Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Group
In the Anthropocene, human pressures on wildlife are reaching unprecedented levels. Animals, plants, and entire ecosystems must bear these pressures across different spatial and temporal scales. We, the members of the Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Group (WEC), study how humans influence wildlife. We examine both direct mechanisms like hunting and fire, and mechanisms that are more indirect and that are part of larger-scale processes, such as climate change.
Featured
Zebras with high-tech sensors detect rhino poachers
Scientists at Wageningen University & Research have developed a high-tech early warning system for poaching. By equipping prey animals such as zebras, wildebeests and antelopes with sensors, suspicious changes in their movements are detected. Algorithms then recognise whether this behaviour may have been caused by poachers. This technology could represent a breakthrough in the fight against poaching.
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In general, we engage in three main research lines:
- We investigate how individual animals perform and adapt in response to both anthropogenic and natural changes, and how this affects functioning, viability, and resilience from populations to ecosystems.
- We study ecological interactions and their cascading effects on processes and patterns at lower and higher levels of biological organisation.
- We identify conservation options, and we test the effectiveness of conservation interventions.
Important themes that cut across our main research lines include:
- animal movement and distributions
- population dynamics
- trophic interactions
- disease and physiology
News
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Functional Ecology Haldane prize for Yingying Wang
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Frank van Langevelde new chair of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation group
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New paper: Why climate change means a rethink of coffee and cocoa production systems.
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INREF grants funding for project “Beyond Anthropocene Pressures: convivialconservation integrating ECOlogy and ECOnomics along the Nile and its wetlands(Eco2)”.
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Sex in a world of fear: rodents produce more offspring when frightened
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Flammable floodplains are weak spot of Amazon forest
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New book: Food Production and Nature Conservation - conflicts and solutions
Selected projects
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SmartParks: using technology for anti-poaching
The Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Group, together with Welgevonden Game Reserve, MTN and IBM, is working on a new anti-poaching system (called... -
Snapshot Hoge Veluwe - Wildlife ecology with camera traps
National Park De Hoge Veluwe and Wageningen University operate a wildlife survey system that is unique in the world. Since 2013, 50-70 camera traps... -
Using technology to benefit bird conservation
Lack of knowledge is one of the factors often limiting effective species conservation. Even in this day and age fundamental knowledge on species... -
The importance of carcasses in nature
How do dead animals (i.e. “carcasses”) decompose in nature? Which nutrients are stored in the bodies of carcasses? How important is the... -
Greening the desert: What can we learn from the Chinese dryland restoration projects?
Latest publications
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Tropical mammal functional diversity increases with productivity but decreases with anthropogenic disturbance
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Timely poacher detection and localization using sentinel animal movement
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SambaR : An R package for fast, easy and reproducible population-genetic analyses of biallelic SNP data sets
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Co-occurrence of high densities of brown hyena and spotted hyena in central Tuli, Botswana
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Diet composition of the golden jackal Canis aureus in south-east Europe – a review
Latest dissertations
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Unravelling networks : Causes and consequences of decreasing connectivity in bird migration pathway
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Tree seedling recruitment dynamics in forest-savanna transitions : Trait responses to vegetation controls mediate differential seedling establishment success of tree functional types
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Some species are more equal than others: phylogenetic relatedness predicts disease pressure
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Genetic variation of wildlife in a human-dominated landscape : Genome-wide SNP analysis of wild boar (Sus scrofa) and red deer (Cervus elaphus) from the European continent
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Consequences of seasonal migration : How goose relocation strategies influence infection prevalence and pathogen dispersal
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Lemurs on a sinking raft? : The ballast of anthropogenic disturbances
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Land use changes in Russia and their impact on migrating geese