Mitchell Warren Serota

University of California, Berkeley | UCB · Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management

Over 20 years ago, ecologists were introduced to the site occupancy model (SOM) for estimating occupancy rates from detection‐nondetection data. In the ensuing decades, the SOM and its hierarchical modeling extensions have become mainstays of quantitative ecology, and estimating occupancy rates has become one of the most common applications of ecol...

Ungulates play vital roles in ecological systems, shaping plant biomass and diversity via herbivory and impacting soil properties through trampling and nutrient deposition. As ungulate communities fluctuate across the globe, the extent to which wild ungulates and domestic livestock can play similar ecological roles is an increasingly vital - and fr...

Context Widespread globally, roads impact the distribution of wildlife by influencing habitat use and avoidance patterns near roadways and disrupting movement across them. Wildlife responses to roads are known to vary across species; however within species, the response to roads may depend on the season or the individual’s behavioral state. Object...

Wildlife translocations are increasingly used to combat declining biodiversity worldwide. Successful translocation often hinges on coexistence between humans and wildlife, yet not all translocation efforts explicitly include human dimensions (e.g., economic incentives, education programs, and conflict reduction assistance). To evaluate the prevalen...

Regional, national, and international 30 × 30 conservation initiatives would be strengthened by including a specific focus on freshwater ecosystem conservation that supplements terrestrial conservation strategies. Globally, freshwater habitats support essential biodiversity and ecosystem services, yet are being lost at disproportionately high rates...

Large carnivores play critical roles in terrestrial ecosystems but have suffered dramatic range contractions over the past two centuries. Developing an accurate understanding of large carnivore diets is an important first step towards an improved understanding of their ecological roles and addressing the conservation challenges faced by these speci...

Global declines in wildlife migrations have prompted new initiatives to conserve remaining migratory behaviors. However, many migrations have already been lost. Important attempts have been made to recover extirpated migrations, and our understanding of restoration remains narrowly confined to these particular species and landscapes. Here, we exami...

We used an automated radiotelemetry system to determine diurnal patterns of activity and temporal phenotype (onset and cessation of activity) in female European starlings during breeding. Parental care is thought to be the most ‘costly’ part of reproduction, with high rates of intense activity due to foraging and provisioning for chicks, so we pred...

Parental care is widely assumed to be costly, and life-history theory predicts that individuals that invest more in parental care should benefit in terms of number of offspring produced but that increased parental care might come at a cost in terms of decreased future fecundity and/or survival. However, the notion that parents that work ‘harder’, c...

Diet specialization has important consequences for how individuals or species deal with environmental change that causes changes in availability of prey species. We took advantage of a “natural experiment” — establishment of a commercial insect farm — that introduced a novel prey item, black soldier flies (Hermetia illucens (Linnaeus, 1758)), to th...

Synopsis: Many behaviors crucial for survival and reproductive success in free-living animals, including migration, foraging, and escaping from predators, involve elevated levels of physical activity. However, although there has been considerable interest in the physiological and biomechanical mechanisms that underpin individual variation in exerc...

Captures and postmortem examinations, or necropsies, of invasive or nonnative animals may provide insight into the ecological impact of these invaders. Researchers should be able to perform necropsies when an opportunity arises to examine nonnative species for study. While the techniques described serve as a guide to necropsy of all reptiles, we fo...

When subject to anthropogenic hunting risks, wildlife populations may adjust their anti-predator behaviour; however, such plastic response has rarely been assessed. We assessed the response of eight species (African elephant, Maasai giraffe, plains zebra, common wildebeest, Grant's gazelle, impala, Thomson's gazelle and Kirk's dik dik) towards huma...