Fox sightings in a city are related to certain land use classes and sociodemographics: results from a citizen science project.

BACKGROUND: Red foxes (Vulpes vulpes L.) have become successful inhabitants of urban areas in recent years. However, our knowledge about the occurrence, distribution and association with land uses of these urban foxes is poor, partly because many favoured habitats are on private properties and therefore hardly accessible to scientists. We assumed that citizen science, i.e. the involvement of the public, could enable researchers to bridge this information gap. We analysed 1179 fox sightings in the city of Vienna, Austria reported via citizen science projects to examine relationships between foxes and the surrounding land use classes as well as sociodemographic parameters. RESULTS: Conditional probabilities of encountering foxes were substantially higher in gardens, areas with a low building density, parks or squares as compared to agricultural areas, industrial areas or forests. Generalized linear model analyses showed that sociodemographic parameters such as education levels, district area, population density and average household income additionally improved the predictability of fox sightings. CONCLUSIONS: Reports of fox sightings by citizen scientists might help to support the establishment of wildlife management in cities. Additionally, these data could be used to address public health issues in relation with red foxes as they can carry zoonoses that are also dangerous to humans.

Occurrence of the invasive Spanish slug in gardens: can a citizen science approach help deciphering underlying factors?

BACKGROUND: The Spanish slug (Arion vulgaris, also known as A. lusitanicus) is considered one of the most invasive species in agriculture, horticulture and private gardens all over Europe. Although this slug has been problematic for decades, there is still not much known about its occurrence across private gardens and the underlying meteorological and ecological factors. One reason for this knowledge gap is the limited access of researchers to private gardens. Here we used a citizen science approach to overcome this obstacle and examined whether the occurrence of Arionidae in Austrian gardens was associated with meteorological (air temperature, precipitation, global solar radiation, relative humidity) or ecological factors (plant diversity, earthworm activity). Occurrence of the invasive A. vulgaris versus the similar-looking native A. rufus was compared using a DNA-barcoding approach. RESULTS: Slugs were collected from 1061 gardens from the dry Pannonian lowland to the wet alpine climate (altitudinal range 742 m). Slug abundance in gardens was best explained and negatively associated with the parameters "sum of the mean air temperature in spring", "number of frost days in the previous winter" and "mean daily global solar radiation on the day of data collection". Precipitation, plant diversity and earthworm activity were also related to slug abundance, but positively. Out of our genetic sampling of collected slugs, 92% belonged to A. vulgaris. CONCLUSIONS: Our study showed that citizen science (i) is a feasible approach to record species occurrence in restricted areas across a wide geographical range and (ii) could be more widely employed in order to identify underlying environmental factors of species occurrence.

Amphibian and reptile road-kills on tertiary roads in relation to landscape structure: using a citizen science approach with open-access land cover data.

BACKGROUND: Amphibians and reptiles are among the most endangered vertebrate species worldwide. However, little is known how they are affected by road-kills on tertiary roads and whether the surrounding landscape structure can explain road-kill patterns. The aim of our study was to examine the applicability of open-access remote sensing data for a large-scale citizen science approach to describe spatial patterns of road-killed amphibians and reptiles on tertiary roads. Using a citizen science app we monitored road-kills of amphibians and reptiles along 97.5 km of tertiary roads covering agricultural, municipal and interurban roads as well as cycling paths in eastern Austria over two seasons. Surrounding landscape was assessed using open access land cover classes for the region (Coordination of Information on the Environment, CORINE). Hotspot analysis was performed using kernel density estimation (KDE+). Relations between land cover classes and amphibian and reptile road-kills were analysed with conditional probabilities and general linear models (GLM). We also estimated the potential cost-efficiency of a large scale citizen science monitoring project. RESULTS: We recorded 180 amphibian and 72 reptile road-kills comprising eight species mainly occurring on agricultural roads. KDE+ analyses revealed a significant clustering of road-killed amphibians and reptiles, which is an important information for authorities aiming to mitigate road-kills. Overall, hotspots of amphibian and reptile road-kills were next to the land cover classes arable land, suburban areas and vineyards. Conditional probabilities and GLMs identified road-kills especially next to preferred habitats of green toad, common toad and grass snake, the most often found road-killed species. A citizen science approach appeared to be more cost-efficient than monitoring by professional researchers only when more than 400 km of road are monitored. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings showed that freely available remote sensing data in combination with a citizen science approach would be a cost-efficient method aiming to identify and monitor road-kill hotspots of amphibians and reptiles on a larger scale.

Predicting spring migration of two European amphibian species with plant phenology using citizen science data.

Habitat fragmentation is one of the drivers for amphibian population declines globally. Especially in industrialized countries roads disrupt the seasonal migration of amphibians between hibernation and reproduction sites, often ending in roadkills. Thus, a timely installing of temporary mitigation measures is important for amphibian conservation. We wanted to find out if plant phenology can be a proxy in advance to determine the start of amphibian migration, since both phenomena are triggered by temperature. We analysed data of 3751 amphibian and 7818 plant phenology observations from citizen science projects in Austria between 2000 and 2018. Using robust regression modelling we compared the migration of common toads (Bufo bufo) and common frogs (Rana temporaria) with the phenology of five tree, one shrub, and one herb species. Results showed close associations between the migration of common frogs and phenological phases of European larch, goat willow and apricot. Models based on goat willow predict migration of common frog to occur 21 days after flowering, when flowering was observed on 60th day of year; apricot based models predict migration to occur 1 day after flowering, observed on the 75th day of year. Common toads showed weaker associations with plant phenology than common frogs. Our findings suggest that plant phenology can be used to determine the onset of temporary mitigation measures for certain amphibian species to prevent roadkills.

The coupled socio-ecohydrological evolution of river systems: Towards an integrative perspective of river systems in the 21st century.

River systems have undergone a massive transformation since the Anthropocene. The natural properties of river systems have been drastically altered and reshaped, limiting the use of management frameworks, their scientific knowledge base and their ability to provide adequate solutions for current problems and those of the future, such as climate change, biodiversity crisis and increased demands for water resources. To address these challenges, a socioecologically driven research agenda for river systems that complements current approaches is needed and proposed. The implementation of the concepts of social metabolism and the colonisation of natural systems into existing concepts can provide a new basis to analyse the coevolutionary coupling of social systems with ecological and hydrological (i.e., 'socio-ecohydrological') systems within rivers. To operationalize this research agenda, we highlight four initial core topics defined as research clusters (RCs) to address specific system properties in an integrative manner. The colonisation of natural systems by social systems is seen as a significant driver of the transformation processes in river systems. These transformation processes are influenced by connectivity (RC 1), which primarily addresses biophysical aspects and governance (RC 2), which focuses on the changes in social systems. The metabolism (RC 3) and vulnerability (RC 4) of the social and natural systems are significant aspects of the coupling of social systems and ecohydrological systems with investments, energy, resources, services and associated risks and impacts. This socio-ecohydrological research agenda complements other recent approaches, such as 'socio-ecological', 'socio-hydrological' or 'socio-geomorphological' systems, by focusing on the coupling of social systems with natural systems in rivers and thus, by viewing the socioeconomic features of river systems as being just as important as their natural characteristics. The proposed research agenda builds on interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity and requires the implementation of such programmes into the education of a new generation of river system scientists, managers and engineers who are aware of the transformation processes and the coupling between systems.

Differentiation of metallicolous and non-metallicolous Salix caprea populations based on phenotypic characteristics and nuclear microsatellite (SSR) markers.

The Salicaceae family comprises a large number of high-biomass species with remarkable genetic variability and adaptation to ecological niches. Salix caprea survives in heavy metal contaminated areas, translocates and accumulates Zn/Cd in leaves. To reveal potential selective effects of long-term heavy metal contaminations on the genetic structure and Zn/Cd accumulation capacity, 170 S. caprea isolates of four metal-contaminated and three non-contaminated middle European sites were analysed with microsatellite markers using Wright's F statistics. The differentiation of populations North of the Alps are more pronounced compared to the Southern ones. By grouping the isolates based on their contamination status, a weak but significant differentiation was calculated between Northern metallicolous and non-metallicolous populations. To quantify if the contamination and genetic status of the populations correlate with Zn/Cd tolerance and the accumulation capacity, the S. caprea isolates were exposed to elevated Cd/Zn concentrations in perlite-based cultures. Consistent with the genetic data nested anova analyses for the physiological traits find a significant difference in the Cd accumulation capacity between the Northern and Southern populations. Our data suggest that natural populations are a profitable source to uncover genetic mechanisms of heavy metal accumulation and biomass production, traits that are essential for improving phytoextraction strategies.

A comparison of statistical learning methods for deriving determining factors of accident occurrence from an imbalanced high resolution dataset.

One of the main aims of accident data analysis is to derive the determining factors associated with road traffic accident occurrence. While current studies mainly use variants of count data regression to achieve this aim, the problem can also be considered as a binary classification task, with the dichotomous target variable indicating events (accidents) and non-events (no accidents). The effects of 45 variables - describing road condition and geometry, traffic volume and regulations, weather, and accident time - are analyzed using a dataset in high temporal (1 h) and spatial (250 m) resolution, covering the whole highway network of Austria over the period of four consecutive years. A combination of synthetic minority oversampling and maximum dissimilarity undersampling is used to balance the training dataset. We employ and compare a series of statistical learning techniques with respect to their predictive performance and discuss the importance of determining factors of accident occurrence from the ensemble of models. Findings substantiate that a trade-off between accuracy and sensitivity is inherent to imbalanced classification problems. Results show satisfying performance of tree-based methods which exhibit accuracies between 75% and 90% while exhibiting sensitivities between 30% and 50%. Overall, this analysis emphasizes the merits of using high-resolution data in the context of accident analysis.

Relative importance of factors influencing the prevalence of lameness in Austrian cubicle loose-housed dairy cows.

The development of lameness is influenced by a number of different factors (housing, management, human-animal relationship and animal-related parameters). The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the complex interactions of these aspects and to search for the relative importance of single factors. In 80 dairy herds of Austrian Simmental cows housed in cubicle loose housing in Upper and Lower Austria, risk factors for lameness, selected from the four factor groups housing, management, human-animal relationship and animal-related variables, were investigated during one farm visit in the autumn and winter months. To assess their relative importance, a multivariable analysis (regression trees) was calculated. The most important risk factor for lameness was the lying surface: straw bedding of at least 2 cm thickness or cow-comfort mats were associated with a lower percentage of lame cows. In case of insufficient quality of the lying surface, the next important parameter identified was the position of the neck rail: a neck rail diagonal greater than 1.94 m was associated with a lower percentage of lame cows. By contrast, on farms with high-quality lying surfaces, lameness prevalence was lower when at least parts of the alleys were constructed with solid floor and not slatted. Further variables associated with a low prevalence of lameness were a longer time span between calving and separation of the calf from the dam, the existence of an outside run, a lower percentage of fat cows, a greater space allowance, more cubicles than animals and a lower kerb height. In addition, further management factors such as the way in which heifers are integrated into the herd or management decisions taking into account the cows' welfare were related to less lameness. Human-animal relationship variables such as, for example, the behaviour and attitude of the stockpeople were explaining variables. In sum, important risk factors were found in all factor groups. Therefore it is necessary to optimise all those different aspects mentioned above to reduce the risk of lameness.

Early noun plurals in German: regularity, productivity or default?

The acquisition of German plurals has been the focus of controversy in the last decade. In this paper we claim that degree of productivity (i.e. the capacity of nouns to form potential plurals) plays a key role in determining pace of acquisition. A plural elicitation task was administered to 84 Viennese German-speaking children aged 2;6 to 6;0. Analyses of correct responses showed that the highest scores were obtained with -e plurals, followed by the plural markers -e + U, -er + U, -s and -(e)n. The lowest score was observed for pure Umlaut (U) plurals. Analyses suggested an impact of productivity on the number of correct scores: fully productive and productive plural patterns obtained higher correct scores than weakly productive and non-productive ones. The results of the study support our productivity scale and are compatible both with single-route models and with a race-model variant of the dual-route view.