Last year was very active for our group. We have made a summary of our performance to share with you our main scientific achievements. In a nutshell, during 2023 our group published 20 scientific articles, presented 21 contributions at international conferences, worked on 6 scientific projects, celebrated the doctoral habilitation of our team member Agnieszka Sergiel (Congrats to Agnieska!), supervised 9 students (6 of them working on their PhD thesis), hosted the short-term visit of 4 researchers, and established or continued international collaboration with 44 centres from all over the world.
More specifically, we have made progress in global change research using mammals as a model group. Data belonging to 50 species from the Bialowieza Forest from a period covering 66 years has shown that mammalian communities are better indicators of global change (increasing nitrogen fertilizers and rising temperatures) than individual species. In another global study involving 43 mammal species, assessing the effects of restricted human mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic, we found that animal movement increased by up to 73% under a strict movement ban, indicating increased landscape permeability.
We have gained insights into the ecology and conservation of large carnivores in Eastern Europe. Anthropogenic factors, particularly artificial light at night and the proportion of agricultural fields have conditioned the suitability of habitats for wolves in Ukraine and Belarus. We have contributed to understanding the role of brown bear individuality in human-wildlife conflicts in the Polish Carpathians. We have shown that behaviors that lead to harm are not exhibited with the same frequency by all individuals in the population.
We continued our ecotoxicological studies of large carnivores and found that environmental pollution by heavy metals (e.g., cadmium, mercury and lead) is deposited in tissues in brown bears affecting the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis (which is responsible for the proper functioning of the reproductive system) and can have negative effects at the individual level and for the population as a whole.
In a continuing study of chemical communication in brown bears, we have shown that rubbing against substances with intense odors can additionally function as an antiparasitic behavior, in addition to the widely recognized function of chemical communication. We also analyzed the odor profiles obtained from different areas of the bears’ bodies, which differed between individuals, as well as between age and sex classes.
Last but not least, we published a letter in response to the ongoing political debate about decreasing legal protection of large carnivores to allow hunting as a means to reduce conflicts. We discuss how hunting can have adverse effects on predator populations and conflict mitigation strategies. We call for the implementation of a database that meets the “FAIR” guidelines on damage caused by large predators at the European level to effectively mitigate conflicts.
We are confident that our activity is helping to advance the understanding of large carnivores’ ecology in human-dominated landscapes and we will continue working to steward their conservation needs locally, regionally and continentally.