Large mammals aren’t getting enough attention (for once)

Guest Post by Dani Rabaiotti 

Large mammals get an awful lot of attention. People love a fluffy, charismatic, animal, and their large size often makes them comparatively easier to study, and an awful lot of time, effort and money goes into conserving charismatic large mammals. As a result, there are systematic biases towards large mammals in conservation research, in the media, across social media (guilty), and in the amount of money raised both through charities and grants. Whilst most people think of large African megafauna when they hear large mammals, they are actually making a comeback in Europe: numbers of wolves, bears, and lynx are increasing across most of the continent and, in some areas, these animals are even expanding their ranges.

This leads me onto one area of research where…possibly (hear me out here!)…large mammals might be overlooked. A lot of the focus on climate change response research has been into reptiles and amphibians, which have physiological traits that mean their behaviour and/or breeding is directly dependant on temperature, or species like corals, which have been identified as most at risk. Low down on the list of climate change impact studies are large mammals. A fairly large number of correlative studies have been done, where researchers look at where species live now and what the climatic conditions are, and use it to project where they could live under climate change. Far fewer studies have looked at the mechanisms by which large mammals might be affected by temperature changes.

African Wild Dog. Photo contributed by Dani Rabaiotti.

It could be argued, however, that large mammals may be disproportionately at risk. Due to their size, large mammals need a lot of resources and as a result generally need big territories to survive. Large mammals are disproportionately threatened compared to small mammals, in part due to global habitat loss, but also because they are more likely to come into conflict with humans, and be persecuted as a result: think large carnivores eating livestock or elephants eating crops. This also means that, as the climate warms, many species have no-where to move to (many plants and animals will move to cooler areas to avoid rising temperatures). In my study species, the African wild dog, for example, it has already been extirpated from over 90 percent of its former range through habitat loss and human conflict – there is no other ‘range’ for it to shift to. On top of this, large mammals take a really long time to reproduce, meaning that if they need to adapt to climate change, it has to be through behaviour and not evolution.

Because of this, it is really important that we understand the responses of large mammals to changes in temperature. This can be challenging as, unlike many smaller species, you can’t stick an elephant in a lab and heat it up to see what happens. The fields of herpetology, fisheries research, and, to a slightly lesser extend ornithology, have done some great work into how the physiology, behaviour and breeding habits of various species are impacted by climate change. These can be used to gain a mechanistic (that is, the mechanism behind how climate change might effect a species in future) understanding of climate change impacts, and allows the building of more detailed, mechanistic models that don’t just rely on correlation. However, there are far fewer papers of this kind on large mammals.

The good news is we already have a lot of data on large mammals, and where data is missing there are a lot of long-term projects out there. It would be a shame to pour money into conserving large mammals in an area that may be too hot for them to survive in the future, when it may be better directed elsewhere. It would be tragic if the large mammal conservation successes in Europe were lessened by an oversight in research. It is important that people start looking at past datasets, and collecting new datasets with questions on temperature impacts in mind. This would help ensure the future of these species that people know and love so well.

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Dani Rabaiotti is a PhD student studying the impact of climate change on African wild dogs at the Zoological Society of London and UCL.  You can find more about her research here or reach out to her on Twitter @DaniRabaiotti.

3 SCB Grants are available for the Greek Summer School! Deadline 31st March

The Europe Section of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB-ES) invites all undergraduate and early postgraduate students from all over Europe, including Turkey to take part in the Greek summer school: “Conservation Biology in Europe: Building a coherent strategy for the future” to be held in Papingo, Greece, 26 June - 9 July 2011.
The School is an Erasmus Intensive Programme organized by the University of Ioannina (Prof. V. Kati) and funded by State Scholarship Foundation – IKY. The two week course is designed for 18 students, of whom 15 are coming from the five Universities taking part in the Erasmus IP. Three more students from all over Europe will receive a grant from the SCB Europe Section, covering the following costs:

1. A grant of 300 euros from for each SCB participant
2. Transport upon arrival and departure from Ioannina town to the residence site (Papingo)
3. Welcome Dinner at arrival date
4. Field transport, field excursions, all tuition fees and use of research equipment
5. One year membership to the Society for Conservation Biology + membership to the European Section + online Subscription to Conservation Biology Journal

SCB-students should cover their accommodation, travel expenses to Ioannina, medical insurance and any other cost not mentioned above. The cost for accommodation (sharing a room for three), breakfast and one meal per day will be approx. 40 EUR per day (550 EUR for the whole duration of the summer school).
Don’t miss this opportunity of building your future career in conservation biology!
Register online: www.cbcd.eu/gss

Spotlight on Student Research: A Call for Submissions

As part of the Society for Conservation Biology’s continuing drive to recognize the outstanding research being conducted by student members, the Student Affairs Committee (SAC) in collaboration with the Newsletter Editor is pleased to announce the Spotlight on Student Research. Each issue of the Newsletter will focus on one of our student members (undergrad and postgrad) whose research exemplifies the mission of the Society for Conservation Biology to advance the science and practice of conserving the Earth's biological diversity. This profile will feature details of their research, as well as a broader description of their involvement in conservation biology. Those profiled will be competitively selected by a panel of judges based on the quality of their research and their contribution to conservation efforts. Each issue will showcase a student from one of our regional sections: Africa, Austral and Neotropical America, Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America. Joining a section is free for SCB members, visithttp://www.conbio.org/Sections/ for info.

We encourage all student members to submit an application (for those who are not members, details on joining can be found at https://www.conbio.org/Join/). We also encourage anyone who knows of suitable candidates to pass on details of this opportunity.Applications are continually accepted and should be submitted as an attached document in the format shown here: http://scb-students.wikispaces.com/Student+Spotlight! to scb.student.spotlight@gmail.com with the e-mail subject “spotlight” followed by the section name. We will notify the results by email and the winner student’s research will be profiled on the SCB website and on the SCB newsletter. We will periodically assess all applications from a section and nominate the winner for that section.The first section to be evaluated is Europe (applications collected the 15^th March and winner chosen by 31^st March). The following section will be Oceania (applications collected 15^th June and winner chosen by 30^th June). The subsequent order is to be defined. We will accept the following formats: Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, Word Perfect, Plain Text, Rich Text Format (rtf). Both text and figures of the submission should be in a single document.

Piero Visconti chair Student Affairs Subcommittee

Nora Bynum chair Education and Student Affairs Committee

Luigi Boitani president of SCB

The Student Affair Committee of the European Section is created!

During the last meeting of the Board of Directors of the European Section of the SCB, in February 2010, the Student's Affair Committee of the European Section of the SCB has been officially recognized.

We, at the Student Affair Committee, want to be the voice of students in the Europe Section, promoting student participation in the Society, in its activities and in conservation biology in general.

For this, we wish to create opportunities for students such as promoting interaction with the European community of conservation professionals, organizing workshops on particularly relevant topics (e.g., grant writing, publishing, paper reviewing, teaching), and facilitate student participation at ECCB meetings, starting with the upcoming one in Glasgow.

We have our web page (http://scb-students.wikispaces.com) which we update with upcoming events in the conservation field such as congresses, courses or student competitions, career opportunities, and also current job openings and a list of grant and scholarship funds, along with current news. The “Wiki” format makes it easy for anyone to add their own event or news, so anyone should feel free to use it and announce their own news, event or position. There is also an option to receive notices (RSS feed) whenever new activities or news are placed in the site.

We also make use of the existing Europe Section mailing list (europe@listserv.conbio.org) to send student related news and activities. So if you are interested make sure to subscribe!


The first chair of the SAC-ES is Nuno Curado. He currently works for an environmental NGO in Portugal, in a LIFE+ project. He got to know the SCB-ES in their Summer Schools and in the ECCB’s, which he believes are great ways for students to become involved in conservation and in the Society.


We are currently looking for people who are interested in joining and making an active contribution to the SAC-ES. So, if you are a student, professor, recent graduate, or motivated for student issues, send me an email to nfcurado@hotmail.com and join us!


On behalf of the SAC-ES
Nuno Curado

Be a Europe Section representative in the global SCB student committee!

The SCB Europe Section is looking for a student candidate willing to
participate in the global SCB Student Affairs Committee as a Europe Section
representative. (http://www.conbio.org/Activities/Committees/) The Committee manages the student awards each year for the annual meeting; maintain and develop new web-based resources for students and have recently launched a new 'spotlight on student research' in the SCB newsletter.

The Europe Section representative is expected to actively represent European perspectives on the global committee and to regularly report to the Europe Section Board of Directors. In addition, a leading role in the establishment of a Europe Section Student Affairs Committee is expected.

The Student Affairs Committee representative is a voluntary position. If you are interested, please send your CV and a few sentences of your motives tothe europe@conbio.org address by 30th April.