PROJECTS

Estimation of vital rates for Sooty Terns:

Under the leadership of Dr. William B. Robertson, park biologist for the Everglades National Park, and his wife, Biologist Betty Robertson, the Park initiated in 1959 a sooty tern (Sterna fuscata) mass banding program on the Dry Tortugas National Park. During 26 years over 100,000 juvenile and adult sooty terns were banded. This became one of the most extensive capture-recapture dataset for the species. In 1972, Betty and Bill established an intensive study plot on Bush Key to explore parental relationships, nesting behavior and individual vital rates for the species. Since then, more than 4,500 sooty terns have been banded with numbered aluminum and color bands. Today, in collaboration with Biologist Oron Sonny Bass we are using the dataset to develop hierarchical Bayesian models to explore vital rates for the colony, as well as to understand the effect of environmental and human induced variability on those (for more information click here).

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Bighorn Sheep Population Dynamics:

In 1975, the Mexican Government, in collaboration with the New Mexico Game and Fish Department, introduced 20 desert bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis mexicana) to Tiburon Island, Gulf of California, Mexico. Since 1995, Unidos Para la Conservacion, A. C. (UPC), under the direction of Carlos Manterola and Patricio Robles Gil, together with Dr. Rodrigo Medellin from the Ecology Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the General Direction of Wildlife of the National Institute of Ecology (INE) initiated a research and conservation program with the population. These efforts were coordinated with the Seri (Kun Kaak) government, an ethnic group who historically has inhabited the Island and the territories on the Sonoran mainland. Our role was to use the aerial survey data to determine the effect of extractions on the population, and it’s interactions with environmental stochastic processes, particularly droughts, and density dependent processes (for more information click here).

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Jaguar Habitat Modeling:

In 1997, Antonio Rivera from Ecosafaris, Carlos Manterola, Director of Unidos Para la Conservacion, A. C. (UPC) and Dr Gerardo Ceballos and his crew from the Ecology Institute of the UNAM initiated the most ambitious jaguar tracking project in the Mayan Forests of Quintana Roo and Campeche, Mexico. More recently, UPC and Ecosafaris started a parallel project in the Peten region of Guatemala, in collaboration with Defensores de la Naturaleza and Propeten, two renowned conservation NGO’s in the region. Today, 9 jaguars have been equipped with GPS tracking collars. With this information Dalia Amor Conde, a Ph D candidate in Ecology at Duke University, with Fernando’s support, are developing probabilistic animal movement and habitat models to determine how much habitat is left for the species and to what extent these large predators can be used as umbrella species in the region (for more information click here).

Bighorn sheep and jaguar pictures: Patricio Robles Gil