Countries committed to implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2011–2020 strategic plan need effective tools to monitor global trends in biodiversity. Remote cameras are a rapidly growing technology that has great potential to transform global monitoring for terrestrial biodiversity and can be an important contributor to the call for measuring Essential Biodiversity Variables. Recent advances in camera technology and methods enable researchers to estimate changes in abundance and distribution for entire communities of animals and to identify global drivers of biodiversity trends. We suggest that interconnected networks of remote cameras will soon monitor biodiversity at a global scale, help answer pressing ecological questions, and guide conservation policy. This global network will require greater collaboration among remote‐camera studies and citizen scientists, including standardized metadata, shared protocols, and security measures to protect records about sensitive species. With modest investment in infrastructure, and continued innovation, synthesis, and collaboration, we envision a global network of remote cameras that not only provides real‐time biodiversity data but also serves to connect people with nature.
Anthropogenic landscape change is a leading driver of biodiversity loss. Preceding dramatic changes such as wildlife population declines and range shifts, more subtle responses may signal impending larger‐scale change. For example, disturbance‐induced shifts to species’ activity patterns may disrupt temporal niche partitioning along the 24‐h time axis, compromising community structure via altered competitive interactions. We investigated the impacts of human landscape disturbance on species’ activity patterns and temporal niche partitioning in the Canadian Rocky Mountain carnivore guild using camera trap images collected across two regions encompassing a wide gradient of human footprint. Applying kernel density estimation techniques, we tested for carnivore species’ activity shifts 1) between a low versus high disturbance landscape, and 2) in relation to site‐scale disturbance. To test our hypothesis that human disturbance impacts species’ temporal niche partitioning, we modelled activity overlap between co‐occurring carnivore species in relation to natural and anthropogenic landscape features, as well as carnivore community composition. Multiple carnivore species altered activity patterns between the low versus high disturbance landscapes and camera sites, but these shifts varied considerably among species. While wolves appeared to increase nocturnal activity in relation to disturbance, coyote activity consistently trended towards cathemerality and marten increased diurnal activity. Detecting effects of landscape disturbance on activity overlap between co‐occurring species was highly sensitive to site‐level detection sample sizes, and our results suggest altered temporal niche partitioning between marten and wolverine in relation to forest cover. This study indicates that mesocarnivores may respond differently and perhaps indirectly to anthropogenic disturbance compared to apex predators. Apex predator shifts to nocturnality may facilitate a ‘behavioural release’ in mesocarnivores. This may be a likely component of mesocarnivore population release, with important management implications for ecological communities on disturbed landscapes.
Contemporary landscapes are subject to a multitude of human‐derived stressors. Effects of such stressors are increasingly realized by population declines and large‐scale extirpation of taxa worldwide. Most notably, cumulative effects of climate and landscape change can limit species’ local adaptation and dispersal capabilities, thereby reducing realized niche space and range extent. Resolving the cumulative effects of multiple stressors on species persistence is a pressing challenge in ecology, especially for declining species. For example, wolverines (Gulo gulo L.) persist on only 40% of their historic North American range. While climate change has been shown to be a mechanism of range retractions, anthropogenic landscape disturbance has been recently implicated. We hypothesized these two interact to effect declines. We surveyed wolverine occurrence using camera trapping and genetic tagging at 104 sites at the wolverine range edge, spanning a 15,000 km2 gradient of climate, topographic, anthropogenic, and biotic variables. We used occupancy and generalized linear models to disentangle the factors explaining wolverine distribution. Persistent spring snow pack—expected to decrease with climate change—was a significant predictor, but so was anthropogenic landscape change. Canid mesocarnivores, which we hypothesize are competitors supported by anthropogenic landscape change, had comparatively weaker effect. Wolverine population declines and range shifts likely result from climate change and landscape change operating in tandem. We contend that similar results are likely for many species and that research that simultaneously examines climate change, landscape change, and the biotic landscape is warranted. Ecology research and species conservation plans that address these interactions are more likely to meet their objectives.
Understanding a species’ behavioral response to rapid environmental change is an ongoing challenge in modern conservation. Anthropogenic landscape modification, or “human footprint,” is well documented as a central cause of large mammal decline and range contractions where the proximal mechanisms of decline are often contentious. Direct mortality is an obvious cause; alternatively, human‐modified landscapes perceived as unsuitable by some species may contribute to shifts in space use through preferential habitat selection. A useful approach to tease these effects apart is to determine whether behaviors potentially associated with risk vary with human footprint. We hypothesized wolverine (Gulo gulo) behaviors vary with different degrees of human footprint. We quantified metrics of behavior, which we assumed to indicate risk perception, from photographic images from a large existing camera‐trapping dataset collected to understand wolverine distribution in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada. We systematically deployed 164 camera sites across three study areas covering approximately 24,000 km2, sampled monthly between December and April (2007–2013). Wolverine behavior varied markedly across the study areas. Variation in behavior decreased with increasing human footprint. Increasing human footprint may constrain potential variation in behavior, through either restricting behavioral plasticity or individual variation in areas of high human impact. We hypothesize that behavioral constraints may indicate an increase in perceived risk in human‐modified landscapes. Although survival is obviously a key contributor to species population decline and range loss, behavior may also make a significant contribution.
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