Biology subjects

Jongejans, E.

Publications and source records attributed to Jongejans, E..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Phenology and flower species availability define wild bee communities on river embankments

River embankments cover extensive areas in estuaries worldwide, yet their potential for pollinator conservation remains largely unexplored. Even more so than road verges, these embankments may offer widespread habitat for pollinators due to their size and sun-facing warm slopes. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of bee communities from 157 dike grasslands along the lower branches of the Meuse and Rhine rivers in the Netherlands in relation to vegetation composition and landscape characteristics. We encountered nearly half (156) of all Dutch bee species. Almost 10% of all individuals belonged to red-listed species, especially in early spring when we observed rich ground nesting bee communities with their associated kleptoparasites. Wild bee abundance and diversity increased with more flowering plant species present, but saturated at low flower species richness. This early saturation suggests that even modest conservation efforts could effectively alleviate floral resource limitation for pollinators. In contrast to the overall pattern, red-listed species occurrence increased with flower diversity without saturating effects and correlated stronger with landscape level factors. Together, these results highlight the unique conservational value of river embankments for wild bees and illustrate the unused potential at many dike grasslands worldwide.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Non-detection during excursions by citizen scientists modeled as a function of weather, season, list length, and individual preferences

INTRODUCTIONCitizen science is an increasingly valuable source of information about biodiversity. It is challenging to use this information for analysis of distribution and trends. The lack of a protocol leads to bias in observations and therefore data are not representative. The bias is a consequence of unequal detection probabilities, caused by different preferences and habits of citizen scientists. METHODSWe propose to incorporate characteristics of these excursions in analyses of data collected by citizen scientists to improve estimates of the probability that a species is not detected and reported, even though it does occur. By limiting these models to areas that are known to be occupied, detection can be modeled separately without considering variation in occupancy. We apply this idea to 150 common species in the Southwest Delta of The Netherlands, and illustrate the data selection, the modeling process and the results using four species. RESULTSThe strongest features to predict detection are the number of species during a visit (list length), earlier observations of the target species by the same observer, and the day of year. We compare three approaches to predict the total non-detection probability that takes all visits to an area into account. Predictions based on only the number of visits were outperformed by predictions that also take the list length into account. Our predictions based on all features combined consistently beat both other approaches, across all 10 species groups that were compared. DISCUSSIONWe thus show that explicitly modelling the characteristics of all visits to an occupied area results in estimation of non-detection probabilities, while providing insight into the causes of detection and reporting bias. Furthermore, predictions of our model provide a basis for quantifying the sampling effort in each area, which is a promising first step to correct bias in citizen science data when aiming to map a species distribution.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2023

A standard protocol to report discrete stage-structured demographic information

O_LIStage-based demographic methods, such as matrix population models (MPMs), are powerful tools used to address a broad range of fundamental questions in ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation science. Accordingly, MPMs now exist for over 3,000 species worldwide. These data are being digitised as an ongoing process and periodically released into two large open-access online repositories: the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database. During the last decade, data archiving and curation of COMPADRE and COMADRE, and subsequent comparative research, have revealed pronounced variation in how MPMs are parameterized and reported. C_LIO_LIHere, we summarise current issues related to the parameterisation and reporting of MPMs that arise most frequently and outline how they affect MPM construction, analysis, and interpretation. To quantify variation in how MPMs are reported, we present results from a survey identifying key aspects of MPMs that are frequently unreported in manuscripts. We then screen COMPADRE and COMADRE to quantify how often key pieces of information are omitted from manuscripts using MPMs. C_LIO_LIOver 80% of surveyed researchers (n=60) state a clear benefit to adopting more standardised methodologies for reporting MPMs. Furthermore, over 85% of the 300 MPMs assessed from COMPADRE and COMADRE omitted one or more elements that are key to their accurate interpretation. Based on these insights, we identify fundamental issues that can arise from MPM construction and communication and provide suggestions to improve clarity, reproducibility, and future research utilising MPMs and their required metadata. To fortify reproducibility and empower researchers to take full advantage of their demographic data, we introduce a standardized protocol to present MPMs in publications. This standard is linked to www.compadre-db.org, so that authors wishing to archive their MPMs can do so prior to submission of publications, following examples from other open-access repositories such as DRYAD, Figshare, and Zenodo. C_LIO_LICombining and standardising MPMs parameterized from populations around the globe and across the tree of life opens up powerful research opportunities in evolutionary biology, ecology, and conservation research. However, this potential can only be fully realised by adopting standardised methods to ensure reproducibility. C_LI

ecology↗