Biology subjects

Mumby, H. S.

Publications and source records attributed to Mumby, H. S..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Drivers of space use in a large semi-urban feral ungulate under seasonally fluctuating resource conditions

Resource scarcity prompts animals to adjust their space use in ways that enhance their survival. In wild herbivores, seasonal habitat shifts are well studied; however, little is known about how large herbivores navigate human-dominated landscapes under fluctuating resource conditions. In Hong Kong, feral water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis; henceforth buffalo) experience declines in body condition score during the dry season. While buffalo expand spatial ranges in the dry season, whether this expansion reflects access to improved ecological conditions, and how key anthropogenic factors (like distance to roads and human density) further influence space use, remains understudied. We observed six buffalo herds (n=92 known individuals) across one wet (July-September 2023) and one dry (January-March 2024) season. We recorded herd locations and extracted remotely sensed habitat and environmental data. We used Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as a proxy of vegetation productivity and included elevation, distance to roads, and human density as additional predictors. We hypothesized that dry-season space use would shift toward higher vegetation productivity, and that anthropogenic factors would have weak influence on space use due to the adaption of buffalo in human-dominated landscapes. We found that buffalo used areas with higher vegetation productivity and higher elevation in the dry season than in the wet. Distance to roads and human density had no detectable effect. Our findings reveal that space use by a large herbivore like buffalo in human-dominated landscapes is strategic and resource driven, and that these seasonal shifts may have important implications for local biodiversity and human-animal interactions.

zoology↗

bioRxiv2025

Adaptive behavioural strategies to seasonal challenges by a semi-urban feral ungulate

Seasonality, or temporal shifts between wet and dry seasons, profoundly affects the behavioural ecology of animals, particularly large herbivores, in (sub-) tropical climatic conditions. Behavioural strategies are crucial for overcoming challenges associated with seasonality. Group-level strategies to seasonality in the wild have received considerable attention, yet little is known about how large herbivores in human-dominated landscapes respond to seasonal challenges. Moreover, focusing solely on groups can obscure how individual animals of different sexes, ages, and personalities respond. We investigated a semi-urban feral population of a large ungulate, the water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) (N=71) during a wet and a dry season. Individual body condition was non-invasively assessed to evaluate whether seasonality impacts physiology. To identify behavioural strategies, we collected data on feeding (grazing and browsing) and space use (core area and home range). Further, using a subset (n=30), we investigated the associations between personality and space use in the dry season. Body condition scores were highest during the wet season and then declined during the dry season, indicating an impact of seasonality on physiology. Older individuals were more affected than younger ones. Browsing increased during the dry compared to the wet season. While there was no change in core area use, home ranges expanded in the dry compared to the wet season. Regardless of season, females utilised home ranges larger than males. Females exhibiting higher social tension personalities had smaller core areas and home ranges than those with lower social tension. We show that buffalo employ behavioural strategies to overcome challenges associated with seasonality, and these strategies are contingent on intrinsic factors: sex, age, and personality. Our findings offer insights into the ecological principles -habitat use, resource utilisation, and competition- that govern the behavioural ecology of herbivores, and have implications for conservation and welfare in increasingly human-dominated and climate-sensitive landscapes.

zoology↗

bioRxiv2019

Insights from two decades of the Student Conference on Conservation Science

Conservation science is a crisis-oriented discipline focused on delivering robust answers to reducing human impacts on nature. To explore how the field might have changed during the past two decades, we analyzed 3,245 applications for oral presentations submitted to the Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) in Cambridge, UK. SCCS has been running every year since 2000, aims for global representation by providing bursaries to early-career conservationists from lower-income countries, and has never had a thematic focus, beyond conservation in the broadest sense. We found that the majority of submissions to SCCS were based on primary biological data collection from local scale field studies in the tropics, contrary to established literature which highlights gaps in tropical research. Our results showed a small increase over time in submissions framed around how nature benefits people as well as a small increase in submissions integrating social science. Our findings also suggest that students and early-career conservationists could provide pathways to increased availability of data from the tropics and for addressing well-known biases in the published literature towards wealthier countries. We hope this research will motivate efforts to support student projects, ensuring data and results are published and made publicly available.

ecology↗