TY - GEN A1 - Ferrante, Marco A1 - Möller, Daniella A1 - Möller, Gabriella A1 - Menares, Esteban A1 - Lubin, Yael A1 - Segoli, Michal T1 - Invertebrate and vertebrate predation rates in a hyperarid ecosystem following an oil spill T2 - Ecology and Evolution N2 - Extreme temperatures and scarce precipitation in deserts have led to abiotic factors often being regarded as more important than biotic ones in shaping desert communities. The presumed low biological activity of deserts is also one reason why deserts are often overlooked by conservation programs. We provide the first quantification of predation intensity from a desert ecosystem using artificial sentinel prey emulating caterpillars, a standardized monitoring tool to quantify relative predation pressure by many invertebrate and vertebrate predators. The study was conducted in a protected natural area affected by oil spills in 1975 and 2014; hence, we assessed the potential effects of oil pollution on predation rates. We found that predation was mostly due to invertebrate rather than vertebrate predators, fluctuated throughout the year, was higher at the ground level than in the tree canopy, and was not negatively affected by the oil spills. The mean predation rate per day (12.9%) was within the range found in other ecosystems, suggesting that biotic interactions in deserts ought not to be neglected and that ecologists should adopt standardized tools to track ecological functions and allow for comparisons among ecosystems. KW - acacia KW - biotic interactions KW - ecological functions KW - Evrona Nature Reserve KW - oil pollution Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7978 SN - 2045-7758 VL - 11 IS - 17 SP - 12153 EP - 12160 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Menares, Esteban T1 - Tara Ivanochko: Think, do, and communicate environmental science. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2021 JF - Community ecology N2 - Planning a new study or research program can be full of unexpected challenges. Much can be learned along the way, but a well-planned project can avoid painful delays and hiccups and increase workflow efficiency and the result of our effort. The goal of Think, Do, and Communicate Environmental Science is to help make a research experience smoother. The book is structured into three interconnected sections. The first section explains how to think like a scientist. How to systematically and critically read scientific papers, going beyond just looking for facts, and how to choose the right type of graph to convey results. It also explains, in general, the process of collecting data, how monitoring programs work, and the differences between direct and indirect measurements. In the second section, Ivanochko illustrates how to do science. By using real examples and comparing different research questions, the reader learns what good research questions are, how to approach answering those questions, and how to search for peer-reviewed literature and data. Afterward, she shows how to select data with the best resolution and how to understand, visualize, and fill gaps in a dataset. She puts great emphasis on working with environmental time-series data, particularly on how to identify and isolate different signals in composite data, differentiating signal from noise, and using several descriptive statistical and simple modeling methods to characterize your data. The third section finishes with a guide on how to communicate scientific work in the form of a research proposal or an abstract. Overall, the book is easy to read, also thanks to the content boxes with detailed practical information. Using traditional, pay-for software is fine, but the author could have incorporated other free and open-source software. As a doctoral student, I am glad to have come across such a book. It is a valuable resource and a practical guide that can be used by pre-graduate students that need to write a thesis and by early/mid-stage graduate students that are becoming researchers. Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s42974-022-00094-7 SN - 1588-2756 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Agunbiade, Michael Bode A1 - Menares, Esteban A1 - Fotang, Chefor A1 - Jallow, Mawdo A1 - Camara, Fagimba A1 - Enoguanbhor, Evidence Chinedu A1 - Shittu, Wakil Adebola A1 - Ogada, Darcy A1 - Birkhofer, Klaus T1 - Amount of organic waste affects the composition and interactions of vertebrate scavengers at Gambian slaughterhouses T2 - African journal of ecology N2 - Slaughterhouses in The Gambia serve as critical feeding sites for diverse vertebrate scavenger communities, including hooded vultures, domestic dogs, pigs and avian species such as pied crows, black kites and cattle egrets. This study investigated how the quantity and type of organic waste influence the composition and competitive interactions of scavengers across five slaughterhouses. Using multivariate statistical models, we found that waste quantity was the strongest predictor of scavenger community composition, explaining 32.7% of the variation, with hooded vultures being most abundant at high‐waste sites. Specific waste types influenced feeding behaviour, suggesting niche differentiation among species; for instance, cattle egrets focused on blood and insects, while vultures dominated meat‐based resources. Competitive interactions varied by species, with domestic dogs frequently displacing vultures without physical conflict, whereas hooded vultures dominated interactions against other birds. Activity patterns revealed temporal separation, with vultures and dogs active primarily in the morning, and other avian scavengers more active in the afternoon, reducing interspecific competition. The study highlights the essential role of hooded vultures in waste management and disease mitigation but also emphasises how poor fencing facilitates mammalian access, intensifying competition and potentially threatening obligate scavengers. Improving fencing, controlling feeding, and incorporating targeted waste management strategies are recommended to support scavenger conservation and enhance ecosystem services in urbanised environments. KW - Conservation strategies KW - Hooded vultures KW - Organic waste removal KW - Scavenger communities KW - Waste management Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/aje.70045 SN - 0141-6707 SN - 1365-2028 VL - 63 IS - 4 SP - 1 EP - 13 PB - Wiley CY - Oxford ER - TY - GEN A1 - Menares-Barraza, Esteban A1 - Markova-Nenova, Nonka A1 - Sturm, Astrid A1 - Wätzold, Frank A1 - Birkhofer, Klaus T1 - Cost-effective conservation of multiple goals in grasslands : synergies and trade-offs T2 - Biological conservation N2 - Permanent grasslands in Europe are essential for biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services, but are increasingly threatened by land-use intensification. In the past, grassland conservation has mainly focused on “traditional” conservation goals such as species richness and endangered species, but has rarely considered alternative goals that address trophic interactions, ecosystem services, or ecosystem resilience. Using data from the research platform Biodiversity Exploratories, we adapted an existing optimization procedure to optimize single and joint conservation goals for butterfly and plant communities in grasslands in two regions in Germany. For all grassland sites, we assessed the costs associated with each management measure and the ecological state measured by multiple attributes. For each region, we ran three optimizations: one ecological (budget-unconstrained), and two cost-effectiveness optimizations with a low and a medium budget (budget-constrained). We compared selected grassland management measures, their costs, and ecological effects for different goals between optimizations and between different goals within the same optimization. Cost-effectiveness optimization can achieve high levels of conservation goals with low budgets, reaching up to 80% of the maximum achievable in the ecological optimizations while requiring only 30% of the budget. Trade-offs with other goals were inevitable but were minimized by jointly optimizing over multiple goals. Optimization results and trade-offs varied between regions, highlighting the need to design and implement region-specific management measures. Our study shows that promoting multiple conservation goals simultaneously across taxonomic boundaries is an ecologically and economically viable option. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2025.111401 SN - 0006-3207 VL - 311 SP - 1 EP - 13 PB - Elsevier BV CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Menares, Esteban A1 - Saíz, Hugo A1 - Schenk, Noëlle V. A1 - Garcia de la Riva, Enrique A1 - Krauss, Jochen A1 - Birkhofer, Klaus T1 - Co-occurrence patterns do not predict mutualistic interactions between plant and butterfly species T2 - Ecology and Evolution N2 - Biotic interactions are crucial for determining the structure and dynamics of communities; however, direct measurement of these interactions can be challenging in terms of time and resources, especially when numerous species are involved. Inferring species interactions from species co-occurrence patterns is increasingly being used; however, recent studies have highlighted some limitations. To our knowledge, no attempt has been made to test the accuracy of the existing methods for detecting mutualistic interactions in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, we compiled two literature-based, long-term datasets of interactions between butterflies and herbaceous plant species in two regions of Germany and compared them with observational abundance and presence/absence data collected within a year in the same regions. We tested how well the species associations generated by three different co-occurrence analysis methods matched those of empirically measured mutualistic associations using sensitivity and specificity analyses and compared the strength of associations. We also checked whether flower abundance data (instead of plant abundance data) increased the accuracy of the co-occurrence models and validated our results using empirical flower visitation data. The results revealed that, although all methods exhibited low sensitivity, our implementation of the Relative Interaction Intensity index with pairwise null models performed the best, followed by the probabilistic method and Spearman's rank correlation method. However, empirical data showed a significant number of interactions that were not detected using co-occurrence methods. Incorporating flower abundance data did not improve sensitivity but enhanced specificity in one region. Further analysis demonstrated incongruence between the predicted co-occurrence associations and actual interaction strengths, with many pairs exhibiting high interaction strength but low co-occurrence or vice versa. These findings underscore the complexity of ecological dynamics and highlight the limitations of current co-occurrence methods for accurately capturing species interactions. KW - Biodiversity Exploratories KW - co- occurrence analysis | KW - flower visitations KW - mutualistic interactions KW - resence/absence data KW - species associations Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.70498 SN - 2045-7758 VL - 14 IS - 11 ER -