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Scientific investigations before and during the COVID-19 lockdown in Berlin in 2020 show that urban red squirrels are extremely flexible in adjusting their diurnal activities to the presence of humans, domestic dogs, domestic cats, and predators such as beech martens. With the help of wildlife cameras, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and citizen scientists recorded red squirrel activities in private gardens and properties over longer periods of time and compared them between the different times of day and seasons. In a paper in the scientific journal “Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution” the team describes the spatial and temporal niches occupied by the red squirrels, found that they were more active during the lockdown than before and conclude that red squirrels fear domestic cats in particular.

In order to use remote locations to record and assess the behaviour of wildlife and environmental conditions, the GAIA Initiative developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that reliably and automatically classifies behaviours of white-backed vultures using animal tag data. As scavengers, vultures always look for the next carcass. With the help of tagged animals and a second AI algorithm, the scientists can now automatically locate carcasses across vast landscapes. The algorithms described in a recently published article in the “Journal of Applied Ecology” are therefore key components of an early warning system that can be used to quickly and reliably recognise critical changes or incidents in the environment such as droughts, disease outbreaks or the illegal killing of wildlife.

Swallows infected with parasites move less and in smaller ranges than healthy ones – with detrimental effects on their foraging success and their survival. As a result, infected individuals foraged in less productive areas, such as cultivated farmland, clearly avoided by their healthy conspecifics. Although infected swallows show no externally recognisable signs of infection, scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the University of Potsdam now demonstrate the negative effects of these infections using the high-resolution tracking system ATLAS. This system records precise position data of swallows at intervals of one second using ultra-light transmitters. The results were published in the journal “Communications Biology”.

Since wolves returned to Germany 20 years ago, they have spread quickly in many parts of the country. The rapid increase in the number of wolves was due to high survival and reproduction rates in areas with favourable environmental conditions. This is the result of an analysis carried out by the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in collaboration with the LUPUS Institute, the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), and the Senckenberg Center for Wildlife Genetics. The probability of survival for wolves during the period analysed was higher than anywhere else in the world. However, the expansion phase will end as soon as the carrying capacity of suitable German landscapes are reached – at which point survival rates can be expected to fall, according to the scientific team in a new paper in the scientific journal “Wildlife Biology”.

Some bat species are among the world champions of seasonal migration in the animal kingdom. Leisler’s bat, for example, which weighs between 12 and 22 grams, flies from central or Eastern Europe to the Mediterranean every late summer – and back in spring. Until now, it has only been possible to trace these approximately 1,500-kilometre routes on the basis of sporadic findings of ringed individuals. A scientific team from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) has now equipped Leisler’s bats with tiny transmitters as part of a larger investigation and reconstructed in detail a recent flight of a female from Brandenburg in north-eastern Germany to Italy – the route to her wintering grounds led via Munich, the Alps and Milan to Parma.

An international science team has made significant strides in understanding river flow dynamics. Scientific findings leveraged isotope hydrology techniques such as measuring stable isotopes in water molecules to elucidate the contributions of various water sources to river flow, offering critical insights for ecosystem management and hydrological risk assessment. This latest research is published in the prestigious journal Nature Water and is a collaboration of scientists from the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna, the Federal Institute of Hydrology, Germany, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

The European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) pilot project reports its success in uniting scientists from across Europe to produce high-quality reference genomes for 98 species. This marks a significant milestone in the quest to create a high-quality reference genome database for all European animals, plants and fungi. The pilot project was co-initiated in 2021 by the then ERGA chair Dr Camila Mazzoni from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) with input from the entire community. This continental effort sets the stage for a new, inclusive and equitable model for biodiversity genomics, as reported in a research article published today in the journal “npj Biodiversity”.

In the face of the global biodiversity crisis, more and more biobanks are being set up to safeguard and potentially restore genetic diversity. Preserved tissue or cells allow scientists and conservationists to overcome spatial and even temporal fragmentations of dwindling wildlife populations and employ assisted reproduction technologies – as long as biobanks can be used in a safe and ethically appropriate manner. In a new scientific paper in the journal “Cryobiology”, the BioRescue team systematically evaluates these ethical considerations related to, among others, animal welfare, sample ownership and good scientific practice. The team also presents a modification of its “ETHAS” tool as a clear, easy-to-adopt and standardised technique for a structured and organised ethical assessment and decision making in the context of biobanking.