Pablo Ferreras

Pablo Ferreras
Spanish National Research Council | CSIC · IREC, Spanish Game Research Institute

PhD in Biology, Autónoma University of Madrid

About

187
Publications
82,485
Reads
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7,140
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Introduction
My research career has focussed on the ecology of carnivore predators, their interspecific relationships, and with their prey. I currently work as a permanent senior researcher of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) at the Spanish Wildlife Research Institute (IREC). My current research lines include the ecological mechanisms of coexistence in communities of mammalian carnivores and the impact of predators on small game species and their management.
Additional affiliations
January 1989 - May 1994
Spanish National Research Council
Position
  • PhD Student
October 2000 - present
IREC, Spanish Wildlife Research Institute
Position
  • Senior Researcher
January 1995 - December 1995
Cranfield University
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Education
January 1989 - June 1994
Autonomous University of Madrid
Field of study
  • Ecology

Publications

Publications (187)
Article
Carnivores are elusive, nocturnal and scarce, hence, their detection is difficult. Camera trapping has become a powerful non-invasive technique for collecting information on such elusive species. Some of its major applications are species inventories and community monitoring. Some efforts have been recently devoted to standardize protocols for moni...
Article
Full-text available
As a top predator, the Iberian Lynx plays a critical role in regulating mesocarnivore communities across the Iberian Peninsula. While species such as the red fox, the Egyptian mongoose, or the European wildcat develop spatial or temporal avoidance behaviours to minimise potentially lethal encounters with the lynx, the relationship between the Euras...
Article
Full-text available
Human‐wildlife conflicts have increased and are particularly acute when predators are involved. A frequent source of conflict is some people's misbeliefs related to the alleged impact of predators on game species and livestock. In this context, quantifying the impact of expanding predators on their prey can be useful in designing conflict mitigatio...
Poster
Full-text available
El uso de metodologías no-letales para reducir la depredación puede ser una herramienta clave para mitigar los conflictos que causan ciertas especies. Algunas de estas metodologías son el uso de elementos disuasorios, la aversión condicionada o los repelentes. El objetivo de este estudio fue evaluar la efectividad de un repelente (capsaicina), y su...
Article
The situation of the European wildcat (Felis silvestris) in the Iberian Peninsula differs between the northern populations, mostly healthy, and the centre-southern populations, with mainly regressive trends or scarcely known situations. Cádiz province is one of these zones where the species situation is little known. Therefore, we aimed with this w...
Article
Full-text available
The Eurasian otter Lutra lutra is a territorial semi-aquatic carnivore usually found at low densities in rivers, coastal areas, and wetlands. Its diet is based on prey associated with aquatic environments. Mediterranean rivers are highly seasonal, and suffer reduced flow during the summer, resulting in isolated river sections (pools) that sometimes...
Article
Full-text available
Wildlife must adapt to human presence to survive in the Anthropocene, so it is critical to understand species responses to humans in different contexts. We used camera trapping as a lens to view mammal responses to changes in human activity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 163 species sampled in 102 projects around the world, changes in the amo...
Article
Full-text available
Monitoring large carnivores requires substantial efort, which is why indirect methodologies such as camera trapping with attractants or baits are commonly employed. The Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus) is one of the top predators in the Iberian Peninsula, and monitoring its packs is essential to understand its distribution and mitigate conficts...
Preprint
Full-text available
The Eurasian otter Lutra lutra is a territorial semi-aquatic carnivore usually found at low densities in rivers, coastal areas, and wetlands. Its diet is based on prey associated with aquatic environments. Mediterranean rivers are highly seasonal, and suffer reduced flow during the summer, resulting in isolated river sections (pools) that can somet...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Resumen El lirón careto (Eliomys quercinus) es un micromamífero de hábitos forestales, cuyas poblaciones se encuentran en declive en la Península Ibérica. Las causas de este declive no están claras, y se han asociado al cambio climático o al aumento de la depredación debido al declive del conejo. A pesar de sus hábitos forestales, en ocasiones se p...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Efectividad de atrayentes y cebos para la detección del lobo ibérico (Canis lupus signatus); ensayos en cautiverio y en libertad El seguimiento de poblaciones de grandes carnívoros requiere de un gran esfuerzo, siendo muy habitual el empleo de metodologías indirectas como el uso de cámaras trampa. Para optimizar estas metodologías, está muy extendi...
Conference Paper
El gato montés europeo (Felis silvestris) es una especie incluida en el Listado Estatal de Especies Silvestres en Régimen de Protección Especial. Según estudios recientes, muchas poblaciones ibéricas están en regresión, lo que hace necesario una revisión de su estatus legal. Para ello se requieren métodos eficaces que permitan monitorizar el estado...
Poster
Full-text available
Ensayos de selectividad en el consumo de cebos en lobo ibérico (Canis lupus signatus) en cautividad n= 64 cebos 150 g = 32, 250 g= 16, 500 g = 16 4 individuos diferentes separados espacialmente 250g 125 g 500g n= 30 cebos 1,2 m = 10, 1,6 m = 10, 2 m = 10 5 individuos n= 30 cebos 15 rama y 15 tronco 5 individuos Parque de la Naturaleza de Sendaviva,...
Article
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...
Article
Full-text available
The Egyptian mongoose ( Herpestes ichneumon ) is considered a generalist and opportunistic predator whose European distribution is restricted to Iberia. However, all the previous studies on the Egyptian mongoose’s diet in the Iberian Peninsula have been performed in Portugal and Doñana National Park (southwestern Spain), covering a small region of...
Article
Tuberculosis caused by Mycobacterium bovis and other related mycobacteria has been reported in a wide range of mammals worldwide. In the case of the Herpestidae family, Mycobacterium mungi and M. bovis, both belonging to the Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex, have been reported in banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) in Africa and in Egyptian mongooses...
Article
Public surveys can be valuable tools to collect information on wildlife distribution. Our objective was to improve the knowledge on the distribution and expanding areas of the Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon) in central Spain by using an on‐line questionnaire to hunters. We assessed the reliability of information that hunters provided by com...
Article
Carrion is a valuable food source for predators, but its role for specialist predators has received little attention. We recorded the unnoticed scavenging behavior of the endangered Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) on wild ungulate carcasses in a reintroduced lynx population of central Spain. Seven of the 13 carcasses experimentally placed (54 %) were...
Data
Appendix A and Supplementary Tables from article "Agriculture intensity and landscape configuration influence the spatial use of wildcats across Europe"
Article
Full-text available
Land use intensification is increasing worldwide and affects wildlife movements, particularly of specialist carnivores. Resource availability and anthropogenic activities drive the extent and shape of home range size. Wildlife may respond to decreased resource availability under intensification scenarios by increasing their home ranges; however the...
Chapter
Although hunters often blame predators for the decline of the red-legged partridge, predation is just one of a number of possible causal factors. The main mammalian predators of partridges are those associated with humanized environments (feral dogs and cats). Other partridge predators include raptors, carnivores, rodents, insectivores and wild boa...
Article
Full-text available
Population size is one of the basic demographic parameters for species management and conservation. Among different estimation methods, spatially explicit capture-recapture (SCR) models allow the estimation of population density in a framework that has been greatly developed in recent years. The use of automated detection devices , such as camera t...
Chapter
Wildlife trapping and handling entails multi-level consequences on captured individuals. These impacts may be expressed at the physiological and behavioural levels, starting at capture and potentially waning post-release over a variable period. We investigated the impact of trapping and handling on the physiological parameters of 6 species of south...
Article
Hybridisation between domestic and wild taxa can pose severe threats to wildlife conservation, and human induced hybridisation, often linked to species' introductions and habitat degradation, may promote reproductive opportunities between species for which natural interbreeding would be highly unlikely. Using a biome specific approach, we examine t...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Dieta de la nutria en ríos del sureste ibérico: papel de las presas invasoras y relación con contaminantes Las especies invasoras tienen un gran impacto en los ecosistemas dulceacuícolas y pueden influir en los hábitos alimentarios de los depredadores autóctonos. Los ríos mediterráneos, caracterizados por un caudal fuertemente inestable a lo largo...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
La nueva revolución en inteligencia artificial, liderada por los modelos de aprendizaje profundo, promete ayudar en multitud de tareas complejas que realizan los humanos. El fototrampeo es una de las herramientas no invasivas más utilizadas para el seguimiento de las especies animales, especialmente para los mamíferos terrestres. Debido a la elevad...
Article
Full-text available
The conservation of animal populations often requires the estimation of population size. Low density and secretive behaviour usually determine scarce data sources and hampers precise abundance estimations of carnivore populations. However, joint analysis of independent scarce data sources in a common modeling framework allows unbiased and precise e...
Presentation
Wildlife trapping and handling entail multi-level consequences on captured individuals. These impacts may be expressed at the physiological and behavioural levels, starting at capture and potentially waning post-release over a variable period. We investigated the impact of trapping and handling on the physiological parameters of 6 species of southw...
Article
Full-text available
The Egyptian mongoose Herpestes ichneumon (Linnaeus, 1758) is the only species of family Herpestidae that occurs naturally in Europe. It was restricted to SW Iberian Peninsula from where it seems to be expanding in the last decades. However, information on mongoose distribution and recent trends in some areas, such as central Spain (e.g. Castilla -...
Article
Full-text available
Context Some prey species can shift their daily activity patterns to reduce the risk of encountering predators, and, in turn, predators develop strategies to increase their chances of meeting prey. European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a key species in Iberian Mediterranean ecosystems. It is the main prey for many vertebrate predators. It is a...
Article
Full-text available
Humans have transformed most landscapes across the globe, forcing other species to adapt in order to persist in increasingly anthropogenic landscapes. Wide-ranging solitary species, such as wild felids, struggle particularly in such landscapes. Conservation planning and management for their long-term persistence critically depends on understanding...
Article
Full-text available
Knowing the distribution of expanding carnivore species is paramount for identifying and addressing potential human–wildlife conflicts. Occupancy models are useful tools to estimate the distribution and the probability of detection of wildlife species. In this study, we used these models with an empirical dataset to compare different survey methods...
Article
Full-text available
Carrion is a valuable resource exploited not only by obligate scavengers but also by a wide variety of facultative scavengers. These species provide several important ecosystem services which can suffer if the scavenger community composition is altered, thus reducing the services provided. We studied the response of the Mediterranean facultative sc...
Book
GECISO Manual proposes a conceptual framework to develop: The Technical Standard (TE) GECISO®. GECISO® is a technical standard for the territorially-based certification of game management by companies accredited by ENAC, the Spanish national entity for accreditation. GECISO provides detailed regulatory specifications for the certification of susta...
Book
GECISO® is a technical standard for the territorially-based certification of game management by companies accredited by ENAC, the Spanish national entity for accreditation. GECISO provides detailed regulatory specifications for the certification of sustainable management, and it is beginning to be translated into practice on hunting grounds in Spai...
Article
Full-text available
Context The use of baits for reducing the populations of harmful animal species, eradicating invasive species, vaccination, contraception or producing conditioned aversion, is widespread worldwide. However, baiting programs are often not successful enough and affect non-target species, requiring new approaches for baiting methods. Aims The aim of...
Article
Optimal foraging theory predicts that in situations of high prey abundance, predators will select the largest ones if the cost of capture is similar. This relationship is not clear in species of large owls. We aimed to evaluate the selection by the Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) of different body sizes of a profitable prey, the European Rabbit (Oryctolagus...
Article
Full-text available
It is given recent and novel information about the distribution and population of mammalian carnivores in the natural park of “Los Alcornocales” (Cádiz province, S. Spain). The study was made in a period of two years, from 2018 to 2020. The photos were made with camera traps, that were distributed in 113 control stations. An UTM grid of 10x10km was...
Article
It has been suggested that conditioned food aversion (CFA) could be a potential non-lethal intervention by which to deter attacks on livestock by large carnivores. CFA occurs when an animal associates the characteristics of a food with an illness, thus rejecting that food in subsequent encounters. CFA can be associated with an artificial odour duri...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
Predation is a key factor in prey population dynamics and could impact population recovery. One common means employed to recover prey populations is that of translocations, but most fail owing to high predation during the early stages. We tested whether conditioned odor aversion can reduce predation during animal translocations by using the predati...
Article
The use of scats is a widespread non-invasive method in ecological studies of mammalian carnivores. However, their low detectability and the incorrect species assignment may be important sources of bias. We aimed to optimize the detection and identification of scats of Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon), using the red fox (Vulpes vulpes) as a...
Article
The Egyptian mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon L.) is a medium-size carnivore widely distributed in Africa and in a small part of southern Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, where mongoose populations have recently expanded. The mongoose is relatively easily detectable because of its diurnal habits and because it is the only species of Herpestidae occurrin...
Article
Full-text available
Competition is a widespread interaction among carnivores, ultimately manifested through one or more dimensions of the species' ecological niche. One of the most explicit manifestations of competitive interactions regards spatial displacement. Its interpretation under a theoretical context provides an important tool to deepen our understanding of bi...
Article
Populations of many ground-nesting bird species have declined substantially due to several factors, and pre-dation can be a leading contributor to these declines. As a method for reducing the nest predation on ground-nesting birds, we tested whether conditioned food aversion (CFA) can reduce red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) nest predation by r...
Article
Full-text available
Assessments of terrestrial carnivore diet are often required for ecological management and conservation purposes. Analysis and identification of food remains in scats is an important method often employed for these objectives. Proportions of consumed biomass estimated from scat samples may provide an accurate approximation of the actual diet when c...
Data
Corrigendum to "Generalized spatial mark–resight models with incomplete identification: An application to red fox density estimates"
Article
The role that apex predators play in ecosystem functioning, disease regulation and biodiversity maintenance is increasingly debated. However, the positive impacts of their presence in terrestrial ecosystems, particularly in human-dominated landscapes, remain controversial. Limited experimental insights regarding the consequences of apex predator re...
Article
Full-text available
BACKGROUND The conflict between predators and humans for resources such as game species or livestock is an ancient issue, and it is especially sharp in the case of medium‐large wild canids. In order to manage this conflict, lethal control methods are often used, which can sometimes be illegal, such as poisoning. As an alternative, conditioned food...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In the last decades, the populations of the two main species of small game of the Iberian Peninsula, the European wild rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) and the red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa), have been reduced in a generalized manner. To improve these populations, predator control and translocations are one of the most used hunting management...
Article
The study of people’s knowledge through interviews and questionnaires can provide a good picture of the composition of mammal communities. However, there is considerable potential for error and bias in these surveys, including some associated with the familiarity of respondents with wildlife. Our main goals were: 1) to assess mammal community compo...
Article
Full-text available
Worldwide, predators and humans are in conflict for resources such as game species or livestock, especially in the case of wild canids. One non-lethal method to reduce predation is conditioned food aversion (CFA), in which animals learn to avoid a food due to the illness after ingestion, caused by the addition of an undetected chemical compound. CF...
Article
Full-text available
• The estimation of abundance of wildlife populations is an essential part of ecological research and monitoring. Spatially explicit capture–recapture (SCR) models are widely used for abundance and density estimation, frequently through individual identification of target species using camera‐trap sampling. • Generalized spatial mark–resight (Gen‐S...
Article
Full-text available
Lista de revisores de la revista ECOSISTEMAS durante el bienio Lista de revisores que han completado revisiones durante el bienio 2019-2020. La labor de los revisores es fundamental para que una publicación científica realice su actividad de manera adecuada y cumpla con sus objetivos de calidad. Todos estos investigadores contribuyeron generosament...
Article
Full-text available
• Accurate analyses of the diets of predators are key to understand trophic interactions and defining conservation strategies. Diets are commonly assessed through analysis of non‐invasively collected scats, and the use of faecal DNA (fDNA) analysis can reduce the species misidentifications that could lead to biased ecological inference. • We review...
Article
Full-text available
Context Camera trapping is commonly employed for studying carnivores because it provides better data than do other methods, and with lower costs. Increasing the probability of detecting the target species can reduce parameter uncertainty and survey effort required to estimate density and occurrence. Different methods, including attractants and bait...
Article
Full-text available
The interactions between animals and their environment vary across species, regions , but also with gender. Sex-specific relations between individuals and the ecosystem may entail different behavioral choices and be expressed through different patterns of habitat use. Regardless, only rarely sex-specific traits are addressed in ecological modeling...
Presentation
Full-text available
La comadreja Mustela nivalis es un pequeño carnívoro especializado en el consumo de micromamíferos. En la Península Ibérica hay muy poca información sobre esta especie, siendo especialmente interesante el estudio de su papel en la regulación de la dinámica poblacional de los micromamíferos. Algunas especies alcanzan eventualmente elevadas densidade...