Scientific Papers

Nature Seychelles, partners' and other published scientific papers in PDF format. Note that these papers have been made available to Nature Seychelles by their authors and have been made publicly available to the extent that any applicable copyrights are respected by those who download them. Copies of papers downloaded may be used for educational and non-commercial purposes only and may not be reproduced or circulated.  

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Parasites can have severe impacts on the fitness of their hosts, and can influence reproduction, survival and sexual selection. Therefore, understanding if and how hosts mitigate the negative effects of infections is of major importance to understanding host-parasite co-evolution and host life-history evolution.

Introduced populations often lose the parasites they carried in their native range, but little is known about which processes may cause parasite loss during host movement. Conservation-driven translocations could provide an opportunity to identify the mechanisms involved. Using 3,888 blood samples collected over 22 years, we investigated parasite prevalence in populations of Seychelles warblers (Acrocephalus sechellensis) after individuals were translocated from Cousin Island to four new islands.

Why sexually mature individuals stay in groups as nonreproductive subordinates is central to the evolution of sociality and cooperative breeding. To understand such delayed dispersal, its costs and benefits need to be compared with those of permanently leaving to float through the population. However, comprehensive comparisons, especially regarding differences in future breeding opportunities, are rare.

We test a suite of hypothesized immediate (early-life body mass, telomere length, and survival) and delayed (adult reproductive potential and lifespan) costs of sibling rivalry for offspring of differing competitive ability in Seychelles warblers, where most offspring are raised singly and hence competitor success can be compared to a competition-free scenario. Compared to those raised alone, all competing nestlings had lower body mass and weaker competitors experienced reduced survival. However, the stronger competitors appeared to have longer adult breeding tenures and lifespan than
those raised alone.

Ecological baselines are disappearing and it is uncertain how marine reserves, there called fisheries closures, simulate pristine communities. We tested the influence of fisheries closure age, size and compliance on recovery of community biomass and life-history metrics towards a baseline. We used census data from 324 coral reefs, including 41 protected areas ranging between 1 and 45 years of age and 0.28 and 1430 km2, and 36 sites in a remote baseline, the Chagos Archipelago. Fish community-level life histories changed towards larger and later maturing fauna with increasing closure age, size and
compliance.

Groenewoud F, Kingma SA, Hammers M, et al. Subordinate females in the cooperatively breeding Seychelles warbler obtain direct benefits by joining unrelated groups. J Anim Ecol. 2018;00:1–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2656.12849

Victor Galaz, Beatrice Crona, Alice Dauriach, Jean-Baptiste Jouffray, Henrik Österblom and Jan Fichtner. 2018. Tax havens and global environmental degradation. Nature Ecology & Evolution | www.nature.com/natecolevol

Frias-Torres, S., P.H. Montoya-Maya, N. Shah (Eds). 2018. Coral Reef Restoration Toolkit: A Field-Oriented Guide Developed in the Seychelles Islands. Nature Seychelles, Mahe, Republic of Seychelles.

The purpose of this Toolkit is to describe how to complete a coral reef restoration project, using the ‘coral gardening’ concept.

Hammers et al. 2019. Breeders that receive help age more slowly in a cooperatively breeding bird. Nature Communications

2019. McClanahan et al. Outcomes of gear and closure subsidies in artisanal coral reef fisheries. Conservation Science and Practice

Supplementary Online Materials for:
Phua et al. (2021). Marine protected and conserved areas in the time of COVID. PARKS, 27(SI): 85-102. DOI: 10.2305/IUCN.CH.2021.PARKS-27SICP.en

2023. The Authors. No apparent trade-offs associated with heat tolerance in a reef-building coral. Nature Communications

Frias-Torres S, Reveret C, Henri K, Shah N, Montoya Maya PH (2023) A low-tech method for monitoring survival and growth of coral transplants at a boutique restoration site. 

https://peerj.com/articles/15062/

 

Frias-Torres S, Reveret C, Henri K, Shah N, Montoya Maya PH (2023) A low-tech method for monitoring survival and growth of coral transplants at a boutique restoration site.

https://peerj.com/articles/15062/

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