Yiwei Wang

The Nature Conservancy

The Asia-Pacific region contains almost half of the planet’s coastal carbon-sequestering (blue carbon) environments (mangroves, salt marshes, seagrasses). These habitats are highly valuable to sequester carbon and mitigate climate change, but are under threat throughout the region, due in significant part to an insufficient policy environment to pr...

Mesocarnivores face interspecific competition and risk intraguild predation when sharing resources with apex carnivores. Within a landscape, carnivores across trophic levels may use the same communication hubs, which provide a mix of risks (injury/death) and rewards (gaining information) for subordinate species. We predicted that mesocarnivores wou...

Anthropogenic impacts on wildlife behavior arise both from the immediate presence of people, which induces fear responses in many species, and the human footprint (i.e., landscape modification such as residential development), which affects animal movement and habitat use. Where both disturbance types co-occur, disentangling their impacts remains a...

Background Environmental conditions can influence animal movements, determining when and how much animals move. Yet few studies have quantified how abiotic environmental factors (e.g., ambient temperature, snow depth, precipitation) may affect the activity patterns and metabolic demands of wide-ranging large predators. We demonstrate the utility of...

Mesopredators face interspecific competition and intraguild predation when sharing resources with apex predators or more dominant mesopredators. We theorize that mesopredators use a variety of tactics to avoid competitively dominant predators at shared locations, such as scavenging and communication sites, that provide a mix of risks and rewards to...

Changes in the composition of biological communities can be elicited by competitive exclusion, wherein a species is excluded from viable habitat by a superior competitor. Yet less is known about the role of environmental change in facilitating or mitigating exclusion in the context of invasive species. In these situations, decline in a native speci...

Anthropogenic disturbances can constrain the realized niche space of wildlife by inducing avoidance behaviors and altering community dynamics. Human activity might contribute to reduced partitioning of niche space by carnivores that consume similar resources, both by promoting tolerant species while also altering behavior of species (e.g. activity...

Human development strongly influences large carnivore survival and persistence globally. Behavior changes are often the first measureable responses to human disturbances, and can have ramifications on animal populations and ecological communities. We investigated how a large carnivore responds to anthropogenic disturbances by measuring activity, mo...

Background Quantifying individual variability in movement behavior is critical to understanding population-level patterns in animals. Here, we explore intraspecific variation in movement strategies of bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in the north Pacific, where there is high spatiotemporal resource variability. We tracked 28 bald eagles (five...

Communication is a central component of animal behaviour, yet communicative behaviours are poorly studied due to their complexity and varied functions. Pumas (Puma concolor) are wide-ranging, solitary felids that primarily use indirect cues (e.g., scent marking) for communication. Because these cryptic carnivores are rarely observed directly, littl...

Understanding how anthropogenic development affects food webs is essential to implementing sustainable growth measures, yet little is known about how the spatial configuration of residential development affects the foraging behavior and prey habits of top predators. We examined the influence of the spatial characteristics of residential development...

The Funding section incorrectly states that “the authors received no specific funding for this work.” The authors would like to correct the statement as follows: Funding: YW was supported by the NSF grant 1430508. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Human-driven declines of apex predators can trigger widespread impacts throughout ecological communities. Reduced apex predator occupancy or activity can release mesopredators from intraguild competition, with unknown repercussions on the ecological community. As exurban development continues to expand worldwide, it is important to document how mes...

Citizen science projects have the potential to advance science by increasing the volume and variety of data, as well as innovation. Yet this potential has not been fully realized, in part because citizen science data are typically not widely shared and reused. To address this and related challenges, we built CitSci.org (see www.citsci.org), a custo...

The fear induced by predators on their prey is well known to cause behavioural adjustments by prey that can ripple through food webs. Little is known, however, about the analogous impacts of humans as perceived top predators on the foraging behaviour of carnivores. Here, we investigate the influence of human-induced fear on puma foraging behaviour...

Accelerometers are useful tools for biologists seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the daily behavior of cryptic species. We describe how we used GPS and tri-axial accelerometer (sampling at 64 Hz) collars to monitor behaviors of free-ranging pumas (Puma concolor), which are difficult or impossible to observe in the wild. We attached collars...

Pumas (Puma concolor) live in diverse, often rugged, complex habitats. The energy they expend for hunting must account for this complexity but is difficult to measure for this and other large, cryptic carnivores. We developed and deployed a physiological SMART (species movement, acceleration, and radio tracking) collar that used accelerometry to co...

We used carbon and nitrogen isotopes measured in hair to compare the diets of 2 sympatric species of wild mice, Peromyscus californicus and P. boylii, in Santa Cruz County, California. The ability of these 2 Peromyscus species to coexist is thought to be the result of spatial partitioning through canopy plant associations as well as possible dietar...

The spatial scale at which organisms respond to human activity can affect both ecological function and conservation planning. Yet little is known regarding the spatial scale at which distinct behaviors related to reproduction and survival are impacted by human interference. Here we provide a novel approach to estimating the spatial scale at which a...

The effect of different housing density scales, h , on the housing density coefficient for each behavior. (DOCX)

Influence of covariate combinations on the optimal housing density scale, h , for each behavior. (DOCX)

To ensure that our statistical procedure for choosing the behaviorally specific scales at which pumas are responding to housing density was not an artifact of different covariates in the best fit model for each behavior, we computed AIC scores across scales of housing density ranging from 50–1000 meters for each behavior, using the covariates from...

In this article we discuss the utility of crowdfunding from the perspective of individual scientists or laboratory groups looking to fund research. We address some of the main factors determining the success of crowdfunding campaigns, and compare this approach with the use of traditional funding sources.

Background/Question/Methods The rapid adoption of social media globally presents ecologists with unprecedented opportunities to both educate and involve the public in environmental science. In recognition of the expanding influence of the internet, we are developing an exciting and innovative citizen science game on Facebook (https://apps.faceboo...

Context The loss of large predators has been linked with the rise of smaller predators globally, with negative impacts on prey species (mesopredator release). Recent studies suggest that the dingo, Australia’s top terrestrial predator, inhibits predation on native mammals by the invasive red fox, and therefore reduces mammal extinctions. Feral cats...

Islands are important for the conservation of biodiversity because they house 20% of terrestrial plant and vertebrate species, have suffered 64% of IUCN-listed extinctions and have 45% of IUCN-listed critically endangered species. Yet islands make up only about five percent of the earth’s surface. The main cause of extinction and endangerment to bi...

Invasive mammals are the greatest threat to island biodiversity and invasive rodents are likely responsible for the greatest number of extinctions and ecosystem changes. Techniques for eradicating rodents from islands were developed over 2 decades ago. Since that time there has been a significant development and application of this conservation too...

The medial bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTm) influences both social approach and social aversion, suggesting that this structure may play an important role in generating motivational and behavioral differences between gregarious and asocial species. However, no specific neurons have been identified within the BSTm that influence species-ty...

Neuroendocrine factors that produce species differences in aggregation behavior (“sociality”) are largely unknown, although relevant studies should yield important insights into mechanisms of affiliation and social evolution. We here focused on five species in the avian family Estrildidae that differ selectively in their species-typical group sizes...