Person:
Barrientos Yuste, Rafael

First Name

Rafael

Last Name

Barrientos Yuste

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/81128

Affiliation

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Faculty / Institute

Ciencias Biológicas

Department

Biodiversidad, Ecología y Evolución

Identifiers

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 14

The lost road: do transportation networks imperil wildlife population persistence?
(Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation, 2021) Barrientos Yuste, Rafael; Ascensão, Fernando; D'Amico, Marcello; Grilo, Clara; Pereira, Henrique M.
The global road network is rapidly growing associated with human economic development. This growth also entails a high toll for biodiversity, with several well-documented negative impacts on different species. However, there is still a great lack of knowledge about the effects of roads on the persistence of wildlife populations. Here, we aimed to summarize our current knowledge on this topic, based on systematic reviews. We found that only a small proportion of studies (8%) focused on the effects of roads on population persistence. Most of these studies were about large mammals and were performed in high-income countries. Furthermore, these works studied only 2% of those species identified by the IUCN Red List as threatened by roads. Overall, our results show that we are far from understanding how roads affect the long-term viability of wildlife populations inhabiting road-effect zones. Addressing this challenge will require modifying our conceptual perspective, from short-term to long-term studies, from single road sections to focusing the landscape scale, and strive to obtain empirical data to support sound analyses to assess how road impacts affect the survival of wildlife populations, namely with information required to perform approaches such as population viability analyses. We highlight some key studies from our reviews that have addressed this global conservation concern with population-oriented approaches.
Wildlife collisions put a dent in road safety
(Science, 2021) Ascensão, Fernando; Barrientos Yuste, Rafael
Nearby night lighting, rather than sky glow, is associated with habitat selection by a top predator in human-dominated landscapes
(Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2023) Barrientos Yuste, Rafael; Vickers, Winston; Longcore, Travis; Abelson, Eric S.; Dellinger, Justin; Waetjen, David P.; Fandos Guzmán, Guillermo; Shilling, Fraser M.
Artificial light at night (ALAN) is increasing in extent and intensity across the globe. It has been shown to interfere with animal sensory systems, orientation and distribution, with the potential to cause significant ecological impacts. We analysed the locations of 102 mountain lions (Puma concolor) in a light-polluted region in California. We modelled their distribution relative to environmental and human-disturbance variables, including upward radiance (nearby lights), zenith brightness (sky glow) and natural illumination from moonlight. We found that mountain lion probability of presence was highly related to upward radiance, that is, related to lights within approximately 500 m. Despite a general pattern of avoidance of locations with high upward radiance, there were large differences in degree of avoidance among individuals. The amount of light from artificial sky glow was not influential when included together with upward radiance in the models, and illumination from moonlight was not influential at all. Our results suggest that changes in visibility associated with lunar cycles and sky glow are less important for mountain lions in their selection of light landscapes than avoiding potential interactions with humans represented by the presence of nearby lights on the ground.
Greenfinches nesting in algerian orchards delayed their breeding and produced less fledglings in the driest of two years
(Journal of Arid Environments, 2020) Bensouilah, Taqiyeddine; Barrientos Yuste, Rafael
The matching of breeding with the food peak is one of the most important factors affecting the reproductive success in birds. Weather is known to affect the timing of breeding of many bird species. In arid lands, rainfall is usually the factor that triggers the onset of reproduction, since it commonly anticipates the peak of food through its influence on the vegetation development. In this study we used a granivorous finch (European greenfinch Chloris chloris) as a model to assess the influence of rainfall and temperature on the onset and performance of breeding. The study was carried out in fruit orchards in Guelma state (Northeastern Algeria) in 2013 and 2014. The comparison of breeding parameters between the two years showed that greenfinches delayed their breeding in the year that the rains fell later and were less abundant, produced smaller broods and had lower fledgling rate. Clutch size decreased with the season progress only this year. We discuss our results in the context of the influence of weather on bird reproduction in arid lands, while providing novel data on a farmland species from a region with little ornithological information.
Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences
(Nature Communications, 2020) Christie, Alec P.; Abecasis, David; Adjeroud, Mehdi; Alonso, Juan C.; Amano, Tatsuya; Anton, Álvaro; Baldigo, Barry P.; Barrientos Yuste, Rafael; Bicknell, Jack E.; Buhl, Deborah A.; Cebrian, Just; Ceia, Ricardo S.; Cibils-Martina, Ricardo; Clarke, Sarah; Claudet, Joachim; Craig, Michael D.; Davoult, Dominique; De Backer, Annelies; Donovan, Mary K.; Eddy, Tyler D.; França, Filipe M.; Gardner, Jonathan P. A.; Harris, Bradley P.; Huusko, Ari; Jones, Ian L.; Kelaher, Brendan P.; Kotiaho, Janne S.; López-Baucells, Adrià; Major, Heather L.; Mäki-Petäys, Aki; Martín, Beatriz; Martín De La Calle, Carlos Alfonso; Martin, Philip A.; Mateos-Molina, Daniel; McConnaughey, Robert A.; Meyer, Christoph F. J.; Mills, Kade; Montefalcone, Monica; Noreika, Norbertas; Palacín, Carlos; Pande, Anjali; Pitcher, C. Roland; Ponce, Carlos; Rinella, Matt; Rocha, Ricardo; Ruiz-Delgado, María C.; Schmitter-Soto, Juan J.; Shaffer, Jill A.; Sharma, Shailesh; Sher, Anna A.; Stagnol, Doriane; Stanley, Thomas R.; Stokesbury, Kevin D. E.; Torres, Aurora; Tully, Oliver; Vehanen, Teppo; Watts, Corinne; Zhao, Quingyuan; Sutherland, William J.
Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study designs and the magnitude of bias in their estimates. Randomised designs and controlled observational designs with pre-intervention sampling were used by just 23% of intervention studies in biodiversity conservation, and 36% of intervention studies in social science. We demonstrate, through pairwise within-study comparisons across 49 environmental datasets, that these types of designs usually give less biased estimates than simpler observational designs. We propose a model-based approach to combine study estimates that may suffer from different levels of study design bias, discuss the implications for evidence synthesis, and how to facilitate the use of more credible study designs.
Interspecific interactions disrupted by roads
(Biological Reviews, 2024) Quiles Tundidor, Pablo; Barrientos Yuste, Rafael; Welch, John
Roads have pervasive impacts on wildlife, including habitat loss and fragmentation, road mortality, habitat pollution and increased human use of habitats surrounding them. However, the effects of roads on interspecific interactions are less understood. Here we provide a synthesis of the existing literature on how species interactions may be disrupted by roads, identify knowledge gaps, and suggest avenues for future research and conservation management. We conducted a systematic search using the Web of Science database for each species interaction (predation, competition, mutualism, parasitism, commensalism and amensalism). These searches yielded 2144 articles, of which 195 were relevant to our topic. Most of these studies focused on predation (50%) or competition (24%), and less frequently on mutualism (17%) or, parasitism (9%). We found no studies on commensalism or amensalism. Studies were biased towards mammals from high‐income countries, with most conducted in the USA (34%) or Canada (18%). Our literature review identified several patterns. First, roads disrupt predator–prey relationships, usually with negative impacts on prey populations. Second, new disturbed habitats created in road corridors often benefit more competitive species, such as invasive species, although some native or endangered species can also thrive there. Third, roads degrade mutualistic interactions like seed dispersal and pollination. Fourth, roads can increase parasitism rates, although the intensity of the alteration is species specific. To reduce the negative impacts of roads on interspecific interactions, we suggest the following management actions: ( i ) verges should be as wide and heterogenous as possible, as this increases microhabitat diversity, thus enhancing ecosystem services like pollination and seed dispersal; ( ii ) combining different mowing regimes can increase the complexity of the habitat corridor, enabling it to act as a habitat for more species; ( iii ) the use of de‐icing salts should be gradually reduced and replaced with less harmful products or maintenance practices; ( iv ) wildlife passes should be implemented in groups to reduce animal concentrations inside them; ( v ) periodic removal of carcasses from the road to reduce the use of this resource by wildlife; and ( vi ) implementation of traffic‐calming schemes could enhance interspecific interactions like pollination and avoid disruption of predator–prey relationships.
Differential recovery ability from infections by two blood parasite genera in males of a Mediterranean lacertid lizard after an experimental translocation
(Journal of Experimental Zoology Part A, 2023) Megía Palma, Rodrigo; Redondo, Lara; Blázquez Castro, Sara; Barrientos Yuste, Rafael
Different blood parasites can co‐infect natural populations of lizards. However, our knowledge of the host's ability to recover from them (i.e., significantly reduce parasitemia levels) is scarce. This has interest from an ecological immunology perspective. Herein, we investigate the host recovery ability in males of the lizard Psammodromus algirus infected by parasite genera Schellackia and Karyolysus. The role of lizard hosts is dissimilar in the life cycle of these two parasites, and thus different immune control of the infections is expected by the vertebrate host. As Schellackia performs both sexual and asexual reproduction cycles in lizards, we expect a better immune control by its vertebrate hosts. On the contrary, Karyolysus performs sexual reproductive cycles in vectors, hence we expect lower immune control by the lizards. We carried out a reciprocal translocation experiment during the lizards’ mating season to evaluate both parasitemia and leukocyte profiles in male lizards, being one of the sampling plots close to a road with moderate traffic. These circumstances provide a combination of extrinsic (environmental stress) and intrinsic factors (reproductive vs. immune trade‐offs) that may influence host's recovery ability. We recaptured 33% of the lizards, with a similar proportion in control and translocated groups. Karyolysus infected 92.3% and Schellackia 38.5% of these lizards. Hosts demonstrated ability to significantly reduce parasitemia of Schellackia but not of Karyolysus. This suggests, in line with our predictions, a differential immune relationship of lizards with these parasites, at time that supports that parasites with different phylogenetic origins should be analyzed separately in investigations of their effects on hosts. Furthermore, lizards close to the road underwent a stronger upregulation of lymphocytes and monocytes when translocated far from the road, suggesting a putative greater exposure to pathogens in the latter area.
Prioritizing road-kill mitigation areas: A spatially explicit national-scale model for an elusive carnivore
(Diversity and Distributions, 2020) Russo, Luca F.; Barrientos Yuste, Rafael; Fabrizio, Mauro; Di Febbraro, Mirko; Loy, Anna
Aim: Roads impact wildlife in different ways, among which road mortality has been the most studied. Budgets in conservation biology are usually small, and macroecological approaches have been employed in recent years as the first steps towards guiding management. Carnivores are particularly vulnerable to mortality on roads due to their elevated ecological needs (low population density, often low fecundity and relatively large home ranges). Our aim was to develop a ranking methodology to prioritize specific areas for road-kill mitigation. Location: Continental Italy. Methods: We studied 271 occurrences of live polecats (Mustela putorius) and 212 polecat road-kill sites. We used the former to generate a species distribution model and the latter to identify the variables that determined the road-kill risk. Habitat suitability was derived from a spatial distribution model that combined the polecat occurrence data with a set of environmental variables. Prey availability was derived from the combination of suitability maps of 26 prey species. We used generalized linear modelling to identify the set of variables that best explained the occurrence of road-kills. The variables included in the best performing model were combined to produce the road risk map and to identify the areas with the highest densities of road sections with highest risk. Results: Road-kills were positively associated with the road sections with higher broad-leaved forest coverage. The number of casualties was found to be higher than expected on the national and provincial roads and lower than expected on the local roads. Main conclusions: This approach allowed us to identify the 10 × 10 km cells where mitigation actions to prevent road-kills should be prioritized. As mitigation actions (wildlife passage construction, fencing) are expensive, measures should be prioritized on the specific high-risk road sections inside these selected cells, avoiding generalized mitigation plans.
Fecal glucocorticoid metabolites and ectoparasites as biomarkers of heat stress close to roads in a Mediterranean lizard
(Science of the Total Environment, 2021) Megía Palma, Rodrigo Manuel; Barja, I.; Barrientos Yuste, Rafael
Differences between air and ground temperatures are expected to narrow with the advance of the season in temperate regions (aka seasonal restriction in the availability of thermal microhabitats), which may activate behavioral and physiological responses of ectotherm species adapted to temperate climates. However, according to cost-benefit models of ectotherm thermoregulation, we hypothesize that these responses may also carry some costs. We quantified seasonal shifts in thermoregulatory precision, concentration of fecal glucocorticoid metabolites, and load of ectoparasites in a Mediterranean lizard, Psammodromus algirus. We also tested whether the proximity to a road, a putative source of chronic stress, can facilitate the glucocorticoid-mediated response of lizards to heat stress. As expected, differences between body and environmental temperatures narrowed during the reproductive season and lizards responded by increasing their thermoregulatory precision and the secretion of glucocorticoids, as indicated by metabolites in feces. Interestingly, lizards tended to have higher glucocorticoid concentration when captured far from the road. This might reflect either a putative impairment of the glucocorticoid-mediated response of the lizards to heat stress close to the road or the plastic capability of P. algirus to acclimate to sources of moderate chronic stress. In the latter direction, the increase of both glucocorticoid metabolites and thermoregulatory precision supported that this Mediterranean species responds to environmental thermal restrictions with adaptive behavioral and physiological mechanisms. However, this was also associated with an increase in its susceptibility to ectoparasites, which represents an added cost to the current cost-benefit models of ectotherm thermoregulation.
Longitudinal effects of habitat quality, body condition, and parasites on colour patches of a multiornamented lizard
(Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2022) Megía Palma, Rodrigo; Merino, Santiago; Barrientos Yuste, Rafael
Ontogeny is expected to be a determinant factor affecting production of colour patches in lizards, while immune challenges or sudden weight loss may impair the maintenance of pigment-based coloration within a breeding season. We translocated males of the lizard Psammodromus algirus between two sampling plots that differed in distance to a road, vegetation structure, and predator abundance. We analysed variation in spectral reflectance of their colour patches the same and the following year. The change in the reflectance of the lizard colour patches within the first breeding season was explained by the interaction between plot and treatment, but not body condition. The maintenance of the breeding coloration was impaired only in those males translocated close to the road, probably reflecting that it is a poor-quality habitat for P. algirus. The following year, lizards that produced a more elaborate coloration were those that increased their body condition and controlled some parasitic infections, although suffered an increase of others. This study shows that colour patch production is plastic in P. algirus. Lizards increasing parasites or losing weight reduced pigmentation, although habitat quality can cushion these negative effects on pigmentation. However, not all parasites constrain the investment in coloration. In fact, some increased in those lizards that allocated more pigments to colour patches. In conclusion, longitudinal studies following experimental manipulation can contribute to understand pigment allocation rules in lizards.