Last updated: 2025-05-26

Checks: 2 0

Knit directory: SaniVult/

This reproducible R Markdown analysis was created with workflowr (version 1.7.1). The Checks tab describes the reproducibility checks that were applied when the results were created. The Past versions tab lists the development history.

R Markdown file: up-to-date

Great! Since the R Markdown file has been committed to the Git repository, you know the exact version of the code that produced these results.

Repository version: fdf7d8a

Great! You are using Git for version control. Tracking code development and connecting the code version to the results is critical for reproducibility.

The results in this page were generated with repository version fdf7d8a. See the Past versions tab to see a history of the changes made to the R Markdown and HTML files.

Note that you need to be careful to ensure that all relevant files for the analysis have been committed to Git prior to generating the results (you can use wflow_publish or wflow_git_commit). workflowr only checks the R Markdown file, but you know if there are other scripts or data files that it depends on. Below is the status of the Git repository when the results were generated: 


Ignored files:
    Ignored:    .Rhistory
    Ignored:    .Rproj.user/
    Ignored:    ms/Almaraz et al. 2022 Ecol. Appl.pdf
    Ignored:    pipeline.R

Note that any generated files, e.g. HTML, png, CSS, etc., are not included in this status report because it is ok for generated content to have uncommitted changes.

These are the previous versions of the repository in which changes were made to the R Markdown (analysis/index.Rmd) and HTML (docs/index.html) files. If you’ve configured a remote Git repository (see ?wflow_git_remote), click on the hyperlinks in the table below to view the files as they were in that past version.

File Version Author Date Message
Rmd fdf7d8a Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-26 Update my project
html 601b257 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-26 Build site.
Rmd 07c7e45 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-26 Update my project
html 0a69399 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
html b94bdec Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
Rmd 7869f06 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Update my project
html 9611ea2 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
Rmd a1256c6 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Update my project
html d24607c Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
html 01e2d83 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
html 9ea8b52 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
Rmd bf83b0c Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Update my new project
html 3a8bc70 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Add favicon RELab
html 2c5f3ab Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
html d9a4b8e Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
html 9c32eb5 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Build site.
Rmd a6c7740 Pablo Almaraz 2025-05-25 Update my new project
html f802182 Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-19 Build site.
Rmd 914db7f Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-19 Publish
html aad1daf Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-19 Build site.
Rmd 073c12d Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-19 Publish
Rmd 6d825ea Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-19 Nearly there
html 6d825ea Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-19 Nearly there
Rmd 43d2ace Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-18 Update
html 43d2ace Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-18 Update
html b597ece Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-17 wflow_git_commit(all = T)
html 786d58c Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-17 Build site.
Rmd 9a35b18 Pablo Almaraz 2021-11-17 Start workflowr project.

License: MIT DOI


This is the Sanivult project repository, evaluating the impacts of the outbreak of a Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy epidemic in Europe on the demographic and population dynamics of one of the world’s largest colonies of the Eurasian Griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus). Get the paper here.



Scavenging is a key ecological process controlling energy flow in ecosystems and providing valuable ecosystem services worldwide. As long-lived species, the demographic dynamics of vultures can be disrupted by spatiotemporal fluctuations in food availability, with dramatic impacts on their population viability and the ecosystem services provided. In Europe, the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in 2001 prompted a restrictive sanitary regulation banning the presence of livestock carcasses in the wild on a continental scale. In long-lived vertebrate species, the buffering hypothesis predicts that the demographic traits with the largest contribution to population growth rate should be less temporally variable. The BSE outbreak provides a unique opportunity to test for the impact of demographic buffering in a keystone scavenger suffering abrupt but transient food shortages. We studied the 42-year dynamics (1979–2020) of one of the world’s largest breeding colonies of Eurasian griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus). We fitted an inverse Bayesian state-space model with density-dependent demographic rates to the time series of stage-structured abundances to investigate shifts in vital rates and population dynamics before, during, and after the implementation of a restrictive sanitary regulation. Prior to the BSE outbreak the dynamics was mainly driven by adult survival: 83% of temporal variance in abundance was explained by variability in this rate. Moreover, during this period the regulation of population size operated through density-dependent fecundity and subadult survival. However, after the onset of the European ban, a 1-month delay in average laying date, a drop in fecundity, and a reduction in the number of fledglings induced a transient increase in the impact of fledgling and subadult recruitment on dynamics. Although adult survival rate remained constantly high, as predicted by the buffering hypothesis, its relative impact on the temporal variance in abundance dropped to 71% during the sanitary regulation and to 54% after the ban was lifted. A significant increase in the relative impact of environmental stochasticity on dynamics was modeled after the BSE outbreak. These results provide empirical evidence on how abrupt environmental deterioration may induce dramatic demographic and dynamic changes in the populations of keystone scavengers, with far-reaching impacts on ecosystem functioning worldwide.