Sarah PapworthRoyal Holloway University of London | RHUL · Department of Biological Sciences
Sarah Papworth
PhD Conservation Science
About
58
Publications
34,760
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1,798
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
January 2013 - September 2014
Position
- PhD Student
October 2007 - June 2008
Education
October 2008 - September 2012
Independent Researcher
Field of study
- Human-primate interactions
October 2006 - September 2007
Independent Researcher
Field of study
- Biology
October 2002 - June 2005
Publications
Publications (58)
Conservation science needs to engage the general public to ensure successful conservation interventions. Although online technologies such as Twitter and Facebook offer new opportunities to accelerate communication between conservation scientists and the online public, factors influencing the spread of conservation news in online media are not well...
1. Understanding human resource extraction is crucial for conservation science, allowing accurate assessments of system sustainability and testing key assumptions about human resource users.
2. We apply ecological methods and principles to Global Positioning System (GPS) data on human movement to investigate the ecological and behavioural differenc...
Responding only to individuals of a predator species which display threatening behaviour allows prey species to minimise energy expenditure and other costs of predator avoidance, such as disruption of feeding. The threat sensitivity hypothesis predicts such behaviour in prey species. If hunted animals are unable to distinguish dangerous humans from...
Shifting baseline syndrome (SBS) is often referred to as a key issue for conservation, yet there is little evidence for its existence. The presence of SBS could influence the validity of participatory monitoring, local ecological knowledge, community based conservation, and conservation education. We outline two forms of SBS: (1) generational amnes...
Biodiversity conservation work can be challenging but rewarding, and both aspects have potential consequences for conservationists’ mental health. Yet, little is known about patterns of mental health among conservationists and its associated workplace protective and risk factors. A better understanding might help improve working conditions, support...
Workplaces can be sources of both stress and support, affecting employees' mental health and productivity. Yet, little research has investigated variability in workplace risk factors for poor mental health in conservation. We aimed to explore how patterns of psychological distress—a state of emotional disturbance—and associated workplace risk facto...
The risk-disturbance hypothesis states that animals react to human stressors in the same way as they do to natural predators. Given increasing human-wildlife contact, understanding whether animals perceive anthropogenic sounds as a threat is important for assessing the long-term sustainability of wildlife tourism and proposing appropriate mitigatio...
There are huge differences in the conservation support and attention received by different species, perhaps because of human preferences for specific aesthetic traits, such as body size and colouring. If there are such inherent human preferences, then new flagship species should be aesthetically similar to existing successful flagship species and c...
Biodiversity conservation work can be challenging but rewarding, with potential consequences for conservationists’ mental health. Yet, little is known about patterns of mental health among conservationists and its associated protective and risk factors. A better understanding may help improve working conditions, supporting conservationists’ job sat...
In the face of unprecedented biodiversity loss, the belief that conservation goals can be met could play an important role in ensuring they are fulfilled. We asked conservationists how optimistic they felt about key biodiversity outcomes over the next 10 years; 2341 people familiar with conservation in 144 countries responded. Respondents expressed...
Human observers often are present when researchers record animal behavior, which can create observer effects. These effects are rarely explicitly investigated, often due to the assumption that the study animal is habituated to or unaffected by a human’s presence. We investigated the effect of human pressure gradients on a remote population of large...
Goals play important roles in people's lives because they focus attention, mobilize effort, and sustain motivation. Understanding conservationists’ satisfaction with goal progress may provide insights into real‐world environmental trends and flag risks to their well‐being and motivation. We asked 2694 conservationists working globally how satisfied...
Biodiversity conservation work can be challenging but rewarding, with potential consequences for conservationists’ mental health. Yet, little is known about patterns of mental health among conservationists and its associated protective and risk factors. A better understanding can help improve working conditions, supporting conservationists’ job sat...
1. To be effective, the next generation of conservation practitioners and managers need
to be critical thinkers with a deep understanding of how to make evidence-based decisions and of the value of evidence synthesis.
2. If, as educators, we do not make these priorities a core part of what we teach, we
are failing to prepare our students to make an...
1. To be effective, the next generation of conservation practitioners and managers need to be critical thinkers with a deep understanding of how to make evidence‐based decisions and of the value of evidence synthesis.
2. If, as educators, we do not make these priorities a core part of what we teach, we are failing to prepare our students to make an...
Conservationists need to measure human behavior to guide decisions and evaluate their impact. However, activities can be misreported and reporting accuracy may change following conservation interventions, making it hard to verify any apparent changes. Techniques for asking sensitive questions are increasingly integrated into survey designs to impro...
Threats to biodiversity are well documented. However, to effectively conserve species and their habitats, we need to know which conservation interventions do (or do not) work. Evidence-based conservation evaluates interventions within a scientific framework. The Conservation Evidence project has summarized thousands of studies testing conservation...
Shifting baseline syndrome (SBS) describes a persistent downgrading of perceived ‘normal’ environmental conditions with every sequential generation, leading to under‐estimation of the true magnitude of long‐term environmental change on a global scale. The presence of SBS should be considered when local ecological knowledge and participatory techniq...
As conservation has limited funds, numerous studies have identified aesthetic characteristics of successful flagship species which generate donations and conservation. However, prior information about species can also impact human preferences, and may covary with animal appearance, leading to different conclusions about which species will be most e...
Siamese fighting fish, Betta splendens, have been extensively studied due to their aggression and stereotypical displays. Many studies have focused on their characteristic opercular flaring, while the less aggressive and less energetically costly lateral display have been comparatively understudied. Many factors have been shown to influence aggress...
Hunting provides livelihoods and food security for a large number of people across the tropics but endangers wildlife populations. Effective management requires understanding both social and economic dynamics of local bushmeat systems, yet social elements such as relationships between actors are often overlooked. We provide the first detailed descr...
Although potentially beneficial in terms of raising awareness and conservation funding, tourist visitation of wild primates can have negative impacts on visited groups. Tourism‐generated noise is a relatively understudied facet of ecotourism research, and the effects of tourist‐generated speech on free‐ranging, wild primates has never been explored...
Optimism in conservation, and its potential impact on conservation practice, has been the focus of considerable recent attention. Dispositional optimism is the tendency to have positive expectations for the future, and previous research on optimism has focused particularly on the relationship between optimism and positive health outcomes. This rese...
Audience segmentation could help improve the effectiveness of conservation interventions. Marketers use audience segmentation to define the target audience of a campaign. The technique involves subdividing a general population into groups that share similar profiles, such as sociodemographic or behavioral characteristics. Interventions are then des...
Species with large geographic ranges are considered resilient to global decline [1]. However, human pressures on biodiversity affect increasingly large areas, in particular across Asia, where market forces drive overexploitation of species [2]. Range-wide threat assessments are often costly and thus extrapolated from non-representative local studie...
Flagship species are widely used in conservation to raise awareness and funds, and recent observational research suggests that less popular species can be marketed to increase support for their conservation. Using two species groups, sharks and dolphins, this paper experimentally investigates whether stated conservation preferences can shift from m...
The actions that lead to conservation successes and failures are the result of decision-making by individuals and organizations about what to conserve and how to conserve it. The psychology of decision-making should be considered when assessing conservation outcomes.
Myanmar offers unique opportunities for both biodiversity conservation and foreign direct investment due to projected economic growth linked to natural resource exploitation. Industrial-scale development introduces new land uses into the landscape, with unknown repercussions for local communities and biodiversity conservation. We use participatory...
Historically, indigenous peoples have been excluded from conservation decision making and even their own territories. Indigenous peoples are potentially important allies for primate conservation, but are sometimes seen as sources of problems rather than solutions. I argue here that evidence-based conservation which recognizes local community rights...
Southeast Asia possesses the highest rates of tropical deforestation globally and exceptional levels of species richness and endemism. Many countries in the region are also recognized for their food insecurity and poverty, making the reconciliation of agricultural production and forest conservation a particular priority. This reconciliation require...
With the continuous growth of internet usage, Google Trends has emerged as a source of information to investigate how social trends evolve over time. Knowing how the level of interest in conservation topics-approximated using Google search volume-varies over time can help support targeted conservation science communication. However, the evolution o...
Results of SARIMA models for each keyword when using software as the benchmark keyword.
Reported are the lags that entered the models; in brackets are their coefficient estimate and standard errors (x10-3). The news variables for climate change have been back-transformed. Significant lags are in bold.
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Results of SARIMA models for each keyword when using life as the benchmark keyword.
Reported are the lags that entered the models; in brackets are their coefficient estimate and standard errors (x10-3). The news variables for climate change have been back-transformed. Significant lags are in bold.
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Results of SARIMA models for each keyword when using love as the benchmark keyword.
Reported are the lags that entered the models; in brackets are their coefficient estimate and standard errors (x10-3). The news variables for climate change have been back-transformed. Significant lags are in bold.
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A key justification to support plant health regulations is the ability of quarantine services to conduct pest risk analyses (PRA). Despite the supranational nature of biological invasions and the close proximity and connectivity of Southeast Asian countries, PRAs are conducted at the national level. Furthermore, some countries have limited experien...
The Ecuadorian mantled howler monkey (Alouatta palliata aequatorialis) is classified vulnerable due to habitat loss and hunting, yet little is known about the subspecies in the southern part of its range, and previous studies have been conducted in humid forests. Here we present the first data on Ecuadorian mantled howler monkeys in Cerro Blanco Pr...
Tibetan brown bears Ursus arctos pruinosus in the Tibetan Plateau attack and kill livestock and ransack homes for food, causing significant economic costs for local herders. Although a government fund compensates herders for livestock lost to bear attacks in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (China), compensation may not reflect the real cost of losing...
Focal Species Used for Species Identification and Pile Sorting
Ethnoprimatology is an important and growing discipline, studying the diverse relationships between humans and primates. However there is a danger that too great a focus on primates as important to humans may obscure the importance of other animal groups to local people. The Waorani of Amazonian Ecuador were described by Sponsel [Sponsel (1997) New...
QICu and ΔQICu of generalised estimating equations presence/absence of travelling per 5 minute block throughout the one hour experiment as a dependant variable (n = 252 in 21 experiments).
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QICu and ΔQICu of generalised estimating equations with number of calls per minute in the periods immediately before, during and immediately after experimental presentation as a dependant variable (n = 315 in 21 experiments).
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QICu and ΔQICu of generalised estimating equations presence/absence of visible individuals per 5 minute block throughout the one hour experiment as a dependant variable (n = 252 in 21 experiments).
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QICu and ΔQICu of generalised estimating equations with number of calls per 5 minute block throughout the one hour experiment as a dependant variable (n = 252 in 21 experiments).
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Wired Wilderness: Technologies of Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife by Benson Etienne (2010), ix+251 pp., The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, USA. ISBN 9780801897108 (hbk), USD 55.00/GBP 28.50. - Volume 46 Issue 1 - Sarah Papworth
Chimpanzees produce acoustically distinct calls when encountering food. Previous research on a number of species has indicated
that food-associated calls are relatively widespread in animal communication, and the production of these calls can be influenced
by both ecological and social factors. Here, we investigate the factors influencing the produ...
Wild chimpanzees can be dangerously violent against individuals that do not belong to their community, indicating a strong selection pressure on decision-making abilities in this context. The presence of a neighbouring male indicates a serious threat, although encountering an unfamiliar male is potentially even more dangerous because it indicates t...
Male blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis stuhlmanni) of Budongo Forest, Uganda, produce two acoustically distinct alarm calls: hacks to crowned eagles (Stephanoaetus coronatus) and pyows to leopards (Panthera pardus) and a range of other disturbances. In playback experiments, males responded to leopard growls exclusively with a series of pyows and to...
Questions
Questions (2)
I'm planning an undergraduate student field project with mark recapture on wild mice and voles, and thinking about marking methods. As individuals only need to be marked for a week I don't want to use tags. I know fur clipping is often used, but what about temporary marks with hair dye or food dye? As this is for a student project with minimal previous experience handling small mammals I'm a bit cautious about using clipping. If you have used food dye / hair dye or know of something published which did, which brand was used (or a link to the reference)?
I am writing a paper which includes information on group sizes in howler monkeys. Whilst most individuals are found in groups, some are solitary. A reviewer has pointed out that solitary individuals are not in groups, which suggests these solitary individuals should not be included in calculations of 'mean group size' for example. Whilst I agree that linguistically a solitary animal is not in a group, I would still like to present a mean value of 'how many howler monkeys are you likely to find together', for which I don't think I should exclude the solitary individuals. Is there any simple way to refer to this?
