Beyond "Community-Based Conservation"/"Community-Based Management"

"Threat management actions to protect biodiversity and restore ecosystem function are rarely coupled with costed and prioritized sets of management actions for use in decision-making." Carwardine et al. (2012)

"Assigning a cultural, economic, or ecological value to a species is a notoriously difficult task." Wilson et al. (2011)


Towards Quantitative Assessments and Forecasting of Conservation Initiatives
As the quote above suggests, "threat management" entities are in need of revision; however, "community-based conservation" ["community-based management"] entities have as goals neither repair of biogeochemical insults, conservation of total biodiversity, nor restoration of ecosystems, concentrating, instead, on the viability of single non-human taxonomic units as well as a limited number of human groups and their interests.  "Community-based conservation [management]" is defined in one article as programs whereby "rural people [determine] an integral part of a wildlife conservation policy.  The key elements of such programs are that local [and/or indigenous] communities participate in resource planning and management and that they gain economically from wildlife utilization." (Hackel 1999).  Inherent in the latter perspective is that landscapes should be "locally-relevant and multifunctional", that efforts to promote biodiversity be viewed as "conservation and social-ecological systems", and that human environments are viewed as distinct from, not integral components of, biogeochemical systems, implying a disconnect between "ecological and social [sic] values".

Humans And Their Organizations Are Biotic Factors
The latter and related papers advance humans as a fundamental part of the "solution" to biodiversity conservation as problem-solvers and as knowledgeable stakeholders in enterprises devoted to preserving biodiversity [see second link below].  Although a thorough critique of "community-based  conservation" or "community-based management" is beyond the scope of this brief blogpost, I suggest here that indigenous and local communities inhabiting and/or utilizing resources should be incorporated as factors in parameters of formulae critical to ecosystem management and the preservation of healthy biogeochemical processes, evaluated in quantitative models in the same manner as are other critical entities, variables, units, and factors, and weighted for relevance and importance to expert decision-makers, ecologists and conservation biologists (see Carwardine et al. 2012).  Even where human interests are ultimately weighted in addition to or separate from other taxa, a prioritization approach...including assessment of differential benefits and costs to biogeochemical processes of all species in a biome as well as their functions and effects...has predictive utility and should be undertaken before limited funds are invested in any conservation proposal.

Measuring, Weighting, And Modeling Human Factors
An ethical and philosophical perspective justifying such treatment of human variables (cultural, behavioral, "motivational", belief, etc.) would be a utilitarian one whereby the interests of human groups inhabiting and/or utilizing resources deemed critical to biodiversity and ecosystem functions are evaluated relative to what is best for the biogeochemistry of biomes and ecosystems as a whole (i.e., what is best for the "common good").  Humans are an integral, and, often, a deleterious, component of ecosystems, and the functions and effects of human activities demand to be assessed as would any other component of ecosystem health over short and long time-spans.  Quantitative models should weight human factors, and the differential effects and costs of mitigating those factors, as would be factors associated with any other species.  The papers cited below [*] are a few of many publications outlining programs and methods of measuring, prioritizing, and solving problems related to global [conservation] management of biodiversity and ecosystem function.  Just as "triage" [**] will be needed in decision-making regarding which plants and non-human animals to preserve, the same procedures are required when making decisions regarding the weighted effects of human groups, including, their opinions, beliefs, attitudes, values, traditions, locations, etc.  The first article linked below provides one example of a conflict between culture and conservation policy, representing a case in which "triage" [**] was not employed for problem-solving by a managing agency.  Carwardine et al. (2012; also see Wilson et al. 2011) provide a quantitative model capable of incorporating human factors.

Limitations of Community-Based Conservation or Community-Based Management (C-B C/M)
Although C-B C/M organizations generally work with lower budgets than "top-down", internationally-focused organizations, the per unit costs of the former programs are probably higher because of inefficiency brought about, in part, by the lack of transparent, rational planning, and frequently opportunistic choices of sites selected because communities are initially receptive to influence or have already incorporated environmental ethics into their culture (e.g., Mayan traditions diffused to Creoles in Belize: see second link below as well as 3rd link below).  Furthermore, the emphasis in C-B C/M projects is often directed, primarily, to modifications of behaviors, attitudes, and motivations, conventional concerns of the "social sciences". Prioritization, forecasting, and quantification is rarely, if ever, focused on preservation of landscapes prioritized as per total biodiversity and on preservation and/or mitigation of landscapes and biogeochemical processes, including,  ecosystem functions. Furthermore, quantitative assessments, including forecasting, of differential [short-, mid-, and long-term] costs and benefits are rarely, if ever, undertaken.  Related to the latter concerns, C-B C/M is generally focused upon increasing population size of single or a few animal populations, a strategy that may exacerbate tendencies for "trophic cascades" and other imbalances in community ecological patterns and effects in areas where predators have been extirpated (see Teichman et al. 2013) [see J Ecol blogpost ***]. 

In addition, it has been shown that crisis management of endangered species may be very costly or wasteful of resources and that the latter strategy fails to achieve "preventive conservation" (see Wilson 2011).  Many other traits are associated with C-B C/M programs that are inconsistent with the formulations and advice included in the cited and related publications (e.g., short duration of projects; difficulty of behavioral-modification, especially without long-term financial incentives; inevitable conflicts of interest and power asymmetries within communities; selection of resources without conservation [biodiversity or ecosystem of biogeochemical] value; idealistic and/or aesthetic rather than pragmatic motivation and programming; concentration on "charismatic" and/or "flagship" taxa; non-expert administration and implementation; creation of conditions requiring investment of unavailable levels of funding; raising expectations of community members; ad hoc decision-making, etc.).  In short, a review of C-B C/M programs leads to the conclusion that they are not cost-effective responses to or mitigators of  the critical status of conservation and biogeochemical warning signs within and between  habitats and biomes, including challenges related to the long-term maintenance of biodiversity and healthy ecosystem functions (see second link below).  Not only is the scale of C-B C/M usually too small, but the knowledge base is primarily based on a "social science" model inadequate to the successful implementation of databases and models derived from theoretical and empirical ecological research, especially, Community Ecology and Ecosystem Ecology.

6 Neglected Prioritizations Advanced By Game et al. (2013)
It seems likely that C-B C/M organizations fail to address the 6 categories of neglected prioritizations discussed by Game et al. (2013): "not acknowledging conservation plans are prioritizations; trying to solve an ill-defined problem; not prioritizing actions; arbitrariness; hidden value judgments; and not acknowledging risk of failure".  Of prime importance, C-B C/M is not engaged with the projects of biodiversity-conservation and restoration of ecosystems, landscapes, and biogeochemical injuries, running the risk of doing more harm than good to total biodiversity in a region and to ecosystem functions (see "nested" design below & last link to blogpost on Triage Conservation).  See Carwardine et al. (2012; also Wilson et al. 2011) for a quantitative model that can incorporate factors of concern to C-B/M environmentalists and activists as a first approximation for prioritization of these variables. Finally, I wish to suggest for further discussion that conservation is not, fundamentally, about conservation of animals and/or plants, per se, but about conservation of the integrity of the global ecosystem [global biogeochemistry].


Carwardine J, et al. (2012) Prioritizing threat management for biodiversity conservation. Conserv Lett doi:10.1111/j.1755-263X.2012.00228.x*

Ceballos G, et al. (2005) Global mammal conservation: what must we manage? Science 309: 603-607*

Chades I, et al. (2011) General rules for managing and surveying networks of pests, diseases, and endangered species. PNAS 108: 8323-8328*

Fuller RA, et al. (2010) Replacing underperforming protected areas achieves better conservation outcomes. Nature doi:10.1038/nature09180*

Game ET, et al. (2013) Six common mistakes in conservation priority setting. Cons Biol 27: 480-485*

Hackel JD (1999) The future of Africa's wildlife. Cons Biol 13: 726-734

Joseph LN, et al. (2008) Optimal allocation of resources among threatened species: a Project Prioritization Protocol. Conser Biol doi:10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01124.x*

Levin S (2013) Interview, much of it relevant to ecology and conservation biology:*

http://www.biodiverseperspectives.com/2013/11/12/diverse-introspectives-a-conversation-with-simon-levin/

Teichman et al. 2013. Trophic cascades: linking ungulates to shrub-dependent birds and butterflies. J An Ecol doi:10.1111/1365-2656.12094*

Wilson HB, et al. (2011) When should we save the most endangered species? Ecol Lett doi:10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01652.x*



http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112496160/native-american-tribe-granted-permission-to-hunt-bald-eagles/


http://www.communityconservation.org/publications/InTech-Preserving_biodiversity_and_ecosystems_catalyzing_conservation_contagion.pdf


http://news.mongabay.com/2013/0430-isaacs-rondas.html?fbfnpg


Blogpost on Triage Conservation...Michael McCarthy**:


http://mickresearch.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/triage-does-not-mean-abandoning-the-most-threatened-species/


Blogpost on direct and indirect species interactions in disturbed regimes [***]. How is C-BC/M integrated into this picture?

http://jecologyblog.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/riparian-willow-dynamics-in-yellowstone-associate-editor-commentary/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter




"Our approach provides information for generating a 'business plan' for assisting governments and organizations to direct funds toward actions that are most cost-effective and meet stated goals and policy objectives."  Carwardine et al. (2012)

Copyright Clara B. Jones

METHODS: Mechanistic Approaches To The Study Of Animal Social Behavior & Social Organization...I, II

For some time now, and for several reasons, i have engaged my own thinking and the thinking of others about how the study of "real-time" social [here meaning inter-individual interactions among conspecifics] behavior, social interactions, and group "behavior" might be facilitated by using remote sensing. Figure and Table below summarize my information and thinking up to February 2014. 

I am interested in advances that are not summarized in Table and that may have been made since Feb. '14 in remote sensing or other mechanistic approaches that would facilitate "mapping" of individual & interindividual responses, within & between groups, onto critical resources. Ideally, identification of individuals & groups could be "mapped" onto resources &, beyond ideal!, remote sensing could tell us something about the dispersion [distribution & abundance], quality, and type of resources, particularly, plants. Other questions related to, say, access to mates, might also be envisioned. I understand that such remote sensing as i describe is a future project; however, i'm simply wondering whether advances have been made in that direction [beyond the approaches described in Table below]?

I acknowledge the input and expertise of Dr. Daniel Mennill [Univ of Windsor], who informed me of Encounternet, has answered numerous questions from me, and whose work, combined with that of others, has stimulated much of my thinking on these topics.

 

I. MAP: A map, including this “nested-vision” 3D schema, constitutes a systematic effort and tool to model (conceptualize, understand) an actual or potentially real problem, event, condition, situation, response, or, other, phenomenon, in the physical or perceived universe.  The depicted model represents a generic “nested-vision” 3D map, amenable to rotation and a variety of other alterations.  This structure might, for example, characterize a group (black square) from which individuals leave (lines) to forage in two habitats or patches (grey squares) of a home range (A, B), subsequently, returning to their group (lines).  Circles in each “patch” might represent different diameters at breast height (DBH) of trees, colored differentially for species recognition.  The grey squares might, alternatively, represent 2 sub-groups of a group (black square), with circles identifying individuals by age or dominance rank, or other features (e.g., degree of relatedness to a matriline or, in a polygynous group, a resident male).  Or, the black square might represent a source of water in an arid zone, with lines representing proportional (circle size) frequency of movement of different bands of different classes of taxa (within- or between-taxa), A and B.  Continuing to visualize the black box as a source of water, lines might represent individuals of different groups, A and B, with circles representing, for instance, age-size-class membership, frequency of transit, sub-group membership, or related variables.

Following Ware et al. (1997; Parker et al. 1998, Ware and Mitchell 2008), 3D graphs and maps make three assumptions: (1) that 3D is preferable to 2D visualization for large information structures; (2) that “nested” graphs are required to represent “complex” databases; and, (3) that maximum utility of these approaches includes “manual and automatic layout of structures”.  Other types of visualization utilities can be accessed at Colin Ware’s (University of New Hampshire) website: http://ccom.unh.edu/vislab/projects/networks, including, “node-link” diagrams with capacities for thousands of nodes and links, as well as, “interactive motion” structures whereby relevant information can be highlighted with a cursor.  In addition, conventional methods of graphing or mapping information can be expanded, such as the modified physical map presented by Jones (1995, Fig. 1, p 4).  Visualized applications are models constructed systematically to convert a researcher’s conceptualizations of hypothesized and “real-world” systems into graphic and mapped displays of imagined or actual information.  However, graphs, maps, and, related, utilities, do not substitute for mathematical modeling. ©Clara B. Jones

II. TABLE: This table identifies “mechanistic approaches” that may be employed to study groups of social mammals based on a review of the literature, and communication with researchers.  These technologies capture events of a species at one or more scale of analysis, from individuals to groups, to populations as well as abiotic (e.g., soil gradients) and other biotic features (plants, conspecific groups, animal species composition).  Appariti are systematically employed to convert a partial or complete array of real-world problems (migration, group foraging, contest competition, mate choice, cooperation, and the like) into analyzable data.  Challenges are encountered since, in social groups, one animal’s behaviors are a function of interactions with conspecifics, usually, other group members.  In most cases, these apparati will be used in association with traditional data-collection techniques (“focal” observations of animals, hand-held instrumentation, fruit-fall traps, DBH measurements: see, for example, Reich et al. 2004).  As Moorcroft (2012) pointed out, in addition to post-study (and real-time) advances in analyses, including model-fitting, the major contributions of newer technologies at present are increasing capacities to capture concurrent, fine-scale data within- and between-populations.  These utilities, also, permit assessments of environmental “grains” at different levels of analysis (Moorcroft 2012), an important capability for social biologists because events at one scale generally cannot be employed to predict events at lower or higher scales, and, because current technologies and near-generation mechanistic approaches permit a researcher to estimate static and dynamic population parameters (e.g., generation time, population growth).  I thank D.J. Mennill, W.J. Foley, S. Kawano, B. Nicolai, and N. Pettorelli for providing information via "personal communication" and remain grateful to Ted Fleming for assistance with the literature search. ©Clara B. Jones

TECHNOLOGY	CURRENT UTILITIES	REFERENCES	FUTURE UTILITIES/NOTES
Animal Patterns
Radio-tracking	Land-based telemetry system for tracking spatial ecology of individuals and groups	bats: Almenar et al. (2013); primates: Joly & Zimmerman (2011); birds and bats concurrently: Taylor et al. (2011); ungulates: Mueller et al. (2011)	2 or more animals can be studied concurrently (e.g., members of sub-groups); operates on relatively small spatial scales; short-term temporal data; difficulties associated with tracking in closed forest habitats when tracking on foot; recent advances enhance power and applications (Moorcroft 2012); relatively inexpensive compared with other tracking methods
Radio-tracking via airplane	Allows descriptions of landscapes relative to animal use when	Bats: Eby (1991)	Problems associated with length of battery life
Resource-selection analysis (RSA)	Used in combination with radio-telemetry, allowing descriptions of landscapes	Moorcroft (2012)	Capable of identifying spatial scales permitting “multi-layer” analyses; applicable to tests of socio-ecological hypotheses recording within-population dispersion of individuals and groups relative to resource dispersion; adaptable to studies of leadership and rank relations via differential use of space; “mechanistic home-range analysis” (Moorcroft 2012) applicable to social biology
Global-positioning system (GPS)	Satellite-based tracking system using solar- or battery-powered transmitters	Moorcroft (2012);  Holland and Wikelski (2009), Richter and Cumming (2008), Epstein et al. (2009); Tsoar et al. (2011), Markham and Altmann 2008; Tomkiewicz et al. (2010), Cagnacci et al. (2010)	Widespread scientific use relatively recent; permits deployment on animals smaller than large terrestrial and marine mammals; can be used to monitor physiological states; can track animal movements and use of space over large geographical ranges; databases can be created and managed for behavioral, ecological, and comparative studies (Tomkiewicz et al. 2010)
©Encounternet	Light-weight tags “enable automated mapping of social networks” (including, position and duration of interactions and signals	Rutz et al. (2012), Mennill et al. (2012a, b), Taylor et al. (2011)	Data received by a “grid of fixed receiver stations” yielding large, high-quality, high-resolution datasets; so far tested using birds; can be used for terrestrial and arboreal taxa (D.J. Mennill, personal communication)
“Proximity data-loggers”	Similar to and may be used in association with ©Encounternet technology for studying interactions of group-living animals	Ryder et al. (2012), Mennill et al. (2012a, b), Maynard et al. (2012)	Data transferred to receiver “grids” capturing frequency of contacts permitting construction of “weighted networks” characterizing “complex social dynamics and calculation of statistics; captures changes in individual and inter-individual responses, group structure, population processes, and resource dispersion, including, phonologies; useful for tests of sociobiological hypotheses (e.g., cooperation, sexual selection: Mennill et al. 2012)
Camera traps	Remote instruments that take photos or video when a sensor is triggered (mongabay.com)	Diaz et al. 2005, Harmsen et al. 2009, Norris et al. 2020	Use of robo-mammals lags behind studies of robo-mollusks or robo-amphibians; can adapt technology for estimates of animal interactions, such as, local predator-prey abundance and temporal distributions; can utilize for preliminary estimates of species distributions, including, relative occurrences of social and non-social taxa
Robotics	“Automated machines” capable of simulating biological events	fish: Ioannou et al. (2012: coordinated group movement); Handegard et al.(2012: group hunting and schooling prey); Kopman et al. (2013)	Use of robo-mammals lags behind studies of robo-mollusks, robo-amphibians, or robo-fish (“etho-robotics”); however, a  wide range of sociobiological questions is amenable to tests with robotic techniques, including, patterns of group dispersion relative to robots manipulated in various positions or configurations or simulated predators or prey (see references for fish) or manipulations of pelage or skin color and pattern relative to, for example, reproductive condition; in certain ways, these techniques can be employed in association with quantitative modeling (e.g., “agent-based” models)
Resource Patterns
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI); Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI); Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS); Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR); Satellite-based remote sensing; Near Infra-red Spectroscopy (NIS); Imaging spectroscopy	Methods employed to assess plant food dispersion, type, and quality	Asner and Levick (2012), Bradbury et al. (2005), Youngentob et al. (2011)////, Saranwong et al. (2004), Saranwong et al. (2003), Nicolai et al. (2007), Pettorelli et al. (2005), Duffy and Pettorelli (2012)////, Xiao et al. (2006)	Research and development needed to for applications to covariation of events between plants (e.g., phenology, fruit type and ripeness) and mammal groups
Molecular genetics	Collection of tissue samples from animals at different locations, using data from mitochondrial and/or nuclear genes (e.g., microsatellites) to determine degree of genetic similarity between populations	Fleming (2010)	Measures of genetic similarities between seasonally-occupied habitats indicates connectivity of migratory movements; utility for studying migrants relative to particular resources in early stages of development; social biologists can use these techniques alone or in combination with other mechanistic approaches to assess genetic patterns within and between sub-groups (e.g., “fission-fusion” units) of the same species
Visualization
See  Map, above	Various approaches employed to visualize data/information, including, software structures; these utilities may incorporate motion, 3D, “fish-bowl”, “node-link”, and other information architectures	See Map, above	These mechanistic approaches require research and development for specific applications to questions, models, results, configurations (e.g., networks), and conceptualizations pertinent to Social Biology

Constraints On Speciation In Humans: Phenotypic Diversity Matters (New Paper)

Image above: copyright Matthew Oldfield, accessed from google.com 8/11/2013




http://humanbiologyjournal.com/uploads/Volume2-Number3-Article6.pdf

Towards Assembling a Global Data M & M Archive for Terrestrial Mammals

To: The Ecology Community

From: Clara B. Jones (Director, Mammals and Phenogroups, MaPs, Asheville, NC)

Re: Towards Assembling a Global Data Archive of Morbidity and Mortality Events for Terrestrial Mammals

Date: 1/27/13

The purpose of this letter is to highlight a need for, and rationales for, assembling an “international repository” of Morbidity and Mortality (M and M) data for animals in the wild.  Terrestrial mammals are emphasized (Ameca y Juárez et al., 2012) because of their overwhelming dominance among terrestrial vertebrates and because, Homo sapiens, the species responsible for inducing and escalating recent deleterious effects on global biogeochemistry, is a member of Class, Mammalia.  A “multi-metric index” of M and M data requires a bioinformatic, quantitative approach yielding systematic storage, classification, and integration of information, permitting “knowledge management”, directed search, as well as analysis.  Nested bioinformatics designs are sensitive to scale, permitting weighted input of data from individual to ecosystem levels.  Knowledge of mortality patterns, assessed relative to other storable data (e.g., age-sex structure of populations, co-varying spatiotemporal, including, environmental, factors) would provide researchers and their collaborators a powerful source of information for evaluating ramifications of anthropogenic stressors for mammalian populations.

The proposed archive would serve as a “global information grid” of mortality events associated with local, regional, and global environmental regimes.  In addition to serving as a repository of data, the archive’s capacities for multi-dimensional mapping of variations in age, size, development, physiology, and genetics would permit a more comprehensive understanding of life-history* evolution and shifting mean fitness of populations in community and ecosystem contexts, with the potential to generate novel qualitative and quantitative perspectives on questions of critical import to conservation biology, ecology, and evolutionary biology.  Among other concerns to conservation biologists and their colleagues, a “global information grid” of M and M data for terrestrial mammals would address Woodroffe’s (1999) call for systematic approaches to dissection, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases in wild mammal populations.

Zipkin et al. (2010) published a population modeling technique bounded by logic interpretable by any researcher familiar with the conceptual framework and methods of statistical probability.  These authors provided a “primer” on the use of “Markov chains” for studies of disease dynamics in natural populations of animals.  Utilizing “typical” survey records of morbidity and mortality events, Markov chains estimate probabilities “of state [event, condition] transitions between consecutive time steps [spatial or temporal intervals]”.  This approach to quantitative ecology is a type of “epidemiological modeling” amenable to multilevel (hierarchical) modeling (Qian & Shen, 2007), whereby, for instance, M & M at the individual or population level could be quantitatively assessed with associated metrics at the same (limiting resource dispersions), lower (soil gradients, leaf litter dispersion) or higher (interspecific assemblages, variations in nutrient cycling) levels of abiotic and biotic organization..            

A facultative search of “disease, mammals” in seven widely-read American and British journals publishing a significant number of papers on basic ecology and conservation biology was conducted.  Several patterns were apparent.  First, though length of time since publication of first issues varied across journals and while “search” applications are probably structured differently, numbers of papers on topics related to mammalian disease indicated relative emphasis, as follows: Conservation Biology, 494 papers; Ecology, 418; Functional Ecology, 102; International Journal of Primatology, 230; Journal of Applied Ecology, 175; Journal of Ecology, 1; Journal of Mammalogy, 355; and, Oikos, 207.  Most articles addressing mammalian diseases focused on one type of disease (e.g., rabies, Lyme’s disease), on one category of pathology in a single or among related species (e.g., intestinal parasites) or, on parasite-host associations.  Most of the studies investigated disease effects at the population-level rather than epidemiological patterns across time and space from the individual to higher levels.  Specialized  wildlife biology and veterinary medicine journals, as well as, comprehensive texts and field manuals covering “ecology of pests and pathogens” or “field procedures for the study of diseases” address M and M of animals in Nature, as well.  My impression is that, among vertebrates, birds and bats have been studied more thoroughly than terrestrial mammals.     

Table 1 summarizes opportunistic observations of pathologies observed for 156 immobilized adult male and female mantled howler monkeys in Costa Rica.  Males were more likely to exhibit pathologies (25/36= 69%) compared to females (50/120= 42%), possible byproducts of risks from male-male competition and time- rather than energy-maximization (see, for example, Jones, 2005).  Considering the population as a whole, 51%  (80/156) of individuals in the sample exhibited obvious abnormalities.  Table 1 highlights the broad array of pathologies affecting individual mammals, suggesting that many field studies of M and M may be limited by their focus on one causative factor.  Several seemingly minor anomalies may, cumulatively, induce sub-lethal or lethal stress at one or more interacting, systemic levels, from biochemical (genetic, protein, e.g., de novo mutation) to physiological and developmental (e.g., sustained production of cortisol, increased infant mortality) to exposed phenotype (e.g., melanoma, bots), including, behavior (e.g., compromised defensive capacities, change [++, --] in baseline [presumably, optimal] interaction rates). 

The “collective intelligence” available to researchers and their collaborators from the proposed archive would facilitate multilevel epidemiological studies sensitive to variations in anthropogenic effects, including, capacities for local, regional, or global forecasting.  The proposed M and M archive would facilitate capabilities to deposit, assemble, process, share, manage, and diagnose its “multi-metric indices” for hypothesis-testing and effective conservation management in basic and applied ecology. 


*Drew Purves [Microsoft, UK] and his colleagues are working on a global model of body size x longevity [D. Purves, personal communication], part of a global ecosystem modeling project. The M and M archive proposed in the present blogpost would permit global modeling of [terrestrial mammal] female body size [FBS] x mortality or FBS x survivorship, based on the largest possible sample of life history data available.  Interpreting the logic of Purves' program and applying the presumed logic to the M and M archive advanced herein, the "international repository" of M and M data could be modeled for a comprehensive, general, statement of Life History phenomena, including, partitioning of its variability, using the simplifying proxy that variations in female body size [FBS] x mortality and/or FBS x survivorship relationships are governed by the same rules [1] within- and between-taxa, and [2] within- and across-levels of bioenergetic  and biogeochemical organization [scales and gradients].  Ideally, one would substitute a sufficiently-large sample of female age distributions [FAD] x mortality x environment [climate] and/or FAD x survivorship x environment [climate] for a synthesis of Life History trajectories sensitive to local and regional conditions. 

Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Norman J. Scott, Jr. (USFW, ret.) for making his raw data available to me. 

References

Ameca y Juárez, E.I., Mace, G.M., Cowlishaw, G., and Pettorelli, N. 2012. Natural population die-offs: causes and consequences for terrestrial mammals. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 27: 272-277.

Jones, C.B. 2005. Behavioral Flexibility in Primates: Causes and Consequences. Springer, New York.

Qian, S.S., and Shen, Z. 2007. Ecological applications of multilevel ANOVA. Ecology 88: 2489-2495.

Woodroffe, R. 1999. Managing disease threats to wild animals. Animal Conservation 2: 185-193.

Zipkin, E.F., Jennelle, C.S., and Cooch, E.G. 2010. A primer on the application of Markov Chains to the study of wildlife disease dynamics. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 1: 192-198.

Table

Table 1. Pathologies recorded opportunistically during immobilization of individually-marked and aged mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata palliata) at Hacienda La Pacífica, Cañas, Costa Rica, tropical dry forest habitats (riparian and deciduous).  Data were collected in 1976 by Norman J. Scott, Jr. (USFW, ret.) and his assistants, including the present author.  (N= 156: n=  120 females,  n= 36 males)

PATHOLOGY	TYPE-CHARACTER	#FEMALES	#MALES	SUB-TOTAL	TOTAL
APPARENT GENETIC ABMORMALITIES	Hirsuteness			5	5
PARASITES	Botfly Larvae	2	1	3	3
	Roundworms	11	5	16	16
	Tick	1		1	1
INFECTIONS	Herpes-like	2	0	2	2
	Lymphodenopathy	2	1	3	3
	Undiagnosed	2	1	3	3
SCABS	Fungus?, Eczema?, Herpes?	9	0	9	9
TESTICULAR ABNORMALITIES	?		2	2	2
APPARENT NUTRIENT DEFICIENCY	?	9	1	10	10
SCARS	?	5	8	13	13
BROKEN BONES	?	7	6	13	13
TOTAL		50	25	80	80