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Background matching, a common form of camouflage, is a widespread anti-predator adaptation that hinders detection or recognition by increasing the resemblance of prey to its environment. However, the natural environment is complex and both spatially and temporally variable, which constrains effective background matching as an anti-predator strategy. Here, using remote sensing data (publicly available satellite imagery), we investigated how variation of habitat parameters predicts background matching in 16 Sahara–Sahel rodent species across spatial and temporal scales. All fur colour parameters (hue, saturation and brightness) strongly matched the respective habitats of the different species. Background matching in terms of hue was best at the microscale, whereas results for saturation and brightness showed more variation across spatial scales among species. Camouflage across the temporal scale (from 1 to 3 years before capture) was variable among species for all colour parameters. These complex interactions suggest that, in desert rodents, colour parameters are differentially sensitive to the respective scale of the habitat, plausibly reflecting the behaviour and life history of the species and the ecological properties determining their activity patterns. Consequently, the division between habitat (camouflage) generalists and specialists might become blurred in temporally changing and spatially variable environments.
Deserts and semi-deserts, such as the Sahara-Sahel region in North Africa, are exposed environments with restricted vegetation coverage. Due to limited physical surface structures, these open areas provide a promising ecosystem to understand selection for crypsis. Here, we review knowledge on camouflage adaptation in the Sahara-Sahel rodent community, which represents one of the best documented cases of phenotype-environment convergence comprising a marked taxonomic diversity. Through their evolutionary history, several rodent species from the Sahara-Sahel have repeatedly evolved an accurate background matching against visually-guided predators. Top-down selection by predators is therefore assumed to drive the evolution of a generalist, or compromise, camouflage strategy in these rodents. Spanning a large biogeographic extent and surviving repeated climatic shifts, the community faces extreme and heterogeneous selective pressures, allowing formulation of testable ecological hypotheses. Consequently, Sahara-Sahel rodents poses an exceptional system to investigate which adaptations facilitate species persistence in a mosaic of habitats undergoing climatic change. Studies of these widely distributed communities permits general conclusions about the processes driving adaptation and can give insights into how diversity evolves.
Abstract Evaluating the ecotourism potential of sites is a key issue in tourism management. Multiple methodologies have been developed to assess the ecotourism potential of sites. However, there are many constraints affecting their quality. Methodologies independent of subjective criteria and weights are lacking, compromising following interpretations on where to allocate efforts for ecotourism development. We propose a new approach to circumvent these issues that combines independent statistical procedures to assess ecotourism potential. By combining multi-criteria with ordination and clustering algorithms, this two-stage statistical approach allowed identifying suitable water-bodies for ecotourism development in Mauritania and independently assessed which features are related with ecotourism potential. The method was able to group sites for different ecotourist demands, which has implications for policy makers and tourism planners trying to optimize investments while protecting biodiversity and supporting communities. We provide a framework that is scalable and applicable by stakeholders operating in ecotourism planning and management worldwide.
This paper presents the results of the workshop on Human-centred Technologies for Sustainable Development Goals (HCT4SDG) - Challenges and Opportunities. The workshop was part of the 18th International Conference promoted by the IFIP Technical Committee 13 on Human-Computer Interaction (Interact 2021). Nine papers were presented by authors from several different countries and discussed in the workshop. Six of these papers were extended in this proceedings. After discussion, seven challenges and eight research opportunities were listed as expression of the participants’ views on HCT4SDG.