Factors affecting post-release survival and dispersal of reintroduced Crested Ibis(Nipponia nippon)in Tongchuan City,China

Reintroduction has become a common conservation management tool to restore endangered species in their historical range.However,many attempts have failed to establish self-sustaining populations in the wild.The success of reintroductions could be improved by varying release strategies.Therefore,it is vital to determine the factors influencing reintroduction outcomes.To better understand the post-release settlement and to optimize the release strategy of the Crested Ibis(Nipponia nippon),we quantified the effects of age,sex,acclimation duration,and the timing of release events on post-release survival and dispersal distance for the released Crested Ibis in Tongchuan City,Shaanxi Province,using a generalized linear mixed effect modeling approach.Our results indicate that 40–56.3%of the released individuals survived the first year following release.Mortality was attributable to flight collisions,starvation,disease,and unknown reasons.The post-release survival probability of ibises showed a negative association with age(estimate=-0.186;95%CI:-0.350 to-0.022;P=0.026),and post-release dispersal distance was affected by the timing of release event(estimate=0.718;95%CI:0.025 to1.253;P=0.042).However,sex and acclimation period duration did not cause detectable differences in postrelease survival probability and dispersal distance.Based on our results,optimal release strategies for establishing a reintroduced population of the Crested Ibis include:(1)release of sub-adults biased and sex ratio balanced initial groups;(2)release during the non-breeding season;and(3)food supplementation immediately after release.

One discrete dynamical model on the Wolbachia infection frequency in mosquito populations

How to prevent and control the outbreak of mosquito-borne diseases,such as malaria,dengue fever and Zika,is an urgent worldwide public health problem.The most conventional method for the control of these diseases is to directly kill mosquitoes by spraying insecticides or removing their breeding sites.However,the traditional method is not effective enough to keep the mosquito density below the epidemic risk threshold.With promising results international,the World Mosquito Program’s Wolbachia method is helping to reduce the occurrence of diseases transmitted by mosquitoes.In this paper,we introduce a generalized discrete model to study the dynamics of the Wolbachia infection frequency in mosquito populations where infected mosquitoes are impulsively released.This generalized model covers all the relevant existing models since 1959 as some special cases.After summarizing known results of discrete models deduced from the generalized one,we put forward some interesting open questions to be further investigated for the periodic impulsive releases.