Oded Berger-Tal

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• Associate proffesor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Wind turbines add to global environmental pollution through prominent noise emissions, yet significant gaps remain in our understanding of the adverse effects of this noise on wildlife. In this study, we investigated the impact of this noise on the acoustic environment and songbird behavior by employing a unique “phantom wind turbine” method: broad...

Human activities pose existential challenges to wildlife and ecosystems everywhere. In many species, behavioural adjustments are often the first responses when environments are altered. But how can an understanding of such responses—and knowledge of animal behaviour more generally—contribute to solving real-world problems? This book focuses on the...

The widespread sharing of information on the Internet has given rise to ecological studies that use data from digital sources including digitized museum records and social media posts. Most of these studies have focused on understanding species occurrences and distributions. In this essay, we argue that data from digital sources also offer many opp...

In the field of biodiversity conservation, there is a growing need for research to translate to real-world impacts. Currently there exists a gap between research outcomes and on the ground action, commonly referred to as the knowledge-action gap. Previous research has focused on identifying the causes of the gap, but less research has focused on ho...

People's recreational activities in nature are essential to promote wildlife conservation. The interplay between humans and the environment is complex, as the presence of humans may impact wildlife both directly and by altering species interactions. Thus, conservation management in protected areas where people frequently interact with wildlife is c...

Systematic evidence syntheses (systematic reviews and maps) summarize knowledge and are used to support decisions and policies in a variety of applied fields, from medicine and public health to biodiversity conservation. However, conducting these exercises in conservation is often expensive and slow, which can impede their use and hamper progress i...

The need for remote, reliable, and scalable monitoring of plummeting biodiversity amidst mounting human pressures on ecosystems and changing climate has sparked enormous interest in Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) over multiple disciplines and ecosystems. Even though PAM could support UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Biodiversity I...

Human villages in deserts can provide resources in an otherwise stark environment, potentially buffering against extreme environmental conditions. It is thus expected that breeding within these villages would result in higher fitness. However, choosing to raise offspring in these resource-rich environments may have unintended negative consequences....

Many vulture populations have severely declined in the past decades, showing high juvenile mortality. To support these populations, feeding stations are used to increase food availability and to supply food without antibiotics and toxic compounds. Yet, supplying food at feeding stations may affect vulture behavior. We present a large-scale field ex...

1. The spatial expansion of human populations has increased the overlap between humans and wildlife, leading to the greater tolerance of many wildlife species to humans. However, our current understanding of the consequences of such tolerance is limited. In particular, we lack information on whether reduced behavioural responses to humans are indic...

Anthropogenic noise is one of the fastest growing, globally widespread pollutants, affecting countless species worldwide. A rapidly growing source of noise pollution is wind turbine infrastructure. Despite accumulating evidence on the negative impacts of wind turbines on wildlife, little is known about how the noise they generate impacts ecological...

Despite the significant global impact of oil spills on the environment, little is known about the effects of oil spills on animals in terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in desert environments. In contaminated areas, habitat selection can be a crucial behavior determining individuals survival as well as a potential indicator of an ecosystem’s cond...

A unique, hyper-arid habitat in southern Israel was polluted by crude oil in 2014. Surveys following the event found that some species of local lizards avoid the oil, while other species were found more frequently in polluted plots. These results raised the question: why do species react differently to oil-polluted soil? We evaluated how soil type,...

Conservation behaviour is a growing field that applies insights from the study of animal behaviour to address challenges in wildlife conservation and management. Conservation behaviour interventions often aim to manage specific behaviours of a species to solve conservation challenges. The field is often viewed as offering approaches that are less i...

During early development, juvenile animals need to acquire a diverse behavioural repertoire to interact with their environment. The ontogeny of animal behaviour, is paced by the motivation to improve, e.g. internal clocks, and limited by external constraints, e.g. weather conditions. We here evaluate how naive Egyptian vultures (Neophron percnopter...

‘Avrona Nature Reserve was contaminated twice by crude oil; in 1975 and 2014. A five-year field monitoring of insects was conducted, followed by habitat selection lab experiments, aiming to understand the effects of oil spills on the distribution & behavior of ground-dwelling insects. The study species were darkling beetles (mesostena angustata) a...

Although oil spills are a major source of global pollution, little is known about the effects of oil spills on animals in terrestrial ecosystems. We investigated two oil spills that occurred in 1975 and 2014 in a nature reserve within a hyper-arid desert, aiming at determining the long- and short-term effects of oil spills on the habitat selection...

The quest for cleaner energy has caused governments to expand renewable energy infrastructure, including wind turbine farms. However, wind turbines (WTs) can also pose a risk to certain wildlife species, with wildlife-related research predominantly focusing on the potential harm caused to birds and bats from impact injuries. New evidence suggests t...

Large-carnivore populations have experienced significant declines in the past centuries in extended parts of the world. Habitat loss, fragmentation, and depletion of natural resources are some of the main causes of this decline. Consequently, behavioral flexibility, enabling the exploitation of anthropogenic food resources in highly disturbed human...

Global urbanization processes have highlighted the importance of understanding the effects of urban habitats on animal behavior. Behavioral changes are usually evaluated along an urbanization gradient, comparing urban and rural populations. However, this metric fails to consider heterogeneity between urban habitats that can differ significantly in...

Adaptive cognitive biases, such as “optimism,” may have evolved as heuristic rules for computationally efficient decision-making, or as error-management tools when error payoff is asymmetrical. Ecologists typically use the term “optimism” to describe unrealistically positive expectations from the future that are driven by positively biased initial...

Reintroducing species to their historic range or reinforcing extant but endangered populations with individuals from elsewhere are popular conservation efforts to maintain long-term viable populations of animals. These efforts, known as conservation translocations, require proper monitoring of the fate of the animals that are released to assess the...

The sound of wind turbines is a potential threat to songbirds, who use vocal communication to transfer information and rely on acoustic cues from the environment. Previous studies have shown decreased bird density around wind-farms, but the exact causes for this decline have not yet been fully recognized. We investigated the effects of wind-turbine...

The increasing pressure of ecotourism on wildlife in their natural habitats leads many wild animals to alter their behaviors. The restrictions issued in many places due to COVID-19 provide a rare opportunity to examine wildlife behavior in nature reserves with reduced human presence, and to reveal the impact of human visitation on the behaviors and...

Translocated animals typically find themselves in a novel environment in which they must establish a home range in a manner that will maximize their fitness. We hypothesized that the initial establishment of a home range is followed by adjustments expressed as home range shifting, and occurs as familiarity with the landscape increases, until the ho...

The COST Action ‘European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility’ (ERBFacility) aims to develop pan-European raptor biomonitoring in support of better chemicals management in Europe, using raptors as sentinel species. This presents a significant challenge involving a range of constraints that must be identified and addressed. The aims of this study were to:...

The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundr...

While most animal behavior researchers have mastered the process of knowledge creation, generating knowledge that can readily be applied requires a different set of skills. The process and timeframe of fundamental scientific knowledge production is often not relevant to those who might apply it, such as conservation or wildlife managers. Additional...

Long‐distance migrations are among the most physically demanding feats animals perform. Understanding the potential costs and benefits of such behaviour is a fundamental question in ecology and evolution. A hypothetical cost of migration should be outweighed by higher productivity and/or higher annual survival, but few studies on migratory species...

Restricted human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic raised global attention to the presence of wildlife in cities. Here, we analyzed iNaturalist observations of prominent wildlife species around North-American urban centers, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. We suggest that the popular notion of ‘wildlife reclaiming cities’ may h...

Conservation translocations are a widespread tool commonly used to prevent the extinction of species locally and globally. However, conservation transloca-tions are complicated operations which often fail, especially when they involve the release of captive-bred animals. In order to survive, translocated animals need to adapt to a new environment;...

Integrating knowledge and principles of animal behavior into wildlife conservation and management has led to some concrete successes but has failed to improve conservation outcomes in other cases. Many conservation interventions involve attempts to either attract or repel animals, which we refer to as approach/avoidance issues. These attempts can b...

Humans profoundly impact landscapes, ecosystems, and animal behavior. In many cases, animals living near humans become tolerant of them and reduce antipredator responses. Yet, we still lack an understanding of the underlying evolutionary dynamics behind these shifts in traits that affect animal survival. Here, we used a phylogenetic meta-analysis t...

Animals raised in captivity go through drastically different life experiences compared with those raised in the wild. The captive environment is usually characterised by highly stable conditions and limited social interactions. Such early developmental environment, alone and interacting with genes, can have long-lasting effects on cognitive perform...

Baumard's perspective asserts that “opportunity is the mother of innovation,” in contrast to the adage ascribing this role to necessity. Drawing on behavioral ecology and cognition, we propose that both extremes – affluence and scarcity – can drive innovation. We suggest that the types of innovations at these two extremes differ and that both rely...

Antlions (Neuroptera) are a group of sit-and-wait predator insects, with some species further specializing in digging conical pit-traps in the ground in order to catch prey. Studies on antlions’ predators are scarce with only few generalist predators known to feed on them. Here we report for the first time on field observations of antlions’ predati...

We are surrounded by a complex arrangement of sounds creating acoustic patterns in space and time which constitute the sound-scapes that humans and animals experience (Pijanowski et al. 2011). Soundscapes all around the globe are increasingly affected by an-thropogenic sounds. The impacts of this anthropogenic noise pollution are not only shaped by...

Disentangling individual- and population-level variation in migratory movements is necessary for understanding migration at the species level. However, very few studies have analyzed these patterns across large portions of species' distributions. We compiled a large telemetry dataset on the globally endangered Egyptian Vulture Neophron percnopterus...

Translocations are a common conservation and management strategy, but despite their popularity, translocations are a high‐cost endeavor with a history of failures. It is therefore imperative to maximize their success by learning from our collective experience. The Global Re‐introduction Perspectives Series is a collection of conservation translocat...

Anthropogenically induced fragmentation constitutes a major threat to biodiversity. Presently, conservation research and actions focus predominantly on fragmentation caused directly by physical transformation of the landscape (e.g. deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, roads, etc.). While there is no doubt that landscape features play a key rol...

שמורת הטבע עברונה זוהמה פעמיים ע"י נפט גולמי, בשנים 1975 ו-2014. בשנת 2016, רט"ג והמאר"ג החלו בתוכנית ניטור חמש שנתית של הקרקע, החי והצומח בשמורה. במסגרת ניטור פרוקי-הרגליים הקרקעיים בחלקות מזוהמות ונקיות משתי הדליפות מתמקדים בשתי קבוצות: פרוקי-רגליים צמודי קרקע (לא כולל עכבישאים), וכן פרוקי-רגליים זעירים בשכבות הקרקע העליונות (מזופאונה). זיהוי ואפ...

Noise pollution is an intense, widespread anthropogenic disturbance that can have highly detrimental impacts on natural populations, communities, and ecosystems across the globe. One major way through which noise can affect wildlife is by masking acoustic signals that animals rely on and, in doing so, hindering inter- and intraspecific communicatio...

Increased fragmentation and easier access to natural areas (e.g. ecotourism) is bringing man in closer contact to wild populations. Such encounters, even when they don't pose a direct threat to wildlife, may induce behavioral changes in animals that in the long run may have negative fitness consequences. We studied changes to the vigilance/group‐si...

Although examples of successful applications of behavioral ecology research to policy and management exist, knowledge generated from such research is in many cases under-utilized by managers and policy makers. On their own, empirical studies and traditional reviews do not offer the robust syntheses that managers and policy makers require to make ev...

Comment on the invasive status of the Barbary Sheep in Spain.

Systematic reviews are an increasingly popular decision-making tool that provides an unbiased summary of evidence to support conservation action. These reviews bridge the gap between researchers and managers by presenting a comprehensive overview of all studies relating to a particular topic and identify specifically where and under which condition...

National conservation conferences provide benefits not currently served by meetings at other levels

Attitudes among conservation biologists towards technological innovations and solutions have changed over the years from mistrusting and dismissive to widely accepting. However, the time has come for the conservation community to move from being technology consumers to become innovation leaders and to actively seek to create novel technologies to p...

Avrona monitoring Program: 'Avrona nature reserve is located in the southern 'Arava Rift Valley, Israel. The area is in a hyper-arid desert with a low annual precipitation (15-50mm), Intense solar radiation and hot summers that can reach 48 o C. It is characterized by gravel, loess and sandy soils with sparse perennial shrubs cover. In May 2016, se...

Land invertebrates, while comprising the lion's share of global biodiversity, remain grossly under studied, a lacuna which is particularly pronounced in desert habitats. The Arava Rift valley is a hyper arid area that suffers from severe anthropogenic disturbances. Avrona Nature Reserve in the Arava Valley was contaminated twice by crude oil, in 19...

Poor communication between academic researchers and wildlife managers limits conservation progress and innovation. As a result, input from overlapping fields, such as animal behaviour, is underused in conservation management despite its demonstrated utility as a conservation tool and countless papers advocating its use. Communication and collaborat...

Conservation behavior assists the investigation of species endangerment associated with managing animals impacted by anthropogenic activities. It employs a theoretical framework that examines the mechanisms, development, function, and phylogeny of behavior variation in order to develop practical tools for preventing biodiversity loss and extinction...

Conservation behavior assists the investigation of species endangerment associated with managing animals impacted by anthropogenic activities. It employs a theoretical framework that examines the mechanisms, development, function, and phylogeny of behavior variation in order to develop practical tools for preventing biodiversity loss and extinction...

Conservation behavior assists the investigation of species endangerment associated with managing animals impacted by anthropogenic activities. It employs a theoretical framework that examines the mechanisms, development, function, and phylogeny of behavior variation in order to develop practical tools for preventing biodiversity loss and extinction...

Conservation behavior assists the investigation of species endangerment associated with managing animals impacted by anthropogenic activities. It employs a theoretical framework that examines the mechanisms, development, function and phylogeny of behavior variation in order to develop practical tools for preventing biodiversity loss and extinction....

The role of behavioral ecology in improving wildlife conservation and management has been the subject of much recent debate. We aim to answer two foundational questions about the current use of behavioral knowledge in conservation: 1. To what extent is behavioral knowledge used in wildlife conservation and management? 2. How does the use of behavio...

Recursive movement-returns to previously visited areas-is a widespread phenomenon exhibited by a large range of species from bees and birds to primates and large felines, at different spatial scales. Nevertheless, the wide scope and generality of this phenomenon remain underestimated by the scientific community. This limited appreciation for the pe...

Interference competition may lead to a tragedy of the commons in which individuals driven by self-interest reduce the fitness of the entire group. We investigated this hypothesis in Allenby's gerbils, Gerbillus andersoni allenbyi, by comparing foraging behaviors of single vs. pairs of gerbils. We recorded strong interference competition within the...

Because environments can vary over space and time in non-predictable ways, foragers must rely on estimates of resource availability and distribution to make decisions. Optimal foraging theory assumes that foraging behavior has evolved to maximize fitness and provides a conceptual framework in which environmental quality is often assumed to be fixed...

Many conservation and management problems can benefit from mechanistic insights into how animals respond to stimuli and learn about biologically important events [1]. The growing attention toward using cognition to solve real world conservation/management issues is exciting and promising. We applaud the thoughtful review of Greggor et al. of the re...

Despite their importance to conservation, reintroductions are still a risky endeavor and tend to fail, highlighting the need for more efficient post-release monitoring techniques. Reintroduced animals are released into unfamiliar novel environments and must explore their surroundings to gain knowledge in order to survive. According to theory, knowl...

The trade-off between the need to obtain new knowledge and the need to use that knowledge to improve performance is one of the most basic trade-offs in nature, and optimal performance usually requires some balance between exploratory and exploitative behaviors. Researchers in many disciplines have been searching for the optimal solution to this dil...

According to optimal foraging theory, foraging decisions are based on the forager's current estimate of the quality of its environment. However, in a novel environment, a forager does not possess information regarding the quality of the environment, and may make a decision based on a biased estimate. We show, using a simple simulation model, that w...

Matlab code for the foraging simulation without memory. (PDF)

Matlab code for the foraging simulation with memory. (PDF)

A description of the different parameters used in the model. (PDF)

Releasing animals in more than one location may increase or decrease the probability of success of a reintroduction project, yet the question of how many release sites to use has received little attention. We used empirical data from the reintroduction program of the Persian fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica) (Galilee region in northern Israel) in an...

The Persian fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica) reintroduction project of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority is based on a permanent breeding core (Hai-Bar Carmel) established in Israel in 1976 from 2 males and 5 females, before the formulation of the guidelines for reinstruction by the IUCN, with no strategic long-term planning, and little consider...

Conservation behavior is a relatively new interdisciplinary field aimed at investigating how proximate and ultimate aspects of animal behavior can be of value in preventing the loss of biodiversity. This new discipline's usefulness in promoting practical conservation-matters is subject to debate, with some scientists arguing that the importance of...

Ambient temperature largely determines the body temperature of amphibians, and thus their hydration state and physiological performance. Microhabitat conditions chosen by terrestrial amphibians may represent a trade-off between high ambient temperatures, which maximize performance but cause high rates of water loss, and low temperatures, which, in...

Background/Question/Methods Predator-prey interactions are often behaviorally sophisticated games in which the predator and prey are players, the value of prey behavior depends on the characteristics of the predator, and the value of predator behavior depends on the characteristics of the prey. Thus, changes in one player’s behavior may strongly...

Grey Fantails (Rhipidura albiscapa), a common Australian flycatcher, commonly desert their nests before egg-laying. We tested the hypothesis that Grey Fantails desert incomplete nests in response to the attention of predators by placing a mounted Pied Currawong (Strepera graculina), a common nest predator, near fantail nests that were under constru...

Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 302–310 Predator–prey interactions are often behaviourally sophisticated games in which the predator and prey are players. Past studies teach us that hungrier prey take higher risks when foraging and that hungrier predators increase their foraging activity and are willing to take higher risks of injury. Yet no study has l...

Predator-prey interactions are usually composed of behaviorally sophisticated games in which the values of the strategies of foraging prey individuals may depend on those of their predators, and vice versa. Therefore, any change in the behavior of the predator should result in changes to the behavior of the prey. However, this key prediction has ra...

Foraging animals have several tools for managing the risk of predation, and the foraging games between them and their predators. Among these, time allocation is foremost, followed by vigilance and apprehension. Together, their use influences a forager's time allocation and giving-up density (GUD) in depletable resource patches. We examined Allenby'...

Theory states that an optimal forager should exploit a patch so long as its harvest rate of resources from the patch exceeds its energetic, predation, and missed opportunity costs for foraging. However, for many foragers, predation is not the only source of danger they face while foraging. Foragers also face the risk of injuring themselves. To test...

Flexibility in the echolocation call structure of bats can improve their performances, because, in some situations, some signal designs are better than others. Hence, at least some bats should adjust their echolocation calls according to the setting in which they are operating but also to the specific task at hand, that is their behavioral intentio...