@article{BrandesSicksBerger2021,
  author    = {Brandes, Stefanie and Sicks, Florian and Berger, Anne},
  title     = {Behaviour classification on giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis) using machine learning algorithms on triaxial acceleration data of two commonly used GPS devices and its possible application for their management and conservation},
  series = {Sensors},
  volume    = {21},
  journal   = {Sensors},
  number    = {6},
  publisher = {MDPI},
  address   = {Basel},
  issn      = {1424-8220},
  doi       = {10.3390/s21062229},
  pages     = {22},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Averting today's loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services can be achieved through conservation efforts, especially of keystone species. Giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis) play an important role in sustaining Africa's ecosystems, but are 'vulnerable' according to the IUCN Red List since 2016. Monitoring an animal's behavior in the wild helps to develop and assess their conservation management. One mechanism for remote tracking of wildlife behavior is to attach accelerometers to animals to record their body movement. We tested two different commercially available high-resolution accelerometers, e-obs and Africa Wildlife Tracking (AWT), attached to the top of the heads of three captive giraffes and analyzed the accuracy of automatic behavior classifications, focused on the Random Forests algorithm. For both accelerometers, behaviors of lower variety in head and neck movements could be better predicted (i.e., feeding above eye level, mean prediction accuracy e-obs/AWT: 97.6\%/99.7\%; drinking: 96.7\%/97.0\%) than those with a higher variety of body postures (such as standing: 90.7-91.0\%/75.2-76.7\%; rumination: 89.6-91.6\%/53.5-86.5\%). Nonetheless both devices come with limitations and especially the AWT needs technological adaptations before applying it on animals in the wild. Nevertheless, looking at the prediction results, both are promising accelerometers for behavioral classification of giraffes. Therefore, these devices when applied to free-ranging animals, in combination with GPS tracking, can contribute greatly to the conservation of giraffes.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{HampfNendelStreyetal.2021,
  author    = {Hampf, Anna and Nendel, Claas and Strey, Simone and Strey, Robert},
  title     = {Biotic yield losses in the Southern Amazon, Brazil},
  series = {Frontiers in plant science : FPLS},
  volume    = {12},
  journal   = {Frontiers in plant science : FPLS},
  publisher = {Frontiers Media},
  address   = {Lausanne},
  issn      = {1664-462X},
  doi       = {10.3389/fpls.2021.621168},
  pages     = {16},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Pathogens and animal pests (P\&A) are a major threat to global food security as they directly affect the quantity and quality of food. The Southern Amazon, Brazil's largest domestic region for soybean, maize and cotton production, is particularly vulnerable to the outbreak of P\&A due to its (sub)tropical climate and intensive farming systems. However, little is known about the spatial distribution of P\&A and the related yield losses. Machine learning approaches for the automated recognition of plant diseases can help to overcome this research gap. The main objectives of this study are to (1) evaluate the performance of Convolutional Neural Networks (ConvNets) in classifying P\&A, (2) map the spatial distribution of P\&A in the Southern Amazon, and (3) quantify perceived yield and economic losses for the main soybean and maize P\&A. The objectives were addressed by making use of data collected with the smartphone application Plantix. The core of the app's functioning is the automated recognition of plant diseases via ConvNets. Data on expected yield losses were gathered through a short survey included in an "expert" version of the application, which was distributed among agronomists. Between 2016 and 2020, Plantix users collected approximately 78,000 georeferenced P\&A images in the Southern Amazon. The study results indicate a high performance of the trained ConvNets in classifying 420 different crop-disease combinations. Spatial distribution maps and expert-based yield loss estimates indicate that maize rust, bacterial stalk rot and the fall armyworm are among the most severe maize P\&A, whereas soybean is mainly affected by P\&A like anthracnose, downy mildew, frogeye leaf spot, stink bugs and brown spot. Perceived soybean and maize yield losses amount to 12 and 16\%, respectively, resulting in annual yield losses of approximately 3.75 million tonnes for each crop and economic losses of US\$2 billion for both crops together. The high level of accuracy of the trained ConvNets, when paired with widespread use from following a citizen-science approach, results in a data source that will shed new light on yield loss estimates, e.g., for the analysis of yield gaps and the development of measures to minimise them.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{CeulemansGuillGaedke2021,
  author    = {Ceulemans, Ruben and Guill, Christian and Gaedke, Ursula},
  title     = {Top predators govern multitrophic diversity effects in tritrophic food webs},
  series = {Ecology : a publication of the Ecological Society of America},
  volume    = {102},
  journal   = {Ecology : a publication of the Ecological Society of America},
  number    = {7},
  publisher = {Wiley},
  address   = {Hoboken},
  issn      = {0012-9658},
  doi       = {10.1002/ecy.3379},
  pages     = {16},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {It is well known that functional diversity strongly affects ecosystem functioning. However, even in rather simple model communities consisting of only two or, at best, three trophic levels, the relationship between multitrophic functional diversity and ecosystem functioning appears difficult to generalize, because of its high contextuality. In this study, we considered several differently structured tritrophic food webs, in which the amount of functional diversity was varied independently on each trophic level. To achieve generalizable results, largely independent of parametrization, we examined the outcomes of 128,000 parameter combinations sampled from ecologically plausible intervals, with each tested for 200 randomly sampled initial conditions. Analysis of our data was done by training a random forest model. This method enables the identification of complex patterns in the data through partial dependence graphs, and the comparison of the relative influence of model parameters, including the degree of diversity, on food-web properties. We found that bottom-up and top-down effects cascade simultaneously throughout the food web, intimately linking the effects of functional diversity of any trophic level to the amount of diversity of other trophic levels, which may explain the difficulty in unifying results from previous studies. Strikingly, only with high diversity throughout the whole food web, different interactions synergize to ensure efficient exploitation of the available nutrients and efficient biomass transfer to higher trophic levels, ultimately leading to a high biomass and production on the top level. The temporal variation of biomass showed a more complex pattern with increasing multitrophic diversity: while the system initially became less variable, eventually the temporal variation rose again because of the increasingly complex dynamical patterns. Importantly, top predator diversity and food-web parameters affecting the top trophic level were of highest importance to determine the biomass and temporal variability of any trophic level. Overall, our study reveals that the mechanisms by which diversity influences ecosystem functioning are affected by every part of the food web, hampering the extrapolation of insights from simple monotrophic or bitrophic systems to complex natural food webs.},
  language  = {en}
}