Robert Justin Irvine

• PhD Ecology
• Country Director at Frankfurt Zoological Society

To persist in seasonal environments, animals track, exploit, and store energy when food is plentiful. Seasonal changes in plant phenology that are predictable allow animals to track abundant food resources. However, little is known about how animals use and benefit from ephemeral and unpredictable food pulses during times when food is scarce. Clima...

Rapid climate warming is “greening” the tundra due to higher plant productivity, particularly of deciduous shrubs and grasses, potentially changing the nutritional base for herbivores. However, the consequences for herbivores are unclear. Although the gut microbiome is an essential factor, mediating the capacity to adapt to dietary change, few stud...

Hunter-collected data and samples are used as indices of population performance, and monitoring programs often take advantage of such data as ecological indicators. Here, we establish the relationships between measures of skeleton size (lower jawbone length and hind-leg length) and autumn carcass mass of slaughtered individuals of known age and sex...

Hunter-collected data and samples are used as indices of population performance, and monitoring programs often take advantage of such data as ecological indicators. Here, we establish the relationships between measures of skeleton size (lower jawbone length and hind-leg length) and autumn carcass mass of slaughtered individuals of known age and sex...

While capture-mark-recapture studies provide essential individual-level data in ecology, repeated captures and handling may impact animal welfare and cause scientific bias. Evaluating the consequences of invasive methodologies should be an integral part of any study involving capture of live animals. We investigated short-and long-term stress respo...

Anthropogenic activities, such as outdoor recreation, have the potential to change complex interactions between wildlife and livestock, with further consequences for the management of both animals, the environment, and disease transmission. We present the interaction amongst wildlife, livestock, and outdoor recreationists as a three-way interaction...

With increasing levels of outdoor recreation activities, consequences for wildlife through interactions with recreationists are highly variable. Behavioural changes in wildlife are one potential consequence of interactions with outdoor recreationists. In ungulate populations, vigilance and flight responses are well‐known antipredator behaviours, an...

Outdoor recreation has the potential to impact the spatial and temporal distribution of animals. We explore interactions between red deer Cervus elaphus and hikers along a popular hiking path in the Scottish Highlands. We placed camera traps in transects at different distances (25, 75 and 150 m) from the path to study whether distance from hiker ac...

The cost of reproduction on demographic rates is often assumed to operate through changing body condition. Several studies have found that reproduction depresses body mass more if the current conditions are severe, such as high population densities or adverse weather, than under benign environmental conditions. However, few studies have investigate...

Seasonal energetic challenges may constrain an animal's ability to respond to changing individual and environmental conditions. Here, we investigated variation in heart rate, a well-established proxy for metabolic rate, in Svalbard reindeer ( Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus ), a species with strong seasonal changes in foraging and metabolic activit...

The fasting endurance hypothesis (FEH) predicts strong selection for large body size in mammals living in environments where food supply is interrupted over prolonged periods of time. The Arctic is a highly seasonal and food‐restricted environment, but contrary to predictions from the FEH, empirical evidence shows that Arctic mammals are often smal...

Predator avoidance and food availability are both factors known to influence habitat selection and site fidelity around calving in caribou and reindeer. Here, we assess habitat selection and site fidelity during the calving period in the solitary, Arctic Svalbard reindeer Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus, which is subject to limited predation risk a...

The Arctic is undergoing the most rapid climate warming on Earth. While concerns have been raised that more frequent icing events cause die‐offs, and earlier springs generate a mismatch in phenology, the effects of warming autumns have been largely neglected. We used 25 years of individual‐based data from a growing population of wild Svalbard reind...

Outdoor recreation is a known source of disturbance to many wildlife populations. We systematically reviewed 126 relevant papers that study the impact of outdoor recreation on wildlife, focusing on terrestrial wildlife (birds excluded) to assess the different methodological approaches adopted by researchers. We characterised the research methods in...

Albon, S.D., McLeod, J., Potts, J., Irvine, J., Fraser, D. & Newey, S. 2019. Updating the estimates of national trends and regional differences in red deer densities on open-hill ground in Scotland. Scottish Natural Heritage Research Report No. 1149. This report extend previous estimates of trends in overall red deer density (Commissioned Report 9...

In this chapter we synthesise our long-term work on the population ecology of both Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus Vrolik) and their gastrointestinal (abomasal) nematodes in the High Arctic. The study was motivated by the fact that the population dynamics of non-migratory Svalbard reindeer (Tyler & Øritsland, 1989) are unstable (...

Early‐life environmental conditions may generate cohort differences in individual fitness, subsequently affecting population growth rates. Three, nonmutually exclusive hypotheses predict the nature of these fitness differences: (1) silver spoon effects, where individuals born in good conditions perform better across the range of adult environments;...

Extreme climate events often cause population crashes but are difficult to account for in population-dynamic studies. Especially in long-lived animals, density dependence and demography may induce lagged impacts of perturbations on population growth. In Arctic ungulates, extreme rain-on-snow and ice-locked pastures have led to severe population cra...

The Arctic is experiencing rapid climatic and environmental changes, which could alter diets of nonmigratory herbivores both within and between populations. Here, we used carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) in hair to infer summer dietary differences of Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus (nonmigratory reindeer) in Nordenskiöldl...

The costs of reproduction are important in shaping individual life histories, and hence population dynamics, but the mechanistic pathways of such costs are often unknown. Female reindeer have evolved antlers possibly due to interference competition on winter-feeding grounds. Here, we investigate if variation in antler size explains part of the cost...

Environmental variation can generate life‐long similarities among individuals born in the same breeding event, so called cohort effects. Studies of cohort effects have to account for the potentially confounding effects of current conditions (observation year) and age of individuals. However, estimation of such models is hampered by inherent colline...

Studies of locomotor activity in Svalbard reindeer reported the temporary absence of diel rhythms under Arctic photic conditions. However, using Lomb-Scargle periodogram analyses with high statistical power we found diel or circadian rhythmicity throughout the entire year in measures of behaviour, temperature in the rumen and heart rate in free-liv...

Game bird management has the potential to benefit conservation, as management practices specifically targeted at reducing the factors limiting game populations may have positive effects on non‐game species. However, such management may also have costs to species. We review the literature that examines the effect of different forms of game bird mana...

Artar som lever i eit miljø med store sesongvariasjonar i både miljøforhold og ressurstilgang, er avhengige av reproduksjonsstrategiar som på ein best mulig måte sikrar god overleving og vekst for avkoma. «Timing» av reproduksjon og strategiar for korleis ulike organismar investerer i produksjon av avkom, er to av dei mest sentrale livshistorietrek...

Macroparasites have a central place in wildlife ecology because they have the potential to regulate host populations through effects on reproduction and/or survival. However, there remains a paucity of studies that have demonstrated the regulatory role of these parasites in free‐ranging animals. Previous work on Svalbard reindeer demonstrated that...

To improve the integration of policies that relate to land use, an interactive web-based tool was developed to explore how different scenarios are associated with multiple benefits, including the delivery of some key benefits from ecosystems, namely nutrient, and sediment retention, climate regulation, biodiversity, food production. In this study w...

Finding effective ways of conserving large carnivores is widely recognised as a priority in Conservation. However, there is disagreement about the most effective way to do this, with some favouring top-down “command and control” approaches and others, collaborative approaches. Arguments for coercive top-down approaches have been presented elsewhere...

Variation in adult sex ratio (ASR) affects population demography and dynamics of large mammals. The mechanisms behind this variation are largely unclear, but may be partly related to climatic drivers and density dependence operating differently on the adult male and female segments of the population. Here, we examine such drivers of annual changes...

The widespread availability of relatively cheap, reliable and easy to use digital camera traps has led to their extensive use for wildlife research, monitoring and public outreach. Users of these units are, however, often frustrated by the limited options for controlling camera functions, the generation of large numbers of images, and the lack of f...

Background Subtraction procedure. (PDF)

Comparison of the field of view of the PIR sensors and the cameras for the WiseEye and Bushnell. (PDF)

Solar panel power calculations. (PDF)

WiseEye User’s Manual. (PDF)

Cost breakdown by component. (PDF)

Format of summary data recorded to CSV file for a motion-activated image. (PDF)

Warming of the Arctic has resulted in earlier snowmelt and green-up of plants in spring, potentially disrupting the synchrony between plant phenology and breeding phenology in herbivores. A negative relationship between offspring survival in west-Greenland caribou and the timing of vegetation emergence was the first finding of such a mismatch in Ar...

The internal predictive adaptive response (internal PAR) hypothesis predicts that individuals born in poor conditions should start to reproduce earlier if they are likely to have reduced performance in later life. However, whether this is the case remains unexplored in wild populations. Here, we use longitudinal data from a long-term study of Svalb...

Monitoring is one of the key tools employed to help understand the condition of the natural environment and inform the development of appropriate management actions. While international conventions encourage the use of standardised methods, the link between the information monitoring provides and local management needs is frequently overlooked. Thi...

The cumulative effects of climate warming on herbivore vital rates and population dynamics are hard to predict, given that the expected effects differ between seasons. In the Arctic, warmer summers enhance plant growth which should lead to heavier and more fertile individuals in the autumn. Conversely, warm spells in winter with rainfall (rain-on-s...

The cumulative effects of climate warming on herbivore vital rates and population dynamics are hard to predict, given that the expected effects differ between seasons. In the Arctic, warmer summers enhance plant growth which should lead to heavier and more fertile individuals in the autumn. Conversely, warm spells in winter with rainfall (rain-on-s...

As global warming advances, there is a growing concern about the impact of extreme weather events on ecosystems. In the Arctic, more frequent unseasonal warm spells and rain-on-snow events in winter cause changes in snow-pack properties, including ground icing. Such extreme weather events are known to have severe effects across trophic levels, for...

The protection of biodiversity is a key national and international policy objective. While protected areas provide one approach, a major challenge lies in understanding how the conservation of biodiversity can be achieved in the context of multiple land management objectives in the wider countryside. Here we analyse metrics of bird diversity in the...

Species List. Alphabetical list of all bird species recorded during surveys and indication of whether a species is included in the ordination plots (all species were included in the analysis, but for clarity not all species are shown in Fig 2). (DOCX)

Large versions of all the ordination plots presented in Fig 2 provided for ease of reading. (PDF)

Estate management and species abundance data. Estate and bird abundance data used in analyses. (CSV)

Description Annual estimates of the variables used in the analyses of the Svalbard and West Greenland reindeer data. Column description Svalbard data: bm = mean adult female body mass (kg), SE_bm = standard error of bm, pp = proportion of marked adult females pregnant in April, N_pp = the sample size pp is based upon, pc = proportion of adult femal...

The Scottish wildcat Conservation Action Plan (2013) aims to halt the decline of the Scottish wildcat and implement conservation action to improve their status. Hence there is a desire to monitor wild-living cat populations in areas where conservation actions are being targeted to assess their effectiveness. A simulation study of camera trap survey...

The availability of affordable ‘recreational’ camera traps has dramatically increased over the last decade. We present survey results which show that many conservation practitioners use cheaper ‘recreational’ units for research rather than more expensive ‘professional’ equipment. We present our perspective of using two popular models of ‘recreation...

Executive Summary 1. There are estimated to be around 50,000 Eurasian or European lynx (Lynx lynx), distributed across Europe, Siberia and central Asia, with around 9,000 individuals in Europe. IUCN Red List conservation status for lynx is ‘Least Concern’. 2. Lynx are solitary, territorial carnivores of about 20 kg weight. Home range sizes vary fro...

In ungulates, variation in adult sex ratio is known to affect population demography and dynamics, yet the natural mechanisms behind this variation remain unclear. We examined how sex-specific effects of climate and population density influence annual changes in adult sex ratios in Svalbard reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus, Vrolik 1829), a...

The following report looks at the factors that deter or delay individuals from entering into deer farming and highlights the most effective actions required to overcome these barriers. The initial sections provide an introduction to the current state of deer farming in Scotland, and a brief explanation of the historical context. This is followed by...

The Scottish Wildcat (Felis silvestris) is in urgent need of action to save remaining populations in the wild. Following habitat loss and persecution through the nineteenth century, the Wildcat is now restricted in the UK to the Scottish Highlands north of the Central Belt of Scotland. Recently, hybridisation of remaining Wildcats with feral and do...

Monitoring natural resources, biodiversity and wildlife data is crucial for economic and ecological sustainability. But in areas that are hard to reach, monitoring becomes a problem. In Scotland, for example rare eagles and plants in need of protection are found in deserted locations

The ecosystem approach-as endorsed by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CDB) in 2000-is a strategy for holistic, sustainable, and equitable natural resource management, to be implemented via the 12 Malawi Principles. These principles describe the need to manage nature in terms of dynamic ecosystems, while fully engaging with local peoples. It...

Camera traps have become increasingly popular in animal ecology, and offer many advantages for wildlife and environmental monitoring.

Ticks and their pathogens cause significant disease and economic loss in many animal populations. Despite this, experiments that test the impact of ticks and tick-borne diseases on wild animal populations are rare. Here, we report on an experiment assessing the effect of ticks on red grouse productivity and chick growth in relation to other causes...

Climate-driven range fluctuations during the Pleistocene have continuously reshaped species distribution leading to populations of contrasting genetic diversity. Contemporary climate change is similarly influencing species distribution and population structure, with important consequences for patterns of genetic diversity and species’ evolutionary...

A number of scavenger species have suffered population declines across Europe. In attempts to reverse their decline, some land and wildlife managers have adopted the practice of leaving or placing out carcasses of wild or domestic herbivores to provide a source of carrion. However, this can be a controversial practice, with as yet unclear outcomes...

Policy frameworks for protected areas, such as the EU habitats directive, ensure that environmental monitoring takes place to assess the condition of these sites. However, this monitoring rarely extends to the wider countryside, and there is no obligation for private landowners to detect trends in habitat condition. Using the diffusion of innovatio...

For nematodes with a direct life cycle, transmission is highly dependent on temperature-related development and survival of the free-living stages. Therefore, in the Arctic, where the winter lasts from October to May, nematode transmission is expected to be focused in the short summer season, yet there is strong evidence that as well as focussing e...

Monitoring how natural resources and biodiversity respond to environmental change and land management is critical for economic, ecological and social sustainability. However, effective monitoring which provides accurate, timely and sufficiently detailed information on wild animals in their natural habitat is particularly challenging and embraces is...

Assessing the role of weather in the dynamics of wildlife populations is a pressing task in the face of rapid environmental change. Rodents and ruminants are abundant herbivore species in most Arctic ecosystems, many of which are experiencing particularly rapid climate change. Their different life-history characteristics, with the exception of thei...

Parasitic nematodes are found in almost all wild vertebrate populations but few studies have investigated these host-parasite relationships in the wild. For parasites with free-living stages, the external environment has a major influence on life-history traits, and development and survival is generally low at sub-zero temperatures. For reindeer th...

In order to quantify the impact of parasites on host population dynamics, experimental manipulations that perturb the parasite-host relationship are needed but, logistically, this is difficult for wild hosts. Here, we describe the use of a delayed-release anthelmintic delivery system that can be administered when the hosts can be captured and its a...