Our new paper ‘Outcomes of orangutan wild-to-wild translocations reveal conservation and welfare risks’ is out: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0317862
It has been a while since I have been active on my website but I am trying to pick that up a bit more from now on and post more when I publish things or have something else to share. For now I wanted to share a book that came out relatively recently and that I edited with Alex Piel. It is on the topic I am very interested in at the moment: the use of technology in conservation. Ranging from camera traps, to drones, to AI. Contact me if you have any questions.
Here’s the link to the open access paper.
Adrienne Chitayat led this study on chimpanzees in Mahala Mountains which provides a baseline to monitor future trends.
For a project on automated orangutan nest detection on drone images we are looking for a machine learning expert who is interested in conservation to be part of our drone and machine learning team at Liverpool John Moores University. Please see the details here.
Robert Muscarella and Thaise Emilio led a large group of researchers to study the relative abundance of tree palms at a global scale. The paper was published in Global Ecology and Abundance.
Abstract
Palms are an iconic, diverse and often abundant component of tropical ecosystems that provide many ecosystem services. Being monocots, tree palms are evolutionarily, morphologically and physiologically distinct from other trees, and these differences have important consequences for ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration and storage) and in terms of responses to climate change. We quantified global patterns of tree palm relative abundance to help improve understanding of tropical forests and reduce uncertainty about these ecosystems under climate change.
Tropical and subtropical moist forests.
Current.
Palms (Arecaceae).
We assembled a pantropical dataset of 2,548 forest plots (covering 1,191 ha) and quantified tree palm (i.e., ≥10 cm diameter at breast height) abundance relative to co‐occurring non‐palm trees. We compared the relative abundance of tree palms across biogeographical realms and tested for associations with palaeoclimate stability, current climate, edaphic conditions and metrics of forest structure.
On average, the relative abundance of tree palms was more than five times larger between Neotropical locations and other biogeographical realms. Tree palms were absent in most locations outside the Neotropics but present in >80% of Neotropical locations. The relative abundance of tree palms was more strongly associated with local conditions (e.g., higher mean annual precipitation, lower soil fertility, shallower water table and lower plot mean wood density) than metrics of long‐term climate stability. Life‐form diversity also influenced the patterns; palm assemblages outside the Neotropics comprise many non‐tree (e.g., climbing) palms. Finally, we show that tree palms can influence estimates of above‐ground biomass, but the magnitude and direction of the effect require additional work.
Tree palms are not only quintessentially tropical, but they are also overwhelmingly Neotropical. Future work to understand the contributions of tree palms to biomass estimates and carbon cycling will be particularly crucial in Neotropical forests.
A new correspondence in Nature Ecology and Evolution is out on the Tapanuli orangutan and a hydro-electric project threatening its feature. You can read it here.
Our new paper led by Adrià Descals on detecting smallholder and industrial oil palm using Sentinel data is out: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/21/2590/htm
Kasim Rafiq from LJMU just led an exciting new paper on the use of safari tourist photos to determine carnivore densities in Botswana.
Serge Wich's research and projects 