règles de conservation ou d’exploitation de cette population. Cette thèse a pour but de comprendre l’influence...

L’analyse des caractéristiques des domaines vitaux de 22 chevrettes, suivies pendant deux ans dans des milieux forestiers plus ou moins ouverts, montre que l’espèce réagit aux modifications paysagères. Les résultats révèlent que plus l’habitat est hétérogène, plus le domaine vital des animaux est petit. Ce constat permet d’envisager quelques mesure...

Data on 22 radio-collared adult female roe deer Capreolus capreolus in the Chizé forest were used to test whether their home-range size was influenced by resource availability and reproductive status. As roe deer females are income breeders and invest heavily in each reproductive attempt, they should be limited by energetic constraints. Thus it was...

In this study we describe and calibrate a quantitative index method to estimate leaf biomass and forage availability for browsers at different feeding heights. The method is based on an index relating leaf biomass to a number of leaf contacts with a vertical, three-dimensional (2525165cm) metallic quadrat with a central rod and takes into account t...