r/EcologicalSociety_USA

Animals inhabiting the Brazilian Pantanal, one of the world’s largest tropical wetland regions, often modify their behavior when encountering latrines created by giant otters, suggests a new study.

The shared otter latrines serve as pungent territorial boundary markers, the otter version of posting “keep out” signs. To study their effects, researchers deployed motion-activated camera traps across flooded grasslands and forests, tracking wildlife activity before and after new latrines formed and comparing those sites to nearby control areas.

The results showed that the latrines act as both attractants and repellants to other animals. Although slightly more species were recorded after latrine establishment, visits were dominated by a few frequent users. Scavenging birds like curassows, caracaras and vultures were especially common, attracted by abundant insects drawn to the otter waste and by undigested fish remains in otter feces.

Once on the threshold of extinction, giant otters are now on the road to recovery, and their expanding populations may add an odiferous new twist to species interactions in Pantanal ecosystems.

Read the open access article in Ecosphere: Vertebrate community composition and activity at giant otter latrines in the northern Pantanal

Image credit: C.E. Eriksson

Can bird strikes by airplanes be minimized, if not avoided altogether? That question drives a new study in Ecological Applications that adapts years of research on animals’ antipredator behavior to aviation safety.

Building on models originally developed to explain how prey escape approaching predators, and later cars, the researchers created a two-phase framework to predict bird-aircraft collisions. First, the model asks whether a bird has enough time to escape an airplane’s path. If not, a second phase estimates collision risk based on the size and shape of the plane and the bird’s position within the flight trajectory.

Applied to encounters between Canada geese and a Boeing-737, the model predicts that when a goose is within an aircraft’s course, the chances of a collision are nearly 50/50, with highest risk when the goose is in the very center of the plane’s trajectory. The model also shows how antipredator responses can be exploited to reduce that risk. Onboard signal lights reduce the odds of a collision, with blue lights (tuned to the Canada goose visual system) cutting risk by 32%.

By translating predator-prey theory into an aviation context, the study offers a flexible framework for designing bird-strike mitigation strategies across aircraft types and bird species.

Image credit: Alex Galt, USFWS | Public Domain

Exploring Careers in Ecology

Tuesday, May 12, 4:00 PM ET

Our host is going in the hot seat! Aaron says:

Enough people have asked me, "why don't you talk about your career?" Fair question. Honestly, I started this webinar to learn about others. Also, I didn't want to talk about my own career. It has had its ups and downs (like everyone else), and some of it is a bit difficult for me to discuss. But...hell. Let's do it.

For the first time since starting this webinar, I'll talk about my own career. I'll talk about moving through six majors as an undergraduate, internships I hated, graduate school that made me fall in love with science, fallouts, academic burnout, rekindling passion for ecology, discovering parts of the world and society that I never knew existed, and candid advice on how self-care in the work environment.

This time around, I WILL accept questions throughout the webinar. I'm highly distractable...so I'll probably just stop everything and answer whatever questions come my way.

The conversation will be informal and aimed to help career seekers. The webinar will be held LIVE on May 12th from 4-5 PM EST and will be recorded for your viewing / listening pleasure! If you join live, you can ask me questions. If you don't join live, you can still ask me questions.