TY - JOUR A1 - Reil, Daniela A1 - Rosenfeld, Ulrike M. A1 - Imholt, Christian A1 - Schmidt, Sabrina A1 - Ulrich, Rainer G. A1 - Eccard, Jana A1 - Jacob, Jens T1 - Puumala hantavirus infections in bank vole populations BT - host and virus dynamics in Central Europe JF - BMC ecology N2 - Background In Europe, bank voles (Myodes glareolus) are widely distributed and can transmit Puumala virus (PUUV) to humans, which causes a mild to moderate form of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, called nephropathia epidemica. Uncovering the link between host and virus dynamics can help to prevent human PUUV infections in the future. Bank voles were live trapped three times a year in 2010–2013 in three woodland plots in each of four regions in Germany. Bank vole population density was estimated and blood samples collected to detect PUUV specific antibodies. Results We demonstrated that fluctuation of PUUV seroprevalence is dependent not only on multi-annual but also on seasonal dynamics of rodent host abundance. Moreover, PUUV infection might affect host fitness, because seropositive individuals survived better from spring to summer than uninfected bank voles. Individual space use was independent of PUUV infections. Conclusions Our study provides robust estimations of relevant patterns and processes of the dynamics of PUUV and its rodent host in Central Europe, which are highly important for the future development of predictive models for human hantavirus infection risk KW - Myodes glareolus KW - Population dynamics KW - Puumala virus seroprevalence KW - Space use KW - Survival Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12898-017-0118-z SN - 1472-6785 VL - 17 PB - BioMed Central CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Radchuk, Viktoriia A1 - Johst, Karin A1 - Groeneveld, Jürgen A1 - Turlure, Camille A1 - Grimm, Volker A1 - Schtickzelle, Nicolas T1 - Appropriate resolution in time and model structure for population viability analysis: Insights from a butterfly metapopulation JF - : an international journal N2 - The importance of a careful choice of the appropriate scale for studying ecological phenomena has been stressed repeatedly. However, issues of spatial scale in metapopulation dynamics received much more attention compared to temporal scale. Moreover, multiple calls were made to carefully choose the appropriate model structure for Population Viability Analysis (PVA). We assessed the effect of using coarser resolution in time and model structure on population dynamics. For this purpose, we compared outcomes of two PVA models differing in their time step: daily individual-based model (dIBM) and yearly stage-based model (ySBM), loaded with empirical data on a well-known metapopulation of the butterfly Boloria eunomia. Both models included the same environmental drivers of population dynamics that were previously identified as being the most important for this species. Under temperature change scenarios, both models yielded the same qualitative scenario ranking, but they quite substantially differed quantitatively with dIBM being more pessimistic in absolute viability measures. We showed that these differences stemmed from inter-individual heterogeneity in dIBM allowing for phenological shifts of individual appearance. We conclude that a finer temporal resolution and an individual-based model structure allow capturing the essential mechanisms necessary to go beyond mere PVA scenario ranking. We encourage researchers to carefully chose the temporal resolution and structure of their model aiming at (1) depicting the processes important for (meta)population dynamics of the species and (2) implementing the environmental change scenarios expected for their study system in the future, using the temporal resolution at which such changes are predicted to operate. KW - Temporal grain KW - Model complexity KW - Model comparison KW - Population dynamics KW - Individual-based model KW - Stage-based model Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2013.12.004 SN - 0006-3207 SN - 1873-2917 VL - 169 SP - 345 EP - 354 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Liu, Chun A1 - Sibly, Richard M. A1 - Grimm, Volker A1 - Thorbek, Pernille T1 - Linking pesticide exposure and spatial dynamics an individual-based model of wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) populations in agricultural landscapes JF - Ecological modelling : international journal on ecological modelling and engineering and systems ecolog N2 - The wood mouse is a common and abundant species in agricultural landscape and is a focal species in pesticide risk assessment. Empirical studies on the ecology of the wood mouse have provided sufficient information for the species to be modelled mechanistically. An individual-based model was constructed to explicitly represent the locations and movement patterns of individual mice. This together with the schedule of pesticide application allows prediction of the risk to the population from pesticide exposure. The model included life-history traits of wood mice as well as typical landscape dynamics in agricultural farmland in the UK. The model obtains a good fit to the available population data and is fit for risk assessment purposes. It can help identify spatio-temporal situations with the largest potential risk of exposure and enables extrapolation from individual-level endpoints to population-level effects. Largest risk of exposure to pesticides was found when good crop growth in the "sink" fields coincided with high "source" population densities in the hedgerows. KW - Population dynamics KW - Pesticides KW - Ecological risk assessment KW - Habitat choice KW - Agent-based model KW - NetLogo Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2012.09.016 SN - 0304-3800 VL - 248 IS - 2 SP - 92 EP - 102 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Emary, Clive A1 - Malchow, Anne-Kathleen T1 - Stability-instability transition in tripartite merged ecological networks JF - Journal of mathematical biology N2 - Although ecological networks are typically constructed based on a single type of interaction, e.g. trophic interactions in a food web, a more complete picture of ecosystem composition and functioning arises from merging networks of multiple interaction types. In this work, we consider tripartite networks constructed by merging two bipartite networks, one mutualistic and one antagonistic. Taking the interactions within each sub-network to be distributed randomly, we consider the stability of the dynamics of the network based on the spectrum of its community matrix. In the asymptotic limit of a large number of species, we show that the spectrum undergoes an eigenvalue phase transition, which leads to an abrupt destabilisation of the network as the ratio of mutualists to antagonists is increased. We also derive results that show how this transition is manifest in networks of finite size, as well as when disorder is introduced in the segregation of the two interaction types. Our random-matrix results will serve as a baseline for understanding the behaviour of merged networks with more realistic structures and/or more detailed dynamics. KW - Random matrices KW - Phase transition KW - Random eigenvalues KW - Population dynamics KW - Community matrix KW - Ecological network Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00285-022-01783-7 SN - 0303-6812 SN - 1432-1416 VL - 85 IS - 3 PB - Springer CY - Heidelberg ER -