Vanessa Hull

University of Florida | UF · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

Numerous Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) programs have been implemented simultaneously around the world but their outcomes in the literature are not consistent and their interactive effects remain understudied. The Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) and Grain to Green Program (GTGP) are two largest PES programs in the world, and many...

Conflicts between rural people and the Endangered Black-and-chestnut Eagle (Spizaetus isidori) are a prominent conservation concern in the northern Andes, as at least 60 eagles were poached between 2000 and 2022 in response to poultry predation. Here, we conducted direct observations to analyze the Black-and-chestnut Eagle diet and evaluated how fo...

Scent marking sites served as a primary means of chemical communication for giant pandas, enabling intraspecific communication. We integrated metabolomics and high-throughput sequencing techniques to examine the non-targeted metabolome and microbial community structure of scent marking sites and feces in the field. Integrative analysis revealed a m...

Protected areas are a key component of global conservation, and the world is aiming to increase protected areas to cover 30% of land and water through the 30 9 30 Initiative under the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. However, factors affecting their success or failure in regard to promoting mammal population recovery are not well studied, p...

The effects of various strategies aimed at simultaneously promoting environmental conservation and human development are closely related to sustainable development regionally and globally. However, although the effects of many such strategies have been evaluated by ecologists and sociologists separately, their ability to simultaneously meet these t...

Analyses of animal social networks have traditionally been conducted on species that exhibit social behaviors such as group living, whereas relatively less work has been done on species that are thought of as solitary, are cryptic, and that communicate through scent-marking cues. We employed noninvasive fecal genetic sampling, conducted from March...

An exciting research frontier is the intersection of wildlife ecology and social science. Associated research is embracing a spatial approach to integrating ecological and social data to investigate the complex relationships between wildlife and humans across landscapes. However, there is a lack of coherence on the status, current methodology, and...

This study explored the internal driving factors for the effects of livestock grazing on wild giant pandas, their habitats, and staple bamboo resources, in order to provide a basis for the construction and management of the Giant Panda National Park. Based on the survey data of random sample fields of wild giant pandas and grazing livestock in the...

Population characteristics are the most intuitive and measurable biological indicators of plants and the functional responses of plants to external interferences and environmental fluctuations. By analyzing the population characteristics of Bashania faberi clones after feeding by the wild giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) and grazing livestock，...

Riverine systems and associated fish populations worldwide are threatened by human impacts, especially in tropical countries with emerging economies. In India, community-based fish sanctuaries are a key mechanism for the conservation of freshwater fish populations, but there are few peer-reviewed studies on this subject. Here we integrate over 35 c...

Knowledge of large carnivore population abundance is essential for wildlife management and conservation, but these data are often difficult to obtain in inherently low‐density species. In particular, the snow leopard, Panthera uncia, an enigmatic cat occupying remote mountains in Central Asia, has received insufficient assessments of its population...

Age‐ and sex‐specific survival rates are essential for understanding animal population dynamics and discerning environmental influences on population parameters. To date, little research has been done on age‐ and sex‐specific survival of the Gunnison's prairie dog (Cynomys gunnisoni), a colonial ground‐dwelling squirrel inhabiting the sagebrush eco...

This study analyzed the characteristics of the bamboo grazing behaviors (food selection, resource intake rate) of wild giant pandas and livestock in Wolong National Nature Reserve to reveal the ecological mechanism of the impact of grazing livestock on giant panda bamboo resources and habitats. The study was analyzed using data from line transect s...

Globally, non-human primates face mounting threats due to unsustainable harvest by humans. There is a need to better understand the diverse drivers of primate harvest and the complex social-ecological interactions influencing harvest in shared human-primate systems. Here, we take an interdisciplinary, systems approach to assess how complex interact...

The relationships between habitat amount and fragmentation level and functional connectivity and inbreeding remain unclear. Thus, we used genetic algorithms to optimize the transformation of habitat area and fragmentation variables into resistance surfaces to predict genetic structure and examined habitat area and fragmentation effects on inbreedin...

Nature-based tourism occurs in environments shared with many species of flora and fauna that provide numerous benefits for people. Whether developed in urban or rural areas, human-dominated or wild, this type of tourism can have substantial positive or negative impacts on natural systems, including biodiversity. These outcomes affect tourism produc...

Behavioral strategies used in scent communication can reflect the adaptive capacity of animals. Signal detection theory and the principle of least effort posit that scent marking must be efficient and energy maximizing. The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a solitary species that relies heavily on scent communication. There have been few stu...

Bears have fascinated people since ancient times. The relationship between bears and humans dates back thousands of years, during which time we have also competed with bears for shelter and food. In modern times, bears have come under pressure through encroachment on their habitats, climate change, and illegal trade in their body parts, including t...

Understanding habitat selection is important for effective habitat management and recovery of species. However, many habitat selection studies are based on presence and absence data and do not differentiate the intensity of use and its association with fine-scale habitat characteristics. Such information is critical for improving our understanding...

Water is crucial for ecosystem health and socioeconomic development, but water scarcity is becoming a global concern. Management of transboundary watersheds is inherently challenging and has the potential to lead to conflict over the allocation of water resources. The metacoupling framework, which explores the relationships between coupled human an...

This poster provides an overview of a first-of-its-kind citizen-science assessment tool for nature-based tourism operations. Created by a team of interdisciplinary conservation scientists, this tool is designed to be used by tour operators and providers to determine the key ecological attributes of a site and then assess the positive and negative i...

Research has shown that varying spatial scale through the selection of the total extent of investigation and the grain size of environmental predictor variables has effects on species distribution model (SDM) results and accuracy, but there has been minimal investigation into the interactive effects of extent and grain. To do this, we used a consis...

The world’s oceans face unprecedented anthropogenic threats in the globalized era that originate from all over the world, including climate change, global trade and transportation, and pollution. Marine protected areas (MPAs) serve important roles in conservation of marine biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, but their success is increasingly cha...

Ａｓｐｅｃｔｓ ｏｆ ａｎ ａｎｉｍａｌ′ｓ ａｃｔｉｖｉｔｙ ｐａｔｔｅｒｎｓ ｓｕｃｈ ａｓ ｃｉｒｃａｄｉａｎ ｒｈｙｔｈｍ ａｎｄ ａｃｔｉｖｉｔｙ ｌｅｖｅｌ ａｒｅ ｃａｕｓｅｄ ｂｙ ｉｎｔｒｉｎｓｉｃ ｍｅｃｈａｎｉｓｍｓ ａｎｄ ｅｎｖｉｒｏｎｍｅｎｔａｌ ｅｆｆｅｃｔｓ， ａｎｄ ｉｎ ｔｕｒｎ ａｆｆｅｃｔ ａｎ ａｎｉｍａｌ′ ｓ ｅｎｅｒｇｙ ｍｅｔａｂｏｌｉｓｍ ａｂｉｌｉｔｉｅｓ， ｆｏｒａｇｉｎｇ ｂｅｈａｖｉｏｒ ｓｔｒａｔｅｇｉｅｓ， ａｎｄ ｅｖｏｌｕｔｉｏｎａｒｙ ａｄａｐｔａｔｉｏｎ． Ｕｓｉｎｇ ＧＰＳ ｃｏｌｌａｒｓ ｗｉｔｈ ｄｕａｌ⁃ａｘｉｓ ａｃｃｅｌｅｒｏｍｅｔｅｒｓ ｆｉｔｔｅｄ ｏｎ ｗｉｌｄ ｇｉａｎｔ ｐａｎｄａｓ ａｎｄ ｌｉｖ...

Medicinal herb collection has historical and cultural roots in many rural communities in developing countries. Areas where herb collection occurs may overlap with biodiversity hotspots and crucial habitat of endangered and threatened species. However, impacts of such practices on wildlife are unknown and possibly underestimated, perhaps due to the...

Telecoupling refers to socioeconomic and environmental interactions between distant coupled human and natural systems, and has become more extensive and intensive in the globalized era. The integrated framework of telecoupling examines flows of information, energy, matter, people, organisms, and other things such as financial capital and goods and...

Many global challenges, though interconnected, have been addressed singly, at times reducing one problem while exacerbating others. Nexus approaches simultaneously examine interactions among multiple sectors. Recent quantitative studies have revealed that nexus approaches can uncover synergies and detect trade-offs among sectors. If well implemente...

Diet plays a pivotal role in dictating behavioral patterns of herbivorous animals, particularly specialist species. The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is well-known as a bamboo specialist. In the present study, the response of giant pandas to spatiotemporal variation of bamboo shoots was explored using field surveys and GPS collar tracking. R...

Scale is a vital component to consider in ecological research, and spatial resolution or grain size is one of its key facets. Species distribution models (SDMs) are prime examples of ecological research in which grain size is an important component. Despite this, SDMs rarely explicitly examine the effects of varying the grain size of the predictors...

Livestock are a major human-induced threat to wildlife worldwide, especially in forest landscapes where livestock degrade the food and habitat of forest-dwelling wildlife. However, few empirical studies on this topic have been conducted at fine spatiotemporal scales that are crucial for wildlife-livestock interactions, in particular those involving...

Migratory species are an important component of biodiversity and provide essential ecosystem services for humans, but many are threatened and endangered. Numerous studies have been conducted on the biology of migratory species, and there is an increased recognition of the major role of human dimensions in conserving migratory species. However, ther...

The study of wildlife activity patterns is an effective approach to understanding fundamental ecological and evolutionary processes. However, traditional statistical approaches used to conduct quantitative analysis have thus far had limited success in revealing underlying mechanisms driving activity patterns. Here, we combine wavelet analysis, a ty...

Significance Following severe environmental degradation from rapid economic development, China is now advancing policies to secure biodiversity and ecosystem services. We report the first nationwide assessment, showing that protected areas (PAs) are not well delineated to protect either biodiversity or key ecosystem services. This serious deficienc...

China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to expand the ancient land routes that connect China to the Mediterranean Sea and corresponding ocean-based routes, is expanding global cooperation with profound socioeconomic and ecological implications. As China and associated countries are developing specific policies to implement the initi...

Animals make choices about where to spend their time in complex and dynamic landscapes, choices that reveal information about their biology that in turn can be used to guide their conservation. Using GPS collars, we conducted a novel individual-based analysis of habitat use and selection by the elusive and endangered giant pandas (Ailuropoda melano...

Habitat use describes how wildlife utilize natural resources and their activity patterns，and has great influence on the genetic exchange between local populations and their viability. Between 2010 and 2012，we collected habitat data and GPS data from giant pandas and livestock—domestic horses at the Hetaoping section of Wolong National Nature Reserv...

Telemetry studies that track animals through space and time can lead to advances in scientific understanding that are vital in conservation efforts. For example, telemetry studies of the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) have shed light on many aspects of panda biology, but small sample sizes in each separate study make it difficult to draw broa...

Increasingly, the world is becoming socioeconomically and environmentally connected, but many studies have focused on human-environment interactions within a particular area. Although some studies have considered the impacts of external factors, there is little research on multiple reciprocal socioeconomic and environmental interactions between a f...

In today’s globalized world, humans and nature are inextricably linked. The coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) framework provides a lens with which to understand such complex interactions. One of the central components of the CHANS framework involves examining feedbacks among human and natural systems, which form when effects from one system...

One of the most fundamental questions in animal ecology concerns the activity patterns of animals and the environmental and intrinsic factors that influence such dynamics. Activity patterns of the elusive and endangered giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) are not well understood. Using GPS collars equipped with dual-axis accelerometers on captive...

Global sustainability challenges, from maintaining biodiversity to providing clean air and water, are closely interconnected yet often separately studied and managed. Systems integration—holistic approaches to integrating various components of coupled human and natural systems—is critical to understand socioeconomic and environmental interconnectio...

Studies on animal space use can reveal insights into how animals interact with one another and their environment. Research on the space use patterns of the endangered giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) in China has nevertheless lagged behind that of many other species, as a government moratorium prevented telemetry data collection on pandas from...

The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a global conservation icon, but its habitat selection patterns are poorly understood. We synthesized previous studies on giant panda habitat selection. We confirmed that pandas generally selected forests with moderate to high bamboo densities, mid-elevations, both primary and secondary forests, and areas...

Conserving wildlife while simultaneously meeting the resource needs of a growing human population is a major sustainability challenge. As such, using combined social and environmental perspectives to understand how people and wildlife are interlinked, together with the mechanisms that may weaken or strengthen those linkages, is of utmost importance...