Herruzo, A.C., Martínez-Jaúregui M., Carranza, J., Campos, P. (2016) Commercial income and capital of hunting: an application to forest estates in Andalucía. Forest Policy and Economics 69: 53-61.

This paper presents and applies an experimental agroforestry accounting system (AAS) to measure the commercial income and capital of hunting activities in a large territorial area. This application goes beyond the conventional system of national agriculture and forestry accounts. The methodology developed allows the independent valuation of both environmental and manufactured capital which in turn allows the disaggregation of hunting income and other economic indicators by type of capital. The spatial distribution of these economic indicators can also be provided. Results show positive current total capital income but residual manufactured capital income current losses. An underlying economic rationale explaining this phenomenon is offered.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934116300910

Leite de Oliveira, M., Henrique de Faria Peres, P., Vogliotti, A., Grotta-Neto, F., Diaz Koester de Azevedo, A., Cerveira, J.F.,  Batista do Nascimento, G., Peruzzi, N.J., Carranza, J., Maurício Barbanti Duarte, J.M. (2016) Phylogenetic signal in the circadian rhythm of morphologically convergent species of Neotropical deer. Mammalian Biology 81, 281-289

Deer species included in the genus Mazama descend from two different clades that experienced a strong evolutionary convergence in morphology and behaviour when they adapted to Neotropical forests. We would expect that circadian activity rhythms also converged according to habitat features or responded to temporal niche segregation in sympatric species. We used camera trapping in four study areas, rep-resenting three main biomes in Brazil, together with data taken from the literature, to analyse activity patterns of five Mazama species in four biomes in South America. Our results show that clade assignment was the main predictor of diurnal versus nocturnal activity, thus suggesting a phylogenetic constraint rather than any other ecological influence on circadian activity. We discuss how the evolutionary history of both lineages may have influenced their activity patterns.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1616504716300052

Carranza, J., Salinas, M., de Andrés, D., Pérez-González, J. (2016) Iberian red deer: paraphyletic nature at mtDNA but nuclear markers support its genetic identity. Ecology and Evolution 6 (4), 905–922.

Red deer populations in the Iberian glacial refugium were the main source for postglacial recolonization and subspecific radiation in north-western Europe. However, the phylogenetic history of Iberian red deer (Cervus elaphus hispanicus) and its relationships with northern European populations remain uncertain. Here, we study DNA sequences at the mitochondrial control region along with STR markers for over 680 specimens from all the main red deer populations in Spain and other west European areas. Our results from mitochondrial and genomic DNA show contrasting patterns, likely related to the nature of these types of DNA markers and their specific processes of change over time. The results, taken together, bring support to two distinct, cryptic maternal lineages for Iberian red deer that predated the last glacial maximum and that have maintained geographically well differentiated until present. Haplotype relationships show that only one of them contributed to the northern postglacial recolonization. However, allele frequencies of nuclear markers evidenced one main differentiation between Iberian and northern European subspecies although also supported the structure of both matrilines within Iberia. Thus, our findings reveal a paraphyletic nature for Iberian red deer but also its genetic identity and differentiation with respect to northern subspecies. Finally, we suggest that maintaining the singularity of Iberian red deer requires preventing not only restocking practices with red deer specimens belonging to other European populations but also translocations between both Iberian lineages.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/ece3.1836

Moreno, E., Pérez-González, J., Carranza, J., Moya-Laraño, J. (2015) Better Fitness in Captive Cuvier’s Gazelle despite Inbreeding Increase: Evidence of Purging? PLoS ONE 10(12): e0145111.

Captive breeding of endangered species often aims at preserving genetic diversity and to avoid the harmful effects of inbreeding. However, deleterious alleles causing inbreeding depression can be purged when inbreeding persists over several generations. Despite its great importance both for evolutionary biology and for captive breeding programmes, few studies have addressed whether and to which extent purging may occur. Here we undertake a longitudinal study with the largest captive population of Cuvier’s gazelle managed under a European Endangered Species Programme since 1975. Previous results in this population have shown that highly inbred mothers tend to produce more daughters, and this fact was used in 2006 to reach a more appropriate sex-ratio in this polygynous species by changing the pairing strategy (i.e., pairing some inbred females instead of keeping them as surplus individuals in the population). Here, by using studbook data we explore whether purging has occurred in the population by investigating whether after the change in pairing strategy a) inbreeding and homozygosity increased at the population level, b) fitness (survival) increased, and c) the relationship between inbreeding and juvenile survival, was positive. Consistent with the existence of purging, we found an increase in inbreeding coefficients, homozygosity and juvenile survival. In addition, we showed that in the course of the breeding programme the relationship between inbreeding and juvenile survival was not uniform but rather changed over time: it was negative in the early years, flat in the middle years and positive after the change in pairing strategy. We highlight that by allowing inbred individuals to mate in captive stocks we may favour sex-ratio bias towards females, a desirable managing strategy to reduce the surplus of males that force most zoos to use ethical culling and euthanizing management tools. We discuss these possibilities but also acknowledge that many other effects should be considered before implementing inbreeding and purging as elements in management decisions.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0145111

Martínez-Jauregui, M.,  Herruzo A.C., Carranza, J., Torres-Porras, J., Campos, P. (2016) Environmental Price of Game Animal Stocks, Human Dimensions of Wildlife, 21:1, 1-17

Research has addressed the valuation of hunting and game species according to their extractive value, using both market and no market methodologies. This study provides a new perspective to estimate environmental prices of game animals based on game hunting leases population dynamics, the assumption of a steady state, and the use of the residual valuation method. This, in turn, allows the calculations of the contributions of game animal stock by species, sex, and age. These values are estimated in a manner that is consistent with the exchange value of national accounts, allowing improvement of game species valuation in ecosystem accounting.

https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2016.1082682

Pérez-Barbería, F. J., Carranza, J. Sánchez Prieto, C. (2015) Wear Fast, Die Young: More Worn Teeth and Shorter Lives in Iberian Compared to Scottish Red Deer, PLOS ONE 10(8): e0134788

Teeth in Cervidae are permanent structures that are not replaceable or repairable; consequently their rate of wear, due to the grinding effect of food and dental attrition, affects their duration and can determine an animal’s lifespan. Tooth wear is also a useful indicator of accumulative life energy investment in intake and mastication and their interactions with diet. Little is known regarding how natural and sexual selection operate on dental structures within a species in contrasting environments and how these relate to life history traits to explain differences in population rates of tooth wear and longevity. We hypothesised that populations under harsh environmental conditions should be selected for more hypsodont teeth while sexual selection may maintain similar sex differences within different populations. We investigated the patterns of tooth wear in males and females of Iberian red deer (Cervus elaphus hispanicus) in Southern Spain and Scottish red deer (C. e. scoticus) across Scotland, that occur in very different environments, using 10343 samples from legal hunting activities. We found higher rates of both incisor and molar wear in the Spanish compared to Scottish populations. However, Scottish red deer had larger incisors at emergence than Iberian red deer, whilst molars emerged at a similar size in both populations and sexes. Iberian and Scottish males had earlier tooth depletion than females, in support of a similar sexual selection process in both populations. However, whilst average lifespan for Iberian males was 4 years shorter than that for Iberian females and Scottish males, Scottish males only showed a reduction of 1 year in average lifespan with respect to Scottish females. More worn molars were associated with larger mandibles in both populations, suggesting that higher intake and/or greater investment in food comminution may have favoured increased body growth, before later loss of tooth efficiency due to severe wear. These results illustrate how independent selection in both subspecies, that diverged 11,700 years BP, has resulted in the evolution of different longevity, although sexual selection has maintained a similar pattern of relative sex differences in tooth depletion. This study opens interesting questions on optimal allocation in life history trade-offs and the independent evolution of allopatric populations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134788

Carranza, J., & Polo, V. (2015) Sexual reproduction with variable mating systems can resist asexuality in a rock–paper–scissors dynamics. Royal Society Open Science 2: 140383.

While sex can be advantageous for a lineage in the long term, we still lack an explanation for its maintenance with the twofold cost per generation. Here we model an infinite diploid population where two autosomal loci determine, respectively, the reproductive mode, sexual versus asexual and the mating system, polygynous (costly sex) versus monogamous (assuming equal contribution of parents to offspring, i.e. non-costly sex). We show that alleles for costly sex can spread when non-costly sexual modes buffer the interaction between asexual and costly sexual strategies, even without twofold benefit of recombination with respect to asexuality. The three interacting strategies have intransitive fitness relationships leading to a rock–paper–scissors dynamics, so that alleles for costly sex cannot be eliminated by asexuals in most situations throughout the parameter space. Our results indicate that sexual lineages with variable mating systems can resist the invasion of asexuals and allow for long-term effects to accumulate, thus providing a solution to the persisting theoretical question of why sex was not displaced by asexuality along evolution.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.140383

Pintus, E., Uccheddu, S., Roed, K.H., Pérez-Gonzaléz, J., Carranza, J., Nieminen, M., Holand, O. Flexible mating tactics and associated reproductive effort during the rutting season in male reindeer (Rangifer tarandus, L. 1758), Current Zoology, 61 (5) 802–810

Polygynous males can change their mating tactics across their lifetime, but information is scarce on the flexibility of this trait within a given season and the relative costs and bene fits of using different tactics. Here, we monitored individuall y marked male reindeer Rangifer tarandus and classified their mating tactics as hare m-defense, sneaking, or mixed. The costs of the male reproductive effort were assessed using both direct (i.e. percentage of body mass lost) and indirect m easures (i.e. activity patterns such as feeding, standing, and walking), while mating group size and reproductive success were recorded as mating effort benefits. Our results show that reindeer males may switch between the harem-defense and sneaking tactics throughout the same breeding season, providing further support to the notion that reproductive tactics are flexible in ungulates. The costs and benefits of male mating effort vary according to the mating tactic, reaching the highest values in harem-holders and the lowest values in sneaking males. Moreover, males who switched between

the sneaking tactic and the harem-defence tactic tended to achieve higher mating success than males who consistently used the least costly tactic. Indeed, all harem-holders successfully sired offspring, whereas only two out of three mixed-tactic males sired one calf, and sneaking males did not sire any calves. In conclusion, our results show that reindeer males can modulate their mating efforts during the same breeding season by switching between the most costly harem-defense tactic and the least costly sneaking tactic, suggesting Individual solutions to the balance between reproductive effort and mating opportunities

https://doi.org/10.1093/czoolo/61.5.802

Torres-Porras J., Fernández-Llario, P., Carranza, J., Mateos, C. (2015). Conifer plantations negatively affect density of wild boars in Mediterranean ecosystem. Folia Zool. 64(1), 25-31

Several decades ago, large areas of the Iberian Peninsula were planted with allochthonous tree species for timber production among other reasons. This severe habitat transformation is likely to affect a large spectrum of the biodiversity in the area. The wild boar Sus scrofa is a widely distributed large mammal, for which population density can be estimated on the basis of hunting results relative to effort in each area. Our goal was to analyze the influence of pine plantations on the relative density of this species in Southern Spain.

Based on data obtained from hunts, we found that the relative density of wild boar was negatively related to the relative area covered by pine trees. Our results support a negative effect of pine plantations on wild boar density and indicate that restoration and conservation of native oak forests can favour not only biodiversity but also the maintenance of wild boar population.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278037350_Conifer_plantations_negatively_affect_density_of_wild_boars_in_Mediterranean_ecosystem

Pérez-González, J., Costa, V., Santos, P., Slate, J., Carranza, J., Fernández-Llario, P., Zsolnai, A., Monteiro, N.M., Anton, I., Buzgó, J., Varga, G., Beja-Pereira, A. (2014). Males and females contribute unequally to offspring genetic diversity in the polygynandrous mating system of wild boar. PLoS ONE 9(12): e115394.

The maintenance of genetic diversity across generations depends on both the number of reproducing males and females. Variance in reproductive success, multiple paternity and litter size can all affect the relative contributions of male and female parents to genetic variation of progeny. The mating system of the wild boar (Sus scrofa) has been described as polygynous, although evidence of multiple paternity in litters has been found. Using 14 microsatellite markers, we evaluated the contribution of males and females to genetic variation in the next generation in independent wild boar populations from the Iberian Peninsula and Hungary. Genetic contributions of males and females were obtained by distinguishing the paternal and maternal genetic component inherited by the progeny. We found that the paternally inherited genetic component of progeny was more diverse than the maternally inherited component. Simulations showed that this finding might be due to a sampling bias. However, after controlling for the bias by fitting both the genetic diversity in the adult population and the number of reproductive individuals in the models, paternally inherited genotypes remained more diverse than those inherited maternally. Our results suggest new insights into how promiscuous mating systems can help maintain genetic variation.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0115394&type=printable