Saproxylic insects are characterised by their exceptional diversity and high proportion of threatened species. No recent studies have demonstrated the validity of habitat suitability analysis for scientifically based habitat management for these species. We studied the habitat requirements of the endangered longhorn beetle Cerambyx cerdo, a species with a supposed keystone function for the sapr...

Modelling is an effective tool to investigate the ecological state of water resources. In developing countries, the impact of sanitation infrastructures (e.g. wastewater treatment plants) is typically assessed considering the achievement of legal physicochemical quality standards, but ignoring the ecological water quality (EWQ) of the receiving river. In this paper, we developed a generic integ...

Organisms respond to and often simultaneously modify their environment. While these interactions are apparent at the landscape extent, the driving mechanisms often occur at very fine spatial scales. Structure-from-Motion (SfM), a computer vision technique, allows the simultaneous mapping of organisms and fine scale habitat, and will greatly improve our understanding of habitat suitability, ecop...

A Geographic Information System (GIS)-based model, using presence-only data, was used to predict suitability of habitat for large grazing ungulates on a Zimbabwean wildlife reserve. The management-driven study focused on rare and economically valuable herbivores during the resource-limited hot-dry season. The modelling software Biomapper was used to quantify species–habitat association and deri...

Conservation increasingly operates at the landscape scale. For this to be effective, we need landscape scale information on species distributions and the environmental factors that underpin them. Species records are becoming increasingly available via data centres and online portals, but they are often patchy and biased. We demonstrate how such data can yield useful habitat suitability models, ...

The house crow (Corvus splendens), a native of the Indian subcontinent, has shown a rapid expansion of habitat range across Eastern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Europe and Asia. It is an adaptable, gregarious commensal bird which is regarded globally as an important pest species due to its impacts on livestock, agricultural and horticultural crops and indigenous fauna and as a fecal contamina...

The increase in mosquito populations following extreme weather events poses a major threat to humans because of mosquitoes’ ability to carry disease-causing pathogens, particularly in low-lying, poorly drained coastal plains vulnerable to tropical cyclones. In areas with reservoirs of disease, mosquito abundance information can help to identify the areas at higher risk of disease transmission. ...

Setting aside protected areas is a key strategy for tackling biodiversity loss. Reserve effectiveness depends on the extent to which protected areas capture both known occurrences and areas likely to support the species. We assessed the effectiveness of the existing reserve network for Leadbeater's Possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) and other forest-dependent species, and compared the existing ...

We modeled summer and winter habitat suitability of Marco Polo argali in the Pamir Mountains in southeastern Tajikistan using these statistical algorithms: Generalized Linear Model, Random Forest, Boosted Regression Tree, Maxent, and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines. Using sheep occurrence data collected from 2009 to 2015 and a set of selected habitat predictors, we produced summer and ...