Related papers: Optimal land conservation decisions for multiple s…

Molecular ecology uses molecular genetic data to answer traditional ecological questions in biogeography and biodiversity among others. Several ecological principles, such as the niche hypothesis and the competitive exclusions, are based on…

Bird migration is an adaptive behavior ultimately aiming at optimizing survival and reproductive success. We propose an optimal switching model to study bird migration, where birds' migration behaviors can be efficiently modeled as…

To understand the biodiversity of an ecosystem cannot be understood by solely analyzing the pair relations of competing species. Instead, we should consider multi-point interactions because the presence of a third party could change the…

The recent promotion of sustainable urban planning combined with a growing need for public interventions to improve well-being and health have led to an increased collective interest for green spaces in and around cities. In particular,…

We introduce a model of traveling agents ({\it e.g.} frugivorous animals) who feed on randomly located vegetation patches and disperse their seeds, thus modifying the spatial distribution of resources in the long term. It is assumed that…

Efficient on-device models have become attractive for near-sensor insight generation, of particular interest to the ecological conservation community. For this reason, deep learning researchers are proposing more approaches to develop lower…

Plant breeding programs use data obtained from multi-environment selection experiments to produce improved varieties with the ultimate aim of maintaining high levels of genetic gain. Selection accuracy can be improved with the use of…

We propose an algorithm named best-scored random forest for binary classification problems. The terminology "best-scored" means to select the one with the best empirical performance out of a certain number of purely random tree candidates…

When a population inhabits an inhomogeneous environment, the fitness value of traits can vary with the position in the environment. Gene flow caused by random mating can nevertheless prevent that a sexually reproducing population splits…

Evolutionary changes impacts interactions among populations and can disrupt ecosystems by driving extinctions or by collapsing population oscillations, posing significant challenges to biodiversity conservation. This study addresses the…

Thanks to recent technological advances, it is now possible to track with an unprecedented precision and for long periods of time the movement patterns of many living organisms in their habitat. The increasing amount of data available on…

Conservation science depends on an accurate understanding of what's happening in a given ecosystem. How many species live there? What is the makeup of the population? How is that changing over time? Species Distribution Modeling (SDM) seeks…

Species augmentation is one of the methods used to promote biodiversity and prevent endangered species loss and extinction. The current work applies discrete-time optimal control theory to two models of species augmentation for…

Understanding the architectural subtleties of ecological networks, believed to confer them enhanced stability and robustness, is a subject of outmost relevance. Mutualistic interactions have been profusely studied and their corresponding…

Global optimization of decision trees is a long-standing challenge in combinatorial optimization, yet such models play an important role in interpretable machine learning. Although the problem has been investigated for several decades, only…

Data acquisition in animal ecology is rapidly accelerating due to inexpensive and accessible sensors such as smartphones, drones, satellites, audio recorders and bio-logging devices. These new technologies and the data they generate hold…

Anthropogenic activity threatens biodiversity through climate change, habitat fragmentation, and increasing frequency and scale of disturbance. Various theoretical studies have sought to shed light on how these factors could promote or…

We propose a model of multispecies populations surviving on distributed resources. System dynamics are investigated under changes in abiotic factors such as the climate, as parameterized through environmental temperature. In particular, we…

In this paper we propose a family of algorithms combining tree-clustering with conditioning that trade space for time. Such algorithms are useful for reasoning in probabilistic and deterministic networks as well as for accomplishing…

Conservation efforts in green security domains to protect wildlife and forests are constrained by the limited availability of defenders (i.e., patrollers), who must patrol vast areas to protect from attackers (e.g., poachers or illegal…