Sonia Said

Office Français de la Biodiversité · DRAS

Low levels of essential mineral elements such as cobalt, copper, and iron, in organisms reduce immune function, increasing the chances of parasitic infection. This phenomenon has been demonstrated widely in domestic animals but rarely in wildlife. In this study, we used data from 7‐ to 9‐month‐old roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), living in two diffe...

Wildlife tagging provides critical insights into animal movement ecology, physiology, and behavior amid global ecosystem changes. However, the stress induced by capture, handling, and tagging can impact post-release locomotion and activity and, consequently, the interpretation of study results. Here, we analyze post-tagging effects on 1585 individu...

Key message In European mountain forests, the growth of silver fir ( Abies alba Mill.), sycamore maple ( Acer pseudoplatanus L.), European beech ( Fagus sylvatica L.) and Norway spruce ( Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.) seedlings is more strongly affected by ungulate browsing than by elevation. But, the constraint exerted by ungulates, in particular the...

Le renouvellement de nombreuses essences d’intérêts économique et écologique est remis en cause par une hausse généralisée des populations de cervidés et des dégâts qu'ils occasionnent. La simulation d’abroutissement est une méthode expérimentale consistant à combiner la section mécanique de la plante et l’application de salive de cervidés sur la z...

Most chemical elements are crucial for life maintenance, but the intake of non-essential elements or inadequate concentrations of essential ones can have major consequences on wildlife health. However, concentrations of minor and trace elements remain largely unknown in free-ranging animals. This study aimed to establish the first reference values...

Human activity and associated landscape modifications alter the movements of animals with consequences for populations and ecosystems worldwide. Species performing long-distance movements are thought to be particularly sensitive to human impact. Despite the increasing anthropogenic pressure, it remains challenging to understand and predict animals'...

Ixodes ricinus, the most common species of tick in Europe, is known to transmit major pathogens to animals and humans such as Babesia spp. or Borrelia spp. Its abundance and distribution have been steadily increasing in Europe during recent decades, due to global environmental changes. Indeed, as ticks spend most of their life in the environment, t...

Browsing damage in forests relies on a complex interaction between herbivore density and forest understory composition and relative availability. Although variation in the amount of browsed twigs is sometimes used to assess abundance of large herbivores, the potential confounding effect of resource availability on this relationship has not been inv...

Aim: Macroecological studies that require habitat suitability data for many species often derive this information from expert opinion. However, expert-based information is inherently subjective and thus prone to errors. The increasing availability of GPS tracking data offers opportunities to evaluate and supplement expert-based information with de...

Ixodes ricinus , the most common species of tick in Europe, is known to transmit major pathogens to animals and humans such as Babesia spp. or Borrelia spp.. Its abundance and distribution have been steadily increasing in Europe during recent decades, due to global environmental changes. Indeed, as ticks spend most of their life in the environment,...

Understanding the consequences of global change for animal movement is a major issue for conservation and management. In particular, habitat fragmentation generates increased densities of linear landscape features that can impede movements. While the influence of these features on animal movements has been intensively investigated, they may also pl...

Fauna impacts its environment as well as spatial environment influences fauna space use. Forest management implies taking into account pressure from animals in fragile-balanced patches. Our goal is to propose maps that would benefit forest planning by reflecting individual movement and space use depending on the animal species and local spatiotempo...

Browsing damage in forests relies on a complex interaction between herbivore density and both forest understory composition and relative availability. Although variation in the amount of browsed twigs is sometimes used to assess abundance of large herbivores, the potential confounding effect of resource availability on this relationship has not yet...

The fitting of tracking devices to wild animals requires capture and handling which causes stress and can potentially cause injury, behavioural modifications that can affect animal welfare and the output of research. We evaluated post capture and release ranging behaviour responses of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) for five different capture method...

With the rise of large herbivore populations in most northern hemisphere forests, browsing is becoming an increasingly important driver of forest regeneration dynamics. Among other processes affecting the regeneration, the concept of plant-herbivore feedback loops holds that browsed saplings are more subject to subsequent herbivory. This phenomenon...

Animal movement has been identified as a key feature in understanding animal behavior, distribution and habitat use and foraging strategies among others. Large datasets of invididual locations often remain unused or used only in part due to the lack of practical models that can directly infer the desired features from raw GPS locations and the comp...

Migration of ungulates (hooved mammals) is a fundamental ecological process that promotes abundant herds, whose effects cascade up and down terrestrial food webs. Migratory ungulates provide the prey base that maintains large carnivore and scavenger populations and underpins terrestrial biodiversity (fig. S1). When ungulates move in large aggregati...

For sustainable management of exploited populations, it is required to have good knowledge on temporal trends in population density to adapt the harvest. In this regard, hunting statistics are often collected routinely by government agencies and associations. These data are used to assess demographic trends through the development of indices, which...

The recruitment of forest trees is driven by both bottom-up processes (the acquisition of resources) and top-down processes (herbivory). To initiate stand regeneration, foresters commonly reduce tree density to increase light levels for seedlings and enhance primary productivity. These changes in vegetation dynamics, however, could also influence e...

Using GPS-tracking from 61 populations of four ungulate species, Aikens et al. provide evidence that the dynamic nature of forage resources generates the diversity of movement tactics used by animals. Specifically, patterns of spring green-up shaped how closely animals tracked resources and where migration occurred across temperate ecosystems.

Animals exhibit a diversity of movement tactics [1]. Tracking resources that change across space and time is predicted to be a fundamental driver of animal movement [2]. For example, some migratory ungulates (i.e., hooved mammals) closely track the progression of highly nutritious plant green-up, a phenomenon called “green-wave surfing” [3, 4, 5]....

Les populations d’herbivores sauvages sont en nette augmentation depuis plusieurs décennies dans l’hémisphère Nord en raison du changement des pratiques agricoles et des plans de gestion environnementaux. Cet essor est à l’origine de surpâturage, de perturbations physiques du sol par piétinement et labour du sol et de dégâts aux écorces et aux bour...

Oak reproduction is characterized by mast seeding with high inter-annual fluctuations in fruit production. Such resource pulses can greatly affect ecosystem functioning and may cause seed consumers to alter their mobility, demography, or diet. Consequences of mast seeding for seed consumers remain poorly understood as their long timescale makes the...

Animal movement has been identified as a key feature in understanding animal behavior, distribution and habitat use and foraging strategies among others. At the same time, technological improvements now allow for generating large datasets of high sampled GPS data over a long period of time. However, such datasets often remain unused or used only in...

Hunting can be used as a tool for wildlife management, through limitation of population densities and dissuading game from using sensitive areas. The success of these approaches requires in depth knowledge of prey movement. Indeed, movement decisions of game during hunting may affect the killing success of hunters as well as the subsequent location...

Wild boar populations have increased dramatically over the last decades throughout Europe and in France in particular. While hunting is considered the most efficient way to control game populations, many local conflicts persist after the hunting period due to remaining high densities of wild boar despite the large number of animals culled every yea...

Background and aims-Plants may use various defence mechanisms to protect their tissues against deer browsing and the allocation of resources to defence may trade-off with plants' growth. In a context of increasing deer populations in European forests, understanding the resource allocation strategies of trees is critical to better assess their abili...

Satellite telemetry is an increasingly utilized technology in wildlife research, and current devices can track individual animal movements at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolutions. However, as we enter the golden age of satellite telemetry, we need an in-depth understanding of the main technological, species-specific and environmental fact...

R-code for boosted beta regression (Fix acquisition rate). (R)

Covariate partial effects on the variability of the fix acquisition rate. (PDF)

Tagged individuals per species. (PDF)

Covariate partial effects on the variability of the Overall fix success rate. (PDF)

Trends in observed data. (PDF)

Global dataset for boosted beta regressions. (CSV)

Description of data fields in S1 Data. (CSV)

Satellite telemetry articles published. (PDF)

Distribution of response variables and covariates. (PDF)

Unit purchase and operation costs. (PDF)

R-code for boosted beta regression (Overall fix success rate). (R)

Standardized data collection questionnaire. (PDF)

Satellite telemetry evaluations. (PDF)

Hunting, including drive hunts, can be considered as a predation process. Although drive hunts are spatially and temporally well defined, the scale at which the hunting risk triggers anti‐predator responses of prey remains poorly documented. The present study aims at 1) characterizing the delayed movement responses of female red deer Cervus elaphus...

External retention time assessed from observational experiments on different body parts of three ungulate species using Xanthium strumarium

Masting, or mast-seeding, defined as a synchronized and highly variable seed production from year-to-year within a population of plants, is one of the most common example of pulsed resources in terrestrial ecosystems. In oaks, the dramatic fluctuations of acorn production impact its reproductive success and regeneration, the dynamics of a large div...

European wild boar populations have strongly increased during the last decades. Hunting is considered today as the most efficient way to control the level of these populations. However, despite the large number of animals culled by hunters in France, there are still many local conflicts with stakeholders due to wild boar impacts on human activities...

When they visit and revisit specific areas, animals may reveal what they need from their home range and how they acquire information. The temporal dimension of such movement recursions, that is, periodicity, is however rarely studied, yet potentially bears a species, population or individual‐specific signature. A recent method allows estimating the...

This study aimed to (1) identify the scale of environmental drivers of seasonal movements on the migration – residency behavior continuum in a large herbivore species and to (2) test the hypothesis that the same environmental drivers and spatio-temporal scaling should influence spatial processes in both migrants (long distance migration) and reside...

More than others, arctic ecosystems are affected by consequences of global climate changes. The herbivorous plays numerous roles both in Scandinavian natural and cultural landscapes (Forbes et al., 2007). Wild reindeer (Rangifer tarandus L.) herds in Hardangervidda plateau (Norway) constitute one of the isolated populations along Fennoscandia mount...

Much research on large herbivore movement has focused on the annual scale to distinguish between resident and migratory tactics, commonly assuming that individuals are sedentary at the within-season scale. However, apparently sedentary animals may occupy a number of sub-seasonal functional home ranges (sfHR), particularly when the environment is sp...

Effects of hunting on spatial behaviour of Effects of hunting on spatial behaviour of wild boar (Sus scrofa)

French vulgarisation paper published in the French magazine ‘Faune Sauvage’ in the 2nd quarter of 2018 (volume 319, pages 35-42): Une fructification telle que la glandée du chêne est l’un des processus de la régénération forestière. Cette production peut être affectée par le réchauffement climatique ainsi que par la faune sauvage qui la consomme....

With the surge of GPS-technology, many studies uncovered space use of mobile animals and shed light on the underlying behavioral mechanisms of habitat selection. Habitat selection and variation in either occurrence or strength of functional responses (i.e. how selection changes with availability) have given new insight into such mechanisms within p...

In Boulanger et al (2018), we investigated the effects of ungulates on forest plant diversity. By suggesting a revisit of our conclusions regarding ecosystem dynamics since the late Pleistocene, Fløjgaard et al (2018) came to the conclusion that moderate grazing in forest should be a conservation target. Since major points of our paper were mis- or...

Large wild ungulates are a major biotic factor shaping plant communities. They influence species abundance and occurrence directly by herbivory and plant dispersal, or indirectly by modifying plant-plant interactions and through soil disturbance. In forest ecosystems, researchers’ attention has been mainly focused on deer overabundance. Far less is...

Restrictions on roaming Until the past century or so, the movement of wild animals was relatively unrestricted, and their travels contributed substantially to ecological processes. As humans have increasingly altered natural habitats, natural animal movements have been restricted. Tucker et al. examined GPS locations for more than 50 species. In ge...

The transport phase of the animal-mediated plant dispersal process is critical to dispersal effectiveness as it determines the spatial distribution of the diaspores released and their chance for further recruitment. Assessing this specific phase of the dispersal process generally requires combining diaspore retention times with the associated dista...

Plant competition and deer browsing are two main factors which limit tree recruitment. We examined natural tree-recruitment processes under continuous- tree-cover management. Changes in plant communities and tree regeneration were monitored over an eight-year period at two different sites in a temperate hardwood forest in the North-East of France....

Article disponible dans la revue Forêt Nature n° 145, pages 36-45.

Deer populations have dramatically increased over the last decades in Western Europe and their browsing has affected forest vegetation, especially plant community composition. High deer browsing pressure may threaten forest ecosystems and needs to be assessed over the long run. However, few studies to date have addressed the long-term impact of dee...

This study is centered on wild boar (Sus scrofa) in its native range and aims to answer the question: does wild boar impact biodiversity in its temperate native range and how? Native wild boar can impact all environmental components: vegetation, soil properties, fauna, fungi or aquatic habitats. Existing studies demonstrate that wild boar is an imp...

More than others, arctic ecosystems are affected by consequences of global climate changes. The herbivorous plays numerous roles both in Scandinavian natural and cultural landscapes (Forbes et al., 2007). Wild reindeer (Rangifer tarandus L.) herds in Hardangervidda plateau (Norway) constitute one of the isolated populations along Fennoscandia mount...

Ecologists have long argued about the modification of plant competition along abiotic gradients, and particularly along resource gradients. Through simulations, we evaluated the impact of bramble defoliation by roe deer on the response of oak seedlings to bramble presence along two resource gradients. We set up a controlled experiment crossing: (i)...

Cette synthèse bibliographique a pour objectif d’apporter des éléments de réponse sur l’impact du sanglier (Sus scrofa scrofa et Sus scrofa meridionalis) sur son habitat naturel en Europe. Le sanglier peut impacter toutes les composantes de l’écosystème : la flore, la faune et le fonctionnement du sol. Sa présence se traduit fréquemment par une mod...

De nombreux massifs montagneux abritent aujourd'hui plusieurs espèces de grands herbivores sauvages. Cette cohabitation se traduit par une pression importante sur les milieux forestiers. Les résultats d'une étude du régime alimentaire du cerf, du chevreuil, du chamois et du mouflon, réalisée dans les Bauges entre 2003 et 2008, mettent en évidence d...

Herbivorous ungulates are key species in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, and their recent demographic and geographic expansion in some temperate regions is likely to influence ecological processes, particularly if we consider plants and the frequency of mobile links among plant populations. In forests, long-distance seed dispersal essent...