A study from the Doñana Biological Station has developed a seed dispersal model based on the movement of gulls monitored by GPS telemetry, while feeding in rice fields in Andalusia, South-West Spain.
Modelling shows that gulls can disperse weeds over large distances and between different hábitats, causing the exchange of weed and alien plant species between agricultural crops and natural areas.

The lesser black-backed gull is now the second most abundant wintering waterbird in Andalusian wetlands. Many birds are fitted with GPS loggers on their breeding grounds in northern Europe, and using 42 tagged individuals we studied the connectivity network between different sites and habitats in Andalusia.

Firebreaks are linear strips that dissect the landscape and prevent or mitigate the spread of wildfires in Mediterranean landscapes. However, few studies have addressed their potential effect on insect behavior. The lack of traffic and other human activities in firebreaks makes them suitable for testing the sole effect of physical habitat disruption on animal movement. Main objective was to evaluate whether the pattern of movement by a butterfly species was affected by this landscape element.

Population expansions of successful species have gained importance as a major conservation and management concern. The success of these ‘winners’ is widely attributed to their high adaptability and behavioural plasticity, which allow them to efficiently use opportunities provided by human-modified habitats. However, the individual components within populations is critical for a better understanding of the main ecological mechanisms related to the success of winning species. Here, the spatial...

Protected areas are one of the most common strategies for wildlife conservation worldwide. However, their effectiveness is rarely evaluated. In Europe, after the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a restrictive sanitary regulation prohibited the abandonment of dead livestock in extensive farming in the field, which led to negative consequences for scavengers. As an attempt to mitigate this negative impact, a new regulation was approved to allow farmers to leave extensive livestock...