Aim: Mapping species distributions is a crucial but challenging requirement of wildlife management. The frequent need to sample vast expanses of potential habitat increases the cost of planned surveys and rewards accumulation of opportunistic observations. In this paper, we integrate planned‐survey data from roost counts with opportunistic samples from eBird, WikiAves and Xeno‐canto citizen‐science platforms to map the geographic range of the endangered Vinaceous‐breasted Parrot. We demonstrate the estimation and mapping of species occurrence based on data integration while accounting for specifics of each dataset, including observation technique and uncertainty about the observations.Location: Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.Methods: Our analysis illustrates (a) the incorporation of sampling effort, spatial autocorrelation and site covariates in a joint‐likelihood, hierarchical, data integration model; (b) the evaluation of the contribution of each dataset, as well as the contribution of effort covariates, spatial autocorrelation and site covariates to the predictive ability of fitted models using a cross‐validation approach; and (c) how spatial representation of the latent occupancy state (i.e. realized occupancy) helps identify areas with high uncertainty that should be prioritized in future fieldwork.Results: We estimate a Vinaceous‐breasted Parrot geographic range of 434,670 km², which is three times larger than the “Extant” area previously reported in the IUCN Red List. The exclusion of one dataset at a time from the analyses always resulted in worse predictions by the models of truncated data than by the Full Model, which included all datasets. Likewise, exclusion of spatial autocorrelation, site covariates or sampling effort resulted in worse predictions.Main conclusions: The integration of different datasets into one joint‐likelihood model produced a more reliable representation of the species range than any individual dataset taken on its own, improving the use of citizen‐science data in combination with planned‐survey results.

Mosquito-borne pathogens pose major public health challenges worldwide. With vaccines or effective drugs still unavailable for most such pathogens, disease prevention heavily relies on vector control. To date, however, mosquito control has proven difficult, with low breeding-site coverage during control campaigns identified as a major drawback. A novel tactic exploits the egg-laying behavior of mosquitoes to have them disseminate tiny particles of a potent larvicide, pyriproxyfen (PPF), from resting to breeding sites, thus improving coverage. This approach has yielded promising results at small spatial scales, but its wider applicability remains unclear. We conducted a four-month trial within a 20-month study to investigate mosquito-driven dissemination of PPF dust-particles from 100 ‘dissemination stations’ (DSs) deployed in a 7-ha sub-area to surveillance dwellings and sentinel breeding sites (SBSs) distributed over an urban neighborhood of about 50 ha. We assessed the impact of the trial by measuring juvenile mosquito mortality and adult mosquito emergence in each SBS-month. Using data from 1,075 dwelling-months, 2,988 SBS-months, and 29,922 individual mosquitoes, we show that mosquito-disseminated PPF yielded high coverage of dwellings (up to 100%) and SBSs (up to 94.3%). Juvenile mosquito mortality in SBSs (about 4% at baseline) increased by over one order of magnitude during PPF dissemination (about 75%). This led to a >10-fold decrease of adult mosquito emergence from SBSs, from approximately 1,000–3,000 adults/month before to about 100 adults/month during PPF dissemination. By expanding breeding-site coverage and boosting juvenile mosquito mortality, a strategy based on mosquito-disseminated PPF has potential to substantially enhance mosquito control. Sharp declines in adult mosquito emergence can lower vector/host ratios, reducing the risk of disease outbreaks. This approach is a very promising complement to current and novel mosquito control strategies; it will probably be especially relevant for the control of urban disease vectors, such as Aedes and Culex species, that often cause large epidemics. Mosquito-transmitted diseases are among the most challenging infectious threats worldwide. Mosquito control is crucial for preventing infection and disease, particularly when effective vaccines or drugs are unavailable. A major drawback of current mosquito control strategies is that mosquito breeding sites are often overlooked, and therefore left untreated, during control campaigns. One appealing alternative proposes exploiting the innate breeding-site–finding ability of female mosquitoes to have them disseminate tiny insecticide particles that poison their offspring. Thus far, however, this idea has only been tested in small-scale trials. Here we show that mosquitoes effectively transferred insecticide particles from dissemination stations to sentinel breeding sites over distances between 3 and 400 m in a tropical urban neighborhood. This yielded high breeding-site coverage, with up to 94.3% of sentinel breeding sites presenting evidence of contamination with mosquito-disseminated insecticide. We recorded a 10-fold increase of juvenile mosquito mortality and a 10-fold decrease of adult mosquito emergence during the four-month dissemination trial. In combination with other tactics, this approach has the potential to considerably enhance mosquito-borne disease prevention, particularly in urban settings.

The search for explanations of the well-documented positive relationship between latitude and avian clutch size has created the expectation that tropical birds should balance their smaller clutch sizes with relatively high survival probabilities. So far, efforts to detect a latitudinal gradient in survival have found no statistical support, leading to the hypothesis that a gradient may be present in the survival of juveniles alone. Such a gradient could be masked by the data on adults when field records make no distinction between ages. We aimed to (1) assess the effect of age on survival of tropical birds by estimating age-specific annual apparent survival probabilities for a set of 40 passerine understory species from the central Brazilian Amazon and (2) test the hypothesis of a latitudinal gradient in adult survival with a meta-analysis of tropical and temperate-zone forest passerine survival probabilities at study areas from Peru to Alaska. We estimated age-specific survival using a hierarchi... RESUMO A busca por explicações para o bem documentado gradiente latitudinal do tamanho de postura em aves criou a expectativa de que as aves tropicais deveriam compensar suas posturas relativamente pequenas com probabilidades de sobrevivência altas. Até hoje, a busca empírica de um gradiente latitudinal de sobrevivência não encontrou suporte estatístico, o que gerou a hipótese de que talvez exista um gradiente que se manifesta apenas nos juvenis. Tal gradiente poderia ser mascarado pelos dados de adultos em observações de campo que não fazem distinção entre idades. Neste estudo pretendemos: a) avaliar o efeito da idade na sobrevivência de aves tropicais através da estimativa de probabilidades anuais de sobrevivência aparente de jovens e adultos em quarenta espécies de passeriformes de sub-bosque da floresta de terra firma na Amazônia Central; e b) testar a hipótese de um gradiente latitudinal de sobrevivência de adultos usando uma meta-análise de estimativas de sobrevivência de passeriformes de floresta t...

Dynamic flow regimes maintain critical connections between main channel and adjacent floodplain habitats that provide fish access to shelter, foraging, and spawning opportunities. Our study advances the understanding of these processes by exploring the importance of coupled longitudinal–lateral connectivity for determining species occurrence in headwater streams of the Amazon. Using a multispecies occupancy model, we revealed a clear pattern of species addition in the downstream direction in temporary floodplain ponds, associated with changes in the pool of potential colonists present in the channel and with increasing lateral hydrologic connectivity. Species that are more tolerant of stagnant waters and those able to disperse in shallow habitats (e.g., Anablepsoides micropus) occurred frequently in ponds along the entire longitudinal extent, whereas those species preferring lotic habitats were present only in the most downstream sites. We also observed increasing similarity of pond and channel communities with distance downstream. This study provides insights on the spatial structuring of tropical fish communities in response to flood-induced hydrologic connectivity and further highlights the vulnerability of floodplain fishes to modification in flooding regimes.