Sophie Calmé

Université de Sherbrooke & El Colegio de la Frontera Sur · Département de biologie & Departamento de observacion y estudio TAO

Objetivo: Analizar las percepciones de habitantes de comunidades rurales marginadas sobre la pandemia de COVID-19 y la influencia de los Determinantes Sociales de la Salud en su experiencia ante la enfermedad. Metodología: Realizamos 72 entrevistas semiestructuradas en 6 comunidades de la zona de Calakmul, Campeche. Analizamos los datos a través de...

Swidden smallholders are among the most vulnerable groups to climate change. Many efforts have focused on incentivizing their transition to agroforestry, often with limited results. Such transitions, embedded in complex socio-environmental changes, generate uncertainties, often ignored in the science-policy interface. In this paper, we examine disp...

In recent years, zoos have acquired an important role in biodiversity conservation, especially for birds which are the most representative group in zoos. Proper management and conservation of species within zoos requires knowledge of sex composition within collections, to form successful breeding groups. However, many bird species are monomorphic,...

This comprehensive chapter covers various aspects of the biology and natural history of the Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii), including names, taxonomy, subspecies and distribution, descriptive notes, habitat, movements and home range, activity patterns, feeding ecology, reproduction and growth, behavior, and status in the wild and in captivity. The...

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs, generally viewed as policies to modernize and increase agricultural production and commercialization, also have social and environmental impacts. Among the first Mexican CCT programs, PROCAMPO is directed toward traditional agriculture and pays farmers for permanent cultivation, ignoring traditional fallow...

Promoting tolerance towards wildlife that pose a threat to humans or their livelihoods is critical to achieving species conservation goals. While conservation discourses often revolve around retaliation, tolerance and intolerance can vary from passive acceptance to active support, and according to level and scale of loss. We developed an experiment...

Indigenous and rural peoples have developed close connections with land and nature for millennia. Traditional and local knowledge resulting from such human-environment interactions is embedded in ethnic, linguistic, and cultural contexts, and may assist local communities in adapting to global issues such as climate change. However, the extent to wh...

Conservation biology is a mission‐driven discipline that must navigate a new relationship between conservation and science. Because conservation is a social and political as well as an ecological project, conservation biologists must practice interdisciplinarity and collaboration. In a comparative study of 7 cases (Jaguars in the Chaco, Grevy's zeb...

Despite the risks associated, some species choose to shield behind a predator to decrease predation risk by another predator. In this study, we demonstrate how Baird’s tapirs (Tapirus bairdii) use humans as a “shield” to reduce the risk of being preyed upon by jaguars (Panthera onca). We collected georeferenced photographic records of 23 tapirs (se...

Global processes manifesting as activities in local places have led to an increase in documented conservation conflicts. Conservation conflicts are sometimes labelled human-wildlife conflict, focusing only on the direct negative impact of species (usually wildlife) on humans or vice versa. However, many authors now recognize that conservation confl...

Borderlands can be places of socioeconomic tensions, development challenges, and ecological risks, now exacerbated by climate change. We investigate the border-development-climate change nexus using research from Calakmul, Mexico and Petén, Guatemala, to detail the lived experiences and vulnerabilities of campesinos in the Selva Maya cross-border r...

La región de Calakmul, localizada en el sur de la península de Yucatán, es parte del macizo de bosque tropical más grande ubicado en el rango de distribución del tapir centroamericano (Tapirus bairdii). Se cree que esta región mantiene una de las poblaciones más grandes de tapir, sin que hasta la fecha existan datos precisos que apoyen esta afirmac...

Private lands are increasingly targeted for ecological restoration and conservation initiatives in high-income countries. However, the fragmented nature of private land tenure, the large number of landowners and their heterogeneous profiles can pose significant challenges for conservation initiatives. This can lead to a range in landowners’ attitud...

The American Flamingo, Phoenicopterus ruber, is a charismatic bird distributed throughout the Caribbean, North and South America. Its wide distribution, the complexity of international monitoring due to its capacity for long-distance flying, and a focus mostly on local populations, make it difficult to understand the dynamics between sites. Here, w...

Private lands are increasingly targeted for ecological restoration and conservation initiatives in high-income countries. However, the fragmented nature of private land tenure, the large number of landowners and their heterogeneous socioeconomic profiles can pose significant challenges for conservation initiatives. Landowners’ attitudes toward cons...

Compensation schemes are important tools to counteract crop or livestock loss caused by wildlife of conservation concern. We adopted a research action approach that focused on local actors' knowledge and evaluations of a compensation scheme for carnivore depredation on livestock in Mexico. We conducted 165 questionnaires with livestock producers in...

Information about the effects of environmental degradation on the health of terrestrial forest wildlife is limited, especially for rare species. In this study, we analyse the influence of ecological factors such as landscape characteristics and seasonality on the health status of Baird’s tapirs in Calakmul, Mexico. We collected georeferenced photog...

ATBC conference Declarations are useful tools for conveying pressing tropical conservation issues with a global audience. We surveyed media and social media posts for the 16 ATBC Declarations and found that there is considerable scope to increase social media coverage of Declarations via mainstream platforms. We present five case study Declarations...

Supplementary information for Marshall, Lecuyer and Calmé (2020). Includes full survey questions, tables with information on the outputs of statistical models, and figures.

Compensation schemes are important tools to counteract crop or livestock loss by wildlife of conservation concern. Here we adopted a research action approach that focuses on local actors' knowledge and evaluations of a compensation scheme implemented to support carnivore conservation in Mexico. Participants rated criteria covering various aspects o...

Some social species exhibit high levels of fission-fusion dynamics (FFD) that improve foraging efficiency. In this study, we shed light on the way that FFD allows animal groups to cope with fluctuations in fruit availability. We explore the relative contribution of fruit availability and social factors like sex in determining association and proxim...

Conservation focuses on environmental objectives, but neglecting social concerns can lead to feelings of injustice among some actors and thus jeopardise conservation aims. Through a case study on a biodiversity conflict around jaguar management in Southern Mexico, we explored actors' feelings of injustice and their associated determinants. We emplo...

Fission-fusion dynamics (FFD) encompass a behavioral strategy present in many animal species that reduces the costs and increases the benefits of group living. In this case study, we investigated how group characteristics (size and composition) and fission rates in spider monkeys varied in space and time with rainfall, fruit availability, and fruit...

Conservation biology faces critical challenges that require collaborative approaches, including novel strategies to support interactions among actors in biodiversity conflicts. The goals of this study were to investigate the concept of common ground across multiple issues and to explore its practical application for the support of environmental man...

A failure to address social concerns in biodiversity conservation can lead to feelings of injustice among some actors, and hence jeopardize conservation goals. The complex socio-cultural and political context of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, has historically led to multiple biodiversity conflicts. Our goal, in this case study, was to expl...

Body condition score (BCS) systems have been used in wild animals as a technique for evaluating the health status of species that are difficult to capture but can be observed in their habitat. In this study, our goal was to enable scoring the BC of wild Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) without the need for direct observation, using camera trap and o...

We report home range estimates of an individual Baird's tapir (Tapirus bairdii) recorded from May 7, 2011 to September 2015 at the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Southern Mexico. The tapir was captured and equipped with a VHF collar in a pond within the reserve. The signal failed to transmit in the following month but with the help of a network of c...

Selective logging can have negative effects on biodiversity, and on key ecological processes such as seed dispersal and forest regeneration. Yet, the effect that timber extraction has on animal behaviour and habitat use is poorly known. We tested whether the density, distribution, and composition of sleeping sites used by spider monkeys (Ateles geo...

This book provides information relevant for the conservation of biodiversity and the sound management of the coastal and forest ecosystems of the Yucatan Peninsula in the face of global change. Various aspects of the biodiversity of the Yucatan Peninsula are analyzed in an integrative manner, including phenological, ecophysiological, ecological and...

The Maya civilization was one of the most important throughout the Americas. Today, Mayans still exist as a cultural group in Mexico, Belize, Honduras and Guatemala. The contemporary Mayan people of the Yucatán Peninsula live in a modern world; however, they still retain their language, customs and ancestral knowledge. Several studies have highligh...

Home to large tracts of biodiverse tropical forests, harboring valuable endemic species and carrying the spirit of its millennium Mayan culture, the Yucatán Peninsula is of high interest not only to ecologists, conservation biologists and social scientists, but to a wider audience interested in its biodiversity and conservation. The threats to biod...

Despite strong links between sociality and fitness that ultimately affect the size of animal populations, the particular social and ecological factors that lead to endangerment are not well understood. Here, we synthesize approximately 25 years of data and present new analyses that highlight dynamics in forest composition, food availability, the nu...

In this chapter, we present the current situation faced by 30 species of the Yucatán Peninsula which conservation status is currently at stake. We focus primarily on endemic species as well as resident and migrant species of conservation concern. Understanding how these species respond to their changing environment is vital to foreseeing their futu...

Landscape connectivity is considered a priority for ecosystem conservation because it may mitigate the synergistic effects of climate change and habitat loss. Climate change predictions suggest changes in precipitation regimes, which will affect the availability of water resources, with potential consequences for landscape connectivity. The Greater...

Existing and emerging infectious diseases are among the most pressing global threats to biodiversity, food safety and human health. The complex interplay between host, pathogen and environment creates a challenge for conserving species, communities and ecosystem functions, while mediating the many known ecological and socio-economic negative effect...

We describe conservation built on local expertise such that it constitutes a hybrid form of traditional and bureaucratic knowledge. Researchers regularly ask how local knowledge might be applied to programs linked to protected areas. By examining the production of conservation knowledge in southern Mexico, we assert local expertise is already centr...

Ecosystem management regularly requires bridging diverse cultural perspectives. As a result, researchers commonly assert that including local ecological knowledge in conservation strategies is essential to crafting enduring environmental solutions. Using the case of the king vulture (Sarcoramphus papa), we take preliminary steps in asking how ethno...

Conocer las preferencias de hábitat y abundancia relativa de mamíferos silvestres aporta información básica para programas de conservación o manejo. El pecarí labios blancos Tayassu pecari (Link, 1795), es una especie en peligro de extinción en México. En este estudio se evaluaron las preferencias del hábitat y la abundancia relativa de esta especi...

This work characterizes the habitat and biology of a population of Megasoma elephas at La Lucha Ejido, Calakmul, Campeche state. It regionalizes the information on the natural history of this beetle and proposes a viable utilization rate as a basis for future works. The size of the population was estimated using the Jolly-Seber method. For the habi...

Most animals need to actively search for food to meet energetic requirements and live in heterogeneous environments where food resources have complex spatio‐temporal patterns of availability. Consequently, foraging animals need to find a balance between effort and resource allocation while accounting for intrinsic and extrinsic factors, which are o...

We estimated nest survival and evaluated factors affecting this demographic parameter for the Black Catbird (Melanoptila glabrirostris), a poorly known mimid endemic to the Yucata ´n Peninsula. During the 2008 and 2009 breeding seasons, we monitored 136 nests spread across four sites in Mexico, including three mainland coastal sites in the Sian Ka’...

Hurricanes are common disturbances in the Caribbean, but their effect on carnivores is unknown. The objective of this study was to evaluate the occurrence and relative abundance of carnivores in relation with vegetation damage 18 months after Hurricane Dean (2007) hit the Yucatan Peninsula. Using camera–trapping, 4 sites showing different intensiti...

Landscape fragmentation usually has a considerable effect on the genetic and demographic viability of most species because it reduces population size and increases isolation among populations. This situation provokes loss of genetic diversity and increased inbreeding that can lead to population or species extinctions. Some studies also show that la...

Pour mieux comprendre l’étendue des conséquences climatiques à venir, il a été confié au Centre pour la Science de la Biodiversité du Québec (CSBQ) le mandat de réaliser une revue de littérature sur leur impact dans le nord du Québec. Une vaste recherche bibliographique qui a permis de rassembler 1892 références dans une base de donnée bibliographi...

Searching for patchily distributed, highly localized, and seasonally variable resources in heterogeneous environments poses significant challenges for social species living in cohesive groups. Here, we studied the searching strategies of a highly social mammal, the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecan), in Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, Mexico. Calakmu...

Even though the full process of seed dispersal is the combination of movement mode and distance, deposition, successful germination and survival (Nathan 2006, Westcott et al. 2005), relatively few studies have documented the role of mammals as facilitators of germination and survival (Paine & Harms 2009). In particular, the effectiveness of large t...

We assessed the effects of a high-intensity hurricane on the abundance of nine game species in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. We sampled 370 km of linear transects in the 3 yr before the hurricane (i.e., 2003-2005), and 315 km in 3 yr after the hurricane (2008-2010). Relative track abundances of all species declined by two-thirds of their prehurric...

To better understand the extent of the future impacts of climate change, the Center for Science in the Quebec Biodiversity (QCBS) was given the mandate to carry out a literature review on the impact in northern Quebec. An extensive literature search brought together 1,892 references in a bibliographic database accessible and searchable from the sit...

New World vultures are typically diurnal with only rare nocturnal activity reported. Tabor and McAllister (1988) observed nocturnal flight by Turkey Vultures (Cathartes aura) during migration, and Mandel and Bildstein (2007) observed small groups of Turkey Vultures regularly feeding until 23:00 H at a landfill site in Pennsylvania, U.S.A. We found...

In the Yucatan Peninsula, the tarantula Brachypelma vagans Ausserer 1875 is commonly associated with human settlements, as are the scorpions Centruroides gracilis Latreille 1804 and C. ochraceus Pocock 1898. Nonetheless, scorpions are virtually absent from villages showing a high density of tarantulas. Predatory interactions between these predators...

Two experiments were performed to study how cultural practices influenced the relationship between frost tolerance and water content of black spruce (Piceamariana (Mill.) B.S.P.), white spruce (Piceaglauca (Moench) Voss), and jack pine (Pinusbanksiana Lamb.) seedlings. In the first experiment, first-year black spruce seedlings were subjected to 14-...

After freezing tests, various methods for evaluating root damage were compared and correlated to the regrowth of 16-week-old containerized black spruce seedlings (Piceamariana (Mill.) B.S.P.) hardened in growth chambers. During the hardening regime, three experiments were performed. The first experiment evaluated the influence on the test results o...

Classification is one of the most widely applied tasks in ecology. Ecologists have to deal with noisy, high-dimensional data that often are non-linear and do not meet the assumptions of conventional statistical procedures. To overcome this problem, machine-learning methods have been adopted as ecological classification methods. We compared five mac...

a b s t r a c t The ocellated turkey Meleagris ocellata (OT) is a large, unmistakable endemic bird of the Yucatan peninsula. The species has suffered a considerable loss of distributional area as well as local abundance between 1980 and 2000 and is classified as endangered according to Mexican norms. We applied Classification Trees and Random Fores...

Although well studied, the role of spider webs in attracting prey and the role of web ornaments remain open questions. We carried out a field study to determine whether webs of Nephila clavipes (Linnaeus 1767) attract insects. Nephila builds large orb-webs with debris-decoration that host kleptobiotic Argyrodes spiders. We studied the potential pre...

Cholinesterase (ChE) activity in birds is subject to interspecific and intraspecific species variations. Factors that influence enzyme activity have to be taken into account in order to obtain an accurate estimation of cholinesterase inhibition due to pesticide exposure in wild birds. This study evaluates variation of plasma cholinesterase activity...

The American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) and the Morelet's crocodile (C. moreletii) are broadly sympatric in Belize and Mexico. The presence of morphologically anomalous individuals in the overlapping range area suggests possible hybridization between these species. Analysis of 477 base pairs of the mitochondrial tRNA(Pro)-tRNA(Phe)-Dloop region...

It has long been established that mature forests are mosaics of patches in different development phases but it has seldom explicitly been taken into account in ecological studies. We demonstrate here that these development phases, which are related to the population dynamics of trees, play an important role in the distribution of fauna based on obs...