PeerJ Award Winners at SCCS 2024

The Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) series in Cambridge, Australia, Beijing, Bangalore, New York and Hungary is the only international series of conservation conferences aimed entirely at students. SCCS helps early career conservation scientists gain experience, learn new ideas and make contacts that will be valuable for their future careers.

Over the past 21 years, SCCS Cambridge has hosted over 3,400 delegates from 136 countries worldwide. The 2024 conference was held between 26 to 28 March. More than 150 delegates from all over the world were welcomed to Cambridge for this unrivalled opportunity to meet with others passionate about conservation science.

Sabiya Sheikh Research Associate at Wildlife Conservation-India.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your research interests?

I am a wildlife biologist with an educational background in wild animal biology and animal behaviour. My work has ranged from biodiversity monitoring to using citizen science to monitor the diet of top predators, mapping the distribution and habitat of wildlife using remote sensing and wildlife health surveillance. My research interests include animal behaviour and conservation science. I am particularly interested in understanding the ecology of top predators in human-use areas and the mechanisms they use to share space with people.

What first interested you in this field of research?

Growing up in Central India and a family of wildlife enthusiasts, I spent many of my school breaks visiting tiger reserves or wildlife sanctuaries. During these trips, I was always very intrigued by the diversity and behaviour of carnivores I would see. As I started working in the field of wildlife science and conducting wildlife surveys in forests outside of protected areas, I realised many carnivores persisted in these areas and how little is known about the behaviour and ecology of carnivores in shared human-wildlife landscapes, which is what led me to develop an interest in this field.

Can you briefly explain the research you presented at SCCS 2024?

At SCCS Cambridge, I presented results from a study my colleagues and I conducted in agroforests in two locations in the Southern Western Ghats of India: Wayanad and Valparai. We used camera traps to examine carnivore species’ diversity and temporal activity in these high ‘human-use’ areas. Using Poisson regression, we also explored predictors of carnivore diversity. We found 11 species of carnivores in our study site, out of which four were large carnivores and seven were small carnivores. Our results also revealed that the patch cohesion index – a measure of the connectedness of forest patches negatively influenced carnivore diversity, indicating that a heterogenous mosaic of forest and plantations may support a higher diversity of carnivores. While human activity positively influenced carnivore diversity, human settlements negatively influenced it. We examined the temporal activity patterns of six species and found that the large carnivores, dhole and leopard, showed moderate levels of temporal overlap, which has previously been observed in sites with sub-optimal prey availability. We also found that the two mongoose species showed completely diurnal activity patterns and very high overlap with human activity. Our results suggest that commodity agroforests may be more important for carnivore conservation than previously understood.

How will you continue to build on this research?

Building on this research, we will explore spatial patterns of co-occurrence of carnivores and humans in our study sites to better understand the mechanisms of co-habitation between them in shared human-wildlife spaces.

Bernadett Zsinka PhD candidate at the University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest, Hungary.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your research interests?

I am a PhD candidate at the Molecular Ecology Research Group of the University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest in Hungary. As part of my PhD work, I am studying the population dynamics of the globally vulnerable eastern imperial eagle (Aquila heliaca) in the Pannonian Region. I am mainly interested in their age-dependent survival probabilities, their dispersal behaviour, and the viability of their population.

What first interested you in this field of research?

I have always wanted to pursue a career in conservation. What has drawn me to this topic specifically was my enthusiasm towards birds of prey and the method used by the research group: a significant amount of our data is generated through non-invasive sampling, by DNA profiling the individuals from their shed feathers. This allows us to monitor the survival and movement of breeding birds, who would be difficult to catch and mark with conventional methods.

Can you briefly explain the research you presented at SCCS 2024?

I gave a talk about the population dynamics and viability analysis of imperial eagles in the Pannonian Region. This population is of high conservation value due to its large size and peripheric placement in the species’ distribution. Our work synthesised data from various sources (DNA profiling, ringing, GPS-tracking) and included population census data going back as far as 1980. Most of the data was acquired in the context of the imperial eagle conservation projects Helicon LIFE and PannonEagle LIFE, which were coordinated by BirdLife Hungary in partnership with Slovakian, Czech, Austrian and Serbian organisations. Our computer simulations suggested that birds may be experiencing different levels of mortality in the two subpopulations of this region. We also made projections for future population growth to determine how much increase in mortality would lead to population decline and thus warning about the negative impact that persecution could have on this population.

How will you continue to build on this research?

As a next step, we would like to further explore this suggested regional difference in mortality and assess its underlying causes. We would also like to enhance our model with more reliable estimates of carrying capacity with the help of habitat suitability modelling. Overall, the goal is to get a detailed picture of the dynamics of this population, which would not only provide useful information for the conservation of the imperial eagle but could also facilitate our understanding on raptor ecology in general.