Tidal flat ecosystems are considered essential habitats for numerous elasmobranch species worldwide, yet regional-scale assessments of community composition and habitat use are largely lacking, particularly for batoids (rays). Aerial drone surveys were conducted at eight intertidal flats in North Queensland, Australia to better characterise patterns of species occurrence in tropical estuarine ( n = 2), marine beach ( n = 3), a...

Human–carnivore coexistence is essential for biodiversity conservation, yet measuring the attitudes and behaviors that support it remains methodologically challenging. We developed psychometric scales to assess willingness to coexist with carnivores and the underlying beliefs of this coexistence through an iterative expert elicitation process grounded in risk perception theory and moral psychology to ensure strong content vali...

Animals within social groups respond to costs and benefits of sociality by adjusting the proportion of time they spend in close proximity to other individuals in the group (cohesion). Variation in cohesion between individuals, in turn, shapes important group‐level processes such as subgroup formation and fission–fusion dynamics. Although critical to animal sociality, a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing coh...

Information on how the trophic ecology of predators shapes their movement patterns and space-use is fundamental to understanding ecological processes across organisational levels. Despite this, studies combining spatial and trophic ecology to determine how prey preference and/or resource availability shape space use are lacking in marine predators as these can occur at low density and are often difficult to track over extended...

An imported case of monkeypox was diagnosed in December 2019 in a traveller returning from Nigeria to the UK. Subsequently, environmental sampling was performed at two adjoining single‐room residences occupied by the patient and their sibling. Monkeypox virus DNA was identified in multiple locations throughout both properties, and monkeypox virus was isolated from several samples 3 days after the patient was last in these loca...

Parasite success typically depends on a close relationship with one or more hosts; therefore, attributes of parasitic infection have the potential to provide indirect details of host natural history and are biologically relevant to animal conservation. Characterization of parasite infections has been useful in delineating host populations and has served as a proxy for assessment of environmental quality. In other cases, the ut...

Animals that disrupt sediments through burrowing or foraging contribute to ecosystem function through bioturbation and ecosystem engineering processes linked to their excavation behavior. Empirical evidence linking behavior with function is rare; yet this information is critical for assessing species‐specific functional roles. Using two stingray species, Himantura australis and Pastinachus ater , as model ecosystem engineers,...

Human activity and land use change impact every landscape on Earth, driving declines in many animal species while benefiting others. Species ecological and life history traits may predict success in human‐dominated landscapes such that only species with “winning” combinations of traits will persist in disturbed environments. However, this link between species traits and successful coexistence with humans remains obscured by th...

Conflicts between people and wild animals are increasing globally, often with serious consequences for both. Local regulations or ordinances are frequently used to promote human behaviors that minimize these conflicts (risk‐reducing behaviors), but compliance with ordinances can be highly variable. While efforts to increase compliance could be improved through applications of conservation psychology, little is known about the...

Urbanization is a major factor driving habitat fragmentation and connectivity loss in wildlife. However, the impacts of urbanization on connectivity can vary among species and even populations due to differences in local landscape characteristics, and our ability to detect these relationships may depend on the spatial scale at which they are measured. Bobcats ( Lynx rufus ) are relatively sensitive to urbanization and the stat...

Apex predators are important indicators of intact natural ecosystems. They are also sensitive to urbanization because they require broad home ranges and extensive contiguous habitat to support their prey base. Pumas ( Puma concolor ) can persist near human developed areas, but urbanization may be detrimental to their movement ecology, population structure, and genetic diversity. To investigate potential effects of urbanization...

Passive acoustic monitoring could be a powerful way to assess biodiversity across large spatial and temporal scales. However, extracting meaningful information from recordings can be prohibitively time consuming. Acoustic indices (i.e., a mathematical summary of acoustic energy) offer a relatively rapid method for processing acoustic data and are increasingly used to characterize biological communities. We examined the relatio...

Urban expansion has widespread impacts on wildlife species globally, including the transmission and emergence of infectious diseases. However, there is almost no information about how urban landscapes shape transmission dynamics in wildlife. Using an innovative phylodynamic approach combining host and pathogen molecular data with landscape characteristics and host traits, we untangle the complex factors that drive transmission...

The evolutionary mechanisms generating the tremendous biodiversity of islands have long fascinated evolutionary biologists. Genetic drift and divergent selection are predicted to be strong on islands and both could drive population divergence and speciation. Alternatively, strong genetic drift may preclude adaptation. We conducted a genomic analysis to test the roles of genetic drift and divergent selection in causing genetic...

Free‐ranging domestic cats ( Felis catus ) incur and impose risks on ecosystems and represent a complex issue of critical importance to biodiversity conservation and cat and human health globally. Prior social science research on this topic is limited and has emphasized feral cats even though owned cats often comprise a large proportion of the outdoor cat population, particularly in urban areas. To address this gap, we examine...

When natural marks provide sufficient resolution to identify individual animals, noninvasive sampling using cameras has a number of distinct advantages relative to “traditional” mark–recapture methods. However, analyses from photo‐identification records often pose additional challenges. For example, it is often unclear how to link left‐ and right‐side photos to the same individual, and previous studies have primarily used data...

Urbanization can result in the fragmentation of once contiguous natural landscapes into a patchy habitat interspersed within a growing urban matrix. Animals living in fragmented landscapes often have reduced movement among habitat patches because of avoidance of intervening human development, which potentially leads to both reduced gene flow and pathogen transmission between patches. Mammalian carnivores with large home ranges...