Main research projects
Main research projects
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Last update: Jan 2025
DeerImpact & BioDEERversity2 (2024-2028)
DeerImpact & BioDEERversity2 (2024-2028)
Our previously funded DAFM-funded projects such as SMARTDEER (link to dedicated website) and BioDEERversity have provided a clear picture of deer distribution and potential impact on Irish ecosystems, and it is now a national priority to define deer population targets to reduce impact to Irish biodiversity while maintaining healthy and sustainable deer populations.
To tackle this challenge, we will combine multi-disciplinary expertise and novel methodologies to empirically support policy makers.
Our project will set up deer monitoring stations across the entire nation particularly focusing on deer hotspots as well as areas with multiple species occurring simultaneously. This is a nationally-coordinated effort with all key stakeholders involved.
We will estimate accurate and precise deer densities using spatial capture-recapture techniques (using faecal DNA) as well as alternative approaches such as camera traps (multiple methods). We will also study the diet of the 3 species of deer looking at faecal contents (genetic barcoding) and investigate how diet and behaviour change when multiple species occur simultaneously, potentially leading to intra-species competition and locally increased forest damage. At the same time, we will measure forest browsing as well as grassland grazing particularly looking at tree survival, growth rate, browsing intensity and grassland yield as a function of deer species and related densities.
Our project will define the precise link between deer density and impact on Irish ecosystems and provide precise indications of target deer populations across Ireland. Thank you very much for contributing to our project with support, access to monitoring sites and related logistics, and constructive criticism.
Feel free to browse the issue of Forestry and Energy (pages 58-62) with our vision on deer management in Ireland: link
Moving badgers (2025-2027)
Moving badgers (2025-2027)
Moving Badgers - Studying badger movement and interaction rate with both co-specifics and cattle to unravel their role in the spread of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) across Irish ecosystems.
Contact rates and the specific mode of transmission remain largely unknown for between nearby badger clans and with cattle, particularly as a function of environmental and population parameters. Understanding when, where, and to what degree, badgers encounter individuals from different clans, and with cattle, are research priorities to understanding the spread of bTB, and ultimately manage it.
By using state-of-the-art high-resolution GPS tracking, LoRaWAN network transmission, and Bluetooth technology able to detect badger-badger contact rates, we aim to track 120 badgers across badger setts and understand how environment and badger density affect badger-badger and badger-cattle interactions and contact rates.
These high-resolution movement data, combined with bTB farm outbreak data, will allow us to generate highly precise models able to predict the likelihood of disease transmission and outbreaks across Irish ecosystems, with clear policy indication on where and when concentrate future vaccination efforts.
At the same time, our Agent-based models (ABMs) will answer a specific epidemiological question regarding the impact of bTB management on Irish badger populations, i.e., how do badger metapopulation dynamics and infection levels change under varying wildlife management (i.e., no management, culling, vaccination)?
Throughout our simulations and dynamic interactions with the field component of our research, our goal is to provide tangible evidence to support policy changes over multiple spatial and temporal scales by predicting changes to badger populations and related risk of bTB outbreaks in response to culling or vaccination over time.
Conservation of the desert-dwelling Angolan giraffe in northern Namibia and Masai giraffe is southern Kenya (2018-ongoing)
Conservation of the desert-dwelling Angolan giraffe in northern Namibia and Masai giraffe is southern Kenya (2018-ongoing)
Adams Kipchumba is currently monitoring Masai Giraffe in sounthern Kenya and his PhD's goal is to estimate giraffe abundance and threats in the area, understand the impact of fencing on movement, and build giraffe connectivity models for the region to improve movement across subpopulations.
By means of direct behavioural observations combined with satellite telemetry, we have been working on the movement ecology and the social behaviour of the Angolan Giraffe in the Namib desert. The goal of this project is to collect empirical data to support the next steps in giraffe conservation in Africa. New students are joining this effort: stay tuned for new peer-reviewed publications produced by this work carried out in collaboration with Giraffe Conservation Foundation.
Deer behavioural ecology and human-wildlife conflict in the Phoenix Park, Dublin (2018-ongoing)
Deer behavioural ecology and human-wildlife conflict in the Phoenix Park, Dublin (2018-ongoing)
The research projects we are running in the Phoenix Park are cutting edge, original, and are meant to change the way we monitor, observe, manage and conserve wildlife. Lessons learnt here have the potential to stir wildlife monitoring and management in completely different ecological contexts across the globe. For instance, we are developing novel approaches to estimate body size, weight, horn, and antler size in large herbivores using non-invasive remote photogrammetry, i.e. the extraction of real-world measurements from photographic data. Students involved in the fallow deer research are testing recent advances with technology, dealing with new wildlife-human conflicts arising in urban areas, and measuring behaviour in deer at a resolution never attempted before. Here we are training the next generation of wildlife biologists and managers. We have set up the scene for a fascinating longitudinal study on fallow deer, with more than 75% of deer of the population individually identifiable by unique colour-coded ear tags. We have several research projects, such as "linking animal personality to life history", "counting deer within peri-urban areas", "sexual segregation in deer" and more. We are carrying out the first empirical study aimed at understanding the effects of tourists feeding the deer on their ecology and behaviour. We have been testing the efficacy of a number of management actions aimed at minimizing the issue of people fediing wildlife, generating a new approach on how to deal with human-wildlife feeding interactions.
Wildlife monitoring and research networks across Europe (2016-ongoing)
Wildlife monitoring and research networks across Europe (2016-ongoing)
EUROMAMMALS / EUROCAMS We are active members of the euromammals' community led by Dr. Francesca Cagnacci: researchers in our lab participate to various projects under the euromammals umbrella particularly working with projects involving roe and red deer, wild boar, wolf and lynx.
SNAPSHOT EUROPE / IRELAND Adam Smith, with the help of Colin Brock and Simone Ciuti, is leading the Irish chapter of SNAPSHOT EUROPE. Snapshot Europe is a coordinated and standardized camera trap effort to collect data on mammals across Europe. The initiative is supported by Euromammals and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, in partnership with Snapshot USA. See also here for more info on Snapshot-Europe/Ireland.
EOW We recently joined the European Observatory of Wildlife EOW to which we are contributing with camera trap data and validation of different camera trap wildlife density estimators.
MAMMALNET IRELAND We are leading MammalNet-Ireland, an initiative in collaboration with: Dr. Phil Stephens at Durham University, UK, MammalWeb, and MammalNet. MammalNet-Ireland is a subproject under the umbrella of MammalNet, a project aimed at assessing the potential of voluntary citizen involvement for mammal monitoring across Europe.
MAMMALS ACROSS EUROPE (in collaboration with Bavarian Forest National Park) Using a combination of camera trapping and satellite radio-tracking, Matteo Bastianelli and Hannah Pepe - both co-supervised by Simone Ciuti and Marco Heurich - are looking at space use, habitat selection, movement behaviour in predators (e.g. Lynx, wolf, fox) and prey (e.g. deer, wild boar), their inter-species interactions as well as their response to human pressures.
Some of our former projects
Some of our former projects
Deer and badgers: disentangling the role of wildlife on bovine tubercolosis maintenance and outbreaks in cattle.
We have been running a number of projects to understand bovine TB dynamics in wildlife and how land use change and wildlife management may affect the maintenance of the disease in the wild, and whether and how this is linked to outbreaks in farms and their cattle.
Virginia Morera-Pujol has built multi-hierarchical Bayesian models to predict badger distribution and density across Ireland,disentangling how badger body condition and localized abundance may be linked to greater likelihood of bTB occurrence and spread. Kilian Murphy has created the first Agent Based Model for badgers in Ireland to simulate badger movement and predict contact rates with cattle under different climate change, land use change, and wildlife management scenarios.
BioDEERversity 1 (bioDEERversity 2 currently up and running, see above under DeerImpact)
The bioDEERversity project has been looking at the effects of deer on biodiversity in the the Wicklow/Dublin mountains where sika deer have reached the highest relative density in Ireland. This project has been investigating the effects of deer on soil ecology (both biotic and abiotic components, including invertebrates, fungi and bacteria), plant communities and diversity, mammal diversity (via camera traps), and bird diversity (via sound recorders) by comparing areas with varying density of sika deer.
Project team: Simone Ciuti, Virginia Morera-Pujol, Tancredi Caruso, Adam Smith, Colin Brock, Nida Amin and Aven Beech.
This project involved many deer stakeholders (hunters, farmers, foresters, landowners, government agencies, citizens) who are key to the success of any initiatives of this kind. Colin Brock played the key role in this project by leading all field operations.
Most recent results published: ongoing (updated Jan 2025)
SMARTDEER
Our project was developed to work with stakeholders, for stakeholders. We led the first nationally-coordinated initiative of deer in Ireland by collecting and analyzing empirical data across the country, helping managers to take evidence-based decisions. Prior to SMARTDEER, neither the up-to-date precise distribution nor the population density of the three main species of deer was currently known, and no national coordination in the collection of deer data existed. Recent advances with technologies such as smartphone applications or digital deer mapping surveys were never used for Irish deer before, and our project filled these gaps in by introducing tools that will allow national deer monitoring on real time.
This project is officially concluded in terms of funding and key results have been communicated via peer-reviewed publications, seminars, popular articles, but the project is very much alive: we are analysing more data and producing new results that will stir deer management and conservation in Ireland.
You can find quick facts about and the results of our project in the dedicated SMARTDEER website.
Social networks in animal societies.
Kim Conteddu and Prabhleen Kaur, both co-supervised by Micheal Salter-Townshend and Simone Ciuti, have developed new tools to estimate social networks in animal societies and unleash the use of this type of analysis to tackle fundamental questions of the 21st century: effect of human perturbations, land-use and climate change on animal sociality and consequences in epidemiology and zoonotic disease spread. Prabhleen published her R package aniSNA, and both Kim and Prabhleen have defined novel protocols that can be used by ecologists to depict the social networks of entire natural populations using relatively small sample sizes (e.g., a subset individuals monitored using satellite telemetry).
Fox in the city, fox in the hill.
We have been running two projects on fox movement ecology. The first one - fox in the hill - has been carried out in collaboration with ATC-Massa and Dr. Paolo Bongi to monitor foxes in the Tuscany hills of Lunigiana. The goal of the project was to depict fox hunting strategies in relation to prey density and availability.
The second fox project - fox in the city - was carried out in Dublin by Dr. Holly English in collaboration with Dublin City Council. The goal of this project was to understand fox foraging ecology along a gradient going from Dublin city center to its suburbs.
Both studies deployed recent advances with biologging, namely high-frequency accelerometers, magnetometers, and GPS transmitters, leading to the collection of the most accurate data describing fox hunting behaviour within and outside urban areas.
Most recent results published: ongoing (updated Jan 2025)
Montane elk research program in the Canadian Rockies
One of the largest satellite telemetry studies in the world, we tracked North American elk and its main predators (humans, grizzly bears, wolves, and cougars). This research has had multiple goals including the study of the effects of human pressures on elk behaviour and ecology. In collaboration with: Prof. Mark Boyce, University of Alberta, Canada. Dr. Henrik Thurfjell, Swedish Species Information Centre. Jeremy Banfield, MSc, Pennsylvania Game Commission, USA. Prof. Marco Musiani, University of Calgary, Canada.
Mule deer population dynamics and predator-prey interactions in the North Dakota Badlands, USA.
This study has been targeting the mule deer population dynamics in an area of North Dakota heavily affected by decades of oil and gas extraction, including recent massive fracking operations to extract oil from the Bakken formation. In collaboration with: Prof. Mark Boyce, University of Alberta, Canada. Dr. William Jensen, North Dakota Game and Fish Department. Prof. Carsten Dormann, University of Freiburg, Germany.
Most recent results published here.
Fallow deer behavioural ecology in San Rossore, Italy.
We have been studying feeding ecology, sexual segregation, and mating behaviour in the lekking fallow deer population of San Rossore, Italy for over 20 years. This project started in the mid-1990s but still has stories to tell about male mating success in a lek (mating arena).
Most recent results published here.
River dolphin monitoring in Tocatins, Brazil
Wildlife conservation and management of wildlife in the Cantão State Park (IUCN category II), State of Tocantins, Central Brazil. Our last work there contributed to test a new aerial counting method for river dolphins. In collaboration with the Araguaia NGO.
Final results published here.
Orangutan reintroduction monitoring program, Sumatra
We have been working closely with researchers of the University of Freiburg, Germany, to assess the behaviour of reintroduced Orangutans at the Frankfurt Zoological Society (FZS) station located in the Bukit Tigapuluh ecosystem, Jambi and Riau provinces, Central Sumatra, Indonesia.
Final results published here.
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