Person:
Barrientos Yuste, Rafael

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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
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2021 - 20233
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Start date: 2020 × Subject: 591.5 ×

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Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    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.
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    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.
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    Associated costs of mitigation-driven translocation in small lizards
    (Amphibia-Reptilia, 2021) Barrientos Yuste, Rafael; Megía Palma, Rodrigo
    Mitigation-driven translocations represent an increasingly common management solution to reduce animal mortality and habitat loss caused by human development. Although they currently outnumber other translocation types, there is a lack of scientific approaches to evaluate the outcome of this management tool. We designed an experimental translocation with two groups of translocated males and two of control males of a small (6-14 g) lizard (totaling 120 individuals). Our results suggest that translocated individuals covered longer distances (53 vs. 18 m) from their respective release points in one month (on average), although this distance diminished over time. Displacing longer distances was associated with a body condition impoverishment and an increase in parasitization by ectoparasites. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that finds a positive relationship between covering longer distances and an increase in the number of mites. This was also explained by the initial mite load that lizards had, suggesting that controlling the infestation by mites is energetically demanding for lizards, being traded by locomotor activity. At least for those individuals in poorer body condition, we recommend the implementation of soft release (gradually accustoming individuals to their new environment by previously releasing them into controlled conditions) and deparasitization before accomplishing a mitigationdriven translocation.