Cooperatively breeding superb fairy-wrens show no facultative manipulation of offspring sex ratio despite plausible benefits

We report a long-term study of offspring sex ratios in the cooperatively breeding superb fairy-wren Malurus cyaneus. Detailed study of this species had revealed a suite of potentially strong selection pressures on the sex ratio. First, females gain substantial fitness benefits from the presence of helpers; so females without male helpers would benefit from any strategy that increased the probability of recruiting help, such as overproduction of sons (local resource enhancement hypothesis), but large numbers of helper males compete among themselves, favouring the production of daughters (local resource competition). Second, daughters fledged early in the season have far greater chances of recruitment to the breeding population than late-fledged daughters, so mothers would benefit from production of daughters early in the breeding season (early bird hypothesis). Third, extra-group mate choice imposes strong sexual selection on males, suggesting that females mating with attractive sires could benefit from investing in sons (sexual selection hypothesis). However, the predictions from these and other sex ratio hypotheses were rejected. The only convincing evidence for manipulation of the sex ratio was a slight bias towards sons (11 sons to 10 daughters) that occurred regardless of context. This result does not support current theory.     

Participatory indicator development: what can ecologists and local communities learn from each other?

Given the growing popularity of indicators among policy-makers to measure progress toward conservation and sustainability goals, there is an urgent need to develop indicators that can be used accurately by both specialists and nonspecialists, drawing from the knowledge possessed by each group. This paper uses a case study from the Kalahari, Botswana to show how participatory and ecological methods can be combined to develop robust indicators that are accessible to a range of users to monitor and enhance the sustainability of land management. First, potential environmental sustainability indicators were elicited from pastoralists in three study sites. This knowledge was then evaluated by pastoralists, before being tested empirically using ecological and soil-based techniques. Despite the wealth of local knowledge about indicators, this knowledge was thinly spread. The knowledge was more holistic than published indicator lists for monitoring rangelands, encompassing vegetation, soil, livestock, wild animal, and socioeconomic indicators. Pastoralist preferences for vegetation and livestock indicators match recent shifts in ecological theory suggesting that livestock populations reach equilibrium with key forage resources in semiarid environments. Although most indicators suggested by pastoralists were validated through empirical work (e.g., decreased grass cover and soil organic matter content, and increased abundance of Acacia mellifera and thatching grass), they were not always sufficiently accurate or reliable for objective degradation assessment, showing that local knowledge cannot be accepted unquestioningly. We suggest that, by combining participatory and ecological approaches, it is possible to derive more accurate and relevant indicators than either approach could achieve alone.     

Displaced honey bees perform optimal scale-free search flights

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are regularly faced with the task of navigating back to their hives from remote food sources. They have evolved several methods to do this, including compass-directed "vector" flights and the use of landmarks. If these hive-centered mechanisms are disrupted, bees revert to searching for the hive, but the nature and efficiency of their searching strategy have hitherto been unknown. We used harmonic radar to record the flight paths of honey bees that were searching for their hives. Our subsequent analysis of these paths revealed that they can be represented by a series of straight line segments that have a scale-free, Lévy distribution with an inverse-square-law tail. We show that these results, combined with the "no preferred direction" characteristic of the segments, demonstrate that the bees were flying an optimal search pattern. Lévy movements have already been identified in a number of other animals. Our results are the best reported example where the movements are mostly attributable to the adoption of an optimal, scale-free searching strategy.     

The effects of landscape structure on space competition and alternative stable states

Many species that compete for space live on heterogeneous landscapes and interact at local scales. The quality, amount, and structure of landscapes may have considerable impact on the ability of species to compete or coexist, yet basic models of space competition do not include that level of detail. We model space competition between two species with positive feedback through recruitment facilitation, which creates the potential for alternative stable states to occur. We compare the predictions of a spatially implicit model with a simulation model that includes explicit space and landscape structure. We create structured landscapes in which we specify the amount of habitat and degree of fragmentation and ask how landscape structure, dispersal strategy, and scale affect the presence of alternative stable states, or bistability. We find that structured landscapes can reduce the range of parameter values that lead to bistability in our model, but they do not eliminate bistability. The type of landscape and the dispersal distance for each species also influence the amount of environmental change needed for abrupt community shifts to occur. Coexistence of the two competitors is possible under certain conditions when connectivity is low. Consequently, landscape structure may lead to considerable disparity between the predictions of simple models and actual dynamics on complex landscapes during environmental change.     

Parents influence asymmetric sibling competition: experimental evidence with partially dependent young

Asymmetric sibling competition, which occurs when some siblings hatch as stronger competitors than others, is an important component of avian reproductive strategies. Here, we report two experiments on the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides investigating how parents might influence the outcome of asymmetric sibling competition. In this species, as in altricial birds, different-aged offspring compete for resources provided by the parents. However, unlike altricial birds, offspring depend only partially on their parents for resources, and parents adjust the brood size directly through filial cannibalism. In the first experiment, we compared the growth and survivorship of different-aged offspring when parents could and could not influence asymmetric sibling competition. In the second experiment, we recorded behavioral interactions between different-aged offspring and parents. We found that senior offspring (early-hatched) grew faster than juniors (late-hatched) when parents were present and could influence the outcome of sibling competition, whereas seniors and juniors grew at similar rates when parents were removed. Thus, seniors benefited more than did juniors when the offspring could obtain resources by begging from the female parent. There was no difference in the survivorship of seniors and juniors. We also found that seniors and juniors spent a similar amount of time feeding from female parents, but juniors spent more time begging and were less effective at begging than seniors. Interestingly, juniors spent more time begging only as long as seniors also begged, suggesting that juniors adjusted their begging effort in response to direct competition against seniors for resources provided by parents. Our study provides novel insights into the ecological significance of asymmetric sibling competition by showing that asymmetric sibling competition took place when parents were present and offspring could obtain resources by begging. In contrast, we found no evidence of asymmetric sibling competition when parents were absent and offspring obtained resources solely by self-feeding.     

Biodiversity consequences of alternative future land use scenarios in Greater Yellowstone.

Land use is rapidly expanding in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, primarily from growth in the number of rural homes. There is a need to project possible future land use and assess impacts on nature reserves as a guide to future management. We assessed the potential biodiversity impacts of alternative future land use scenarios in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. An existing regression-based simulation model was used to project three alternative scenarios of future rural home development. The spatial patterns of forecasted development were then compared to several biodiversity response variables that included cover types, species habitats, and biodiversity indices. We identified the four biodiversity responses most at risk of exurban development, designed growth management policies to protect these areas, and tested their effectiveness in two alternative future scenarios. We found that the measured biodiversity responses, including riparian habitat, elk winter range, migration corridors, and eight other land cover, habitat, and biodiversity indices, are likely to undergo substantial conversion (between 5% and 40%) to exurban development by 2020. Future habitat conversion to exurban development outside the region's nature reserves is likely to impact wildlife populations within the reserves. Existing growth management policies will provide minimal protection to biodiversity in this region. We identified specific growth management policies, including incentives to cluster future growth near towns, that can protect "at risk" habitat types without limiting overall growth in housing.     

Risk Tradeoffs in Adaptive Ecosystem Management: The Case of the U.S. Forest Service

Natural resource planning processes on public lands in the United States are driven in large part by the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which dictates general processes for analyzing and disclosing the likely impacts of proposed actions. The outcomes of these processes are the result of multiple factors, many related to the manifold smaller incremental decisions made by agency personnel directing the processes. Through interviews with decision makers, team leaders, and team members on five NEPA processes within the U.S. Forest Service, this study examines those incremental decisions. Risk, in particular external relationship risk, emerged as a dominant lens through which agency personnel weigh and make process-related decisions. We discuss the tradeoffs associated with agency actors’ emphasis on this form of risk and their potential implications for adaptive ecosystem management and organizational performance.