Advancing road ecology in Africa with robust analyses and cautious inferences: a response to Jackson <i>et al</i>. (2017)

González‐Suárez, Manuela; D’Amico, Marcello; Mulero‐Pázmány, Margarita

doi:10.1111/jzo.12484

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(34 reference statements)

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“…1). We selected this system because African ungulates are relatively easy to detect from the road (Mulero-Pázmány et al, 2016;González-Suárez et al, 2017), and are important components of African ecosystems due to their roles as prey, ecosystem engineers and, in some cases, keystone species (e.g., Waldram et al, 2008;Pringle et al, 2007;Coverdale et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Observations were gathered from a 4x4 vehicle driving at <30 km/h. For each transect, two observers searched for individuals of any ungulate species located <320 m from each side of the road (estimated range of detection;Mulero-Pázmány et al, 2016;González-Suárez et al, 2017), whilst a third observer noted the number of vehicles circulating in the opposite direction. The number of incoming vehicles over the duration of the transect sampling was used to estimate traffic intensity.…”

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Species’ traits as predictors of avoidance towards roads and traffic

Duffett

D’Amico

Mulero‐Pázmány

et al. 2020

Ecological Indicators

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Road-networks and their associated motorized traffic pose a threat to biodiversity and ecosystems, with different groups of species exhibiting different avoidance responses. The often species-specific nature of these behavioural responses to roads and traffic suggest that morphological, ecological, life-history and behavioural traits could be useful in explaining and predicting these responses. Trait-based predictive models have been used to assess extinction risk, land use impacts, and road mortality. Here we present the first, to our knowledge, test of their potential to address animal road avoidance. We studied the fleeing responses and spatial distribution in relation to roads of diverse ungulate species across three South African protected areas. Our results show that smaller, solitary species with nongrazing food habits are more likely to flee in response to presence of a vehicle. None of the tested traits showed a clear relationship based on biological hypotheses with initial distance to roads and tolerance distance to vehicles (used to describe behavioural avoidance towards roads and vehicles, respectively). However, we found significant effects that supported proposed methodological hypotheses. Our results show the potential to use traits as indicators of vehicle and traffic avoidance. Obtaining behavioural avoidance data in the field for many species and areas can be time consuming, but here we show it may be possible to use 2 available trait data to generally predict species responses. This could be useful for initial species risk assessments.

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