Conservation Biology最新文献

Protected areas are generally designed to conserve biodiversity. However, how much they also contribute to maintaining ecosystem functions that plant diversity supports has rarely been tested explicitly, often because of the lack of historical ecosystem function data. We used a trait-based approach to reconstruct past ecosystem functioning and examine its change over the last 15 years in protected and unprotected coastal dune ecosystems. We resurveyed vegetation in quasipermanent plots and measured several ecosystem functions related to biomass production, carbon, water, nutrient cycling, erosion control, and invasion resistance across six coastal dune sites in central Italy. We used these data to quantify biodiversity-ecosystem function (BEF) relationships. We then used these relationships to hindcast past ecosystem functions based on historical vegetation surveys. Finally, as a case study, we applied this method to assess temporal changes in ecosystem functioning under three protection regimes: national protected areas (i.e., strict protection), Natura 2000 sites (loose protection), and unprotected areas. Biomass production, carbon, and water regulation increased over time in unprotected areas, likely due to an expansion of ruderal and non-native species, which are usually more productive. In Natura 2000 sites, communities showed a decrease in erosion control and invasion resistance associated with the loss of important dune-building species and the spread of non-native species. Only in national protected areas did ecosystem functions not undergo significant temporal changes, and invasion resistance even increased. Our results suggested that ecosystem functioning remained stable over time only in areas under strict protection. More broadly, our results demonstrate the potential for using resurvey data in combination with locally estimated BEF relationships to hindcast past ecosystem functioning. Such an approach can be valuable for monitoring long-term functional changes in response to conservation.

In the face of ecosystem change and biodiversity loss caused by climate change and other stressors, conservation breeding, or captive breeding, with the aim of reintroduction for wild population recovery, is an emerging tool for preventing species' extinction and rehabilitating ecosystems. Most of these programs breed terrestrial megafauna, and few breed marine invertebrates. Marine invertebrates play diverse and pivotal roles in maintaining ecological integrity, and their conservation is vital for preserving healthy, functioning marine ecosystems. For sessile or mostly-sessile marine invertebrates, the likelihood of reproductive success scales with nearby population density. When population density declines, marine protected areas may be slow or ineffective in supporting recovery without human-assisted reproduction. However, most marine invertebrate breeding programs lack clear metrics that align with established conservation standards, and few have been directly linked to successful species recovery. Breeding these animals presents unique challenges related to their diverse life histories, demographics, and physiologies. At the same time, marine invertebrate programs offer both opportunities that are distinct from those of terrestrial programs and opportunities that are shared across all conservation breeding programs, regardless of the taxon. To advance the development of marine invertebrate conservation breeding and reintroduction metrics, this review assesses the challenges and opportunities for these programs across 10 focal areas, shedding light on needs and unresolved issues. We emphasize the current and potential future role of zoos and aquariums. As environmental change accelerates, conservation breeding will become increasingly vital to protecting biodiversity. Meeting this challenge requires strong, collaborative, and interdisciplinary programs that address the wide range of factors essential to the successful reintroduction and regeneration of marine ecosystems.

Negotiating conservation priorities in highly anthropic ecosystems requires approaches that promote cooperation and cost bargaining among stakeholders. In data-poor contexts, such negotiations are hindered by limited information and conflicting interests. We developed a transparent and reproducible prioritization framework, combining open-access satellite imagery with a decision-support tool, to inform participatory coastal planning. Although illustrated in northeast Brazil, a data-poor region where coastal conflicts between tourism and fisheries are acute, the framework was designed to be broadly applicable to similar coastal social-ecological systems. It generates visualizations that help stakeholders explore trade-offs in three dimensions: defining a conservation target; debating the location of coastal candidate areas that balance habitat protection with minimizing impacts on tourism and fishing activities; and deliberating the degree of restriction within each candidate area based on conservation and socioeconomic considerations. We applied this approach to design five alternative spatial planning scenarios. Three were based on composite tourism and fisheries indices ("neutral", "avoid fisheries areas", and "avoid tourism areas"), and two focused on specific practices ("all specific activities" and "do not exclude small-scale"). These scenarios revealed where restrictions can be applied or relaxed to achieve conservation objectives while maintaining essential local livelihoods. By highlighting the limitations of existing conservation units and promoting inclusive, transparent decision-making, our method provides a practical means to focus stakeholder negotiations. More broadly, the framework offers a scalable and transferable approach for equitable, multisectoral conservation planning in other data-poor coastal regions facing similar trade-offs.

Biodiversity monitoring programs need to deliver accurate, timely, and actionable predictions. To establish a predictive monitoring program for deep-sea benthos of the Santos Basin, Brazil, we developed a two-stage structured model that allowed comparison of biodiversity predictions obtained from environmental simulations (2M-Sim). We also modeled the environmental variables as a function of spatial and temporal variables and compared this model's predictions with predictions obtained from real environmental data (2M). We built unstructured models (1M) as references to evaluate whether the proposed structured approach was reliable. We expected no significant differences between 1M and 2M or between 2M and 2M-Sim. Data were obtained from 100 stations at depths of 25-2400 m during two surveys (2019 and 2021). In our model framework, we used 12 benthic macro- and meiofaunal variables, 44 sediment and water column environmental variables, and four spatial and temporal variables. We applied a random forest algorithm to the structured and unstructured models. All comparisons were performed with 20% of the dataset set aside for validation. The average accuracy was 72%, 69%, and 68% for the 1M, 2M, and 2M-Sim models, respectively. Accuracies of 2M ranged from 38% to 84% and were generally higher for macrofauna. The observed accuracy loss from 1M to 2M (3%) and from 2M to 2M-Sim (1%) was not significant for any biodiversity variable. The 2M model identified 30 significant environmental variables; bottom water parameters and sedimentary phytopigment and carbonate concentrations were the best predictors. Our approach supports biodiversity conservation by optimizing data needs and future sampling and by guiding data-driven management decisions for benthic biodiversity.

Conservation planning has long prioritized local species richness (α diversity) but has rarely explicitly integrated species turnover (β diversity) into actionable strategies. Areas with high species turnover lack recognition and protection despite their ecological importance. We devised a simple, standardized, and scalable approach for mapping species turnover. We rasterized species ranges, then counted the range edges of each species in each grid cell. This approach enables high-resolution mapping across regions and facilitates the integration of β diversity into conservation planning. We applied this approach to the Eastern Himalayas, where 3 biodiversity hotspots abut, and used endemic bird species as our focal taxa. Our analyses revealed differences between areas of high species richness and high species turnover. Areas of high species richness were concentrated in montane forests, whereas areas of high species turnover tended to be low in mountain forests and peak in foothills and tree lines. Both areas of high species richness and high species turnover are inadequately protected. We contend that species turnover is a critical, complementary metric to species richness in understanding patterns of biodiversity. In addition, areas of high species turnover host unique species assemblages and face a dual challenge. They host peripheral populations that are more prone to local extinction, and communities within them are particularly sensitive to climate change. These vulnerabilities heighten the urgency of protecting such areas. As conservation planning evolves toward more holistic strategies that address multiple interconnected environmental challenges-such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and water security-it becomes increasingly imperative to integrate both α and β diversity into biodiversity mapping. This integration provides a more representative and ecologically robust foundation for long-term conservation planning.

Effectively managing human-wildlife interactions is crucial for fostering coexistence on shared landscapes. Management options are most effective when aligned with the preferences of people directly affected by wildlife, yet little is known about how socioecological factors influence these preferences. Integrating responses from 680 rural residents of northern Tanzania and remotely sensed data, we parameterized a Bayesian hierarchical model to test predictions of the hazard-acceptance model. We estimated how perceived costs and benefits, distance to protected areas, and the human footprint index mediate preferences for managing (preventing damage, compensating damage, reducing populations, and doing nothing) interactions with herbivore (elephant, giraffe, buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, and impala) and carnivore (lion, hyena, leopard, cheetah, honey badger, and jackal) species. Most respondents preferred management options that supported coexistence: prevention (41.9%), no management (38.0%), and compensation (11.1%). In contrast, population reduction (9.0%) was least preferred but more frequently selected for carnivores (13.4%) than herbivores (5.3%). Perceived costs strongly influenced management preferences. Respondents perceiving tangible costs were more likely to prefer prevention (posterior mean: 0.57 [95% credible interval 0.00 to 0.99]) over compensation (0.07 [0.00 to 0.66]) or population reduction (0.16 [0.00 to 0.87]), whereas those not perceiving costs leaned toward no management (0.40 [-0.74 to 1.78]). Though perceived benefits were less influential than costs, respondents associating species with intangible (0.10 [0.00 to 0.74]) or tourism benefits (0.06 [0.00 to 0.63]) were less likely to support population reduction than those perceiving no benefits (0.12 [0.00 to 0.82]). Distance to protected areas and the human footprint index had weaker, inconsistent effects, but random intercepts indicated substantial village-village variation in preferred management options. Our results suggest that conservation strategies should primarily address wildlife-related costs and foster coexistence by more equitably distributing benefits. A possible strategy could include investing tourism revenues into comanaged, locally tailored damage prevention measures.

Stakeholder is a contested term that has spawned a multitude of ad hoc definitions. The ambiguity of these definitions has oftentimes impeded transdisciplinary research in environmental governance and conservation science because it hampers effective communication and operationalization of the stakeholder concept. We devised a project-configurable definition of stakeholder that integrates 2 stakeholder typologies: the holder types of Schmitter (e.g., knowledge, right, space, and interest holders) and the salience model (power, legitimacy, urgency, and proximity) of Mitchell et al. From a conceptual perspective, we synthesized role-based and salience-based views of stakeholder to the following definition: a stakeholder is someone who takes on one or several different roles relating to an issue for whom that issue has a certain baseline level of priority. Building on this definition, we produced a 6-step conceptual stakeholder identification workflow. The workflow combines expert discussion, structured stakeholder scoring, and iterative validation to narrow an initial actor universe to a transparent and defensible stakeholder set. We applied the method to a hypothetical peatland rewetting project in Central Europe to showcase how network boundaries and salience thresholds can be refined in order to move from an initially large set of actors to a documented and manageable set of stakeholders. Our definition of stakeholder and the identification workflow aim to offer scientists, managers, and policy makers a transparent tool for selecting, ranking, and justifying the actors who most urgently need to be at the table.

The long-term success of protected and conserved areas depends on their capacity to remain relevant to human society while maintaining diverse, functional ecosystems. However, despite long-standing interest in applying complex systems approaches to foster protected area (PA) social-ecological resilience and adaptive capacity, a gap between theory and practice remains. We reviewed the evolution of overarching principles for resilience management to provide a cohesive synthesis and identify priorities for conservation governance and management. A systematic literature search identified 15 individual articles that together proposed 20 interrelated thematic clusters (themes) of principles. Analysis of connections between themes and publications identified 2 main schools, one with a more institutional focus (the Ostrom school) and the other with a more ecological focus (the Holling school). We assessed the strengths and weaknesses of the combined set of resilience principles with a focus on identifying gaps in current knowledge. Strengths included principles supported by extensive research on ecological diversity, heterogeneity, and collaborative governance. Key gaps relating to PA resilience included 3 interrelated needs for future research and action: developing governance solutions that extend beyond traditional PA boundaries, clarification of the dynamics of the relationship between resilience and transformation agendas, and deeper and more formal inclusion of justice and equity in resilience management. The rigorous establishment, application, and testing of science-based principles for building and supporting resilience and adaptive capacity, and their translation into conservation actions, remain a critically important goal for conservation science.

Climate change is driving unprecedented declines in dominant, habitat-forming foundation species across marine and terrestrial ecosystems globally. As climatic novelty becomes the norm, ecosystem reassembly will become increasingly common. Predicting and understanding these transitions, and their implications for future ecosystem functioning, is essential for designing effective forward-looking management strategies. We explored 3 scenarios that describe a range of ecosystem reassembly trajectories following declines in previously dominant habitat-forming taxa: compensation, in which functionally similar subdominant or immigrating taxa maintain ecosystem structure and function; decline, in which no compensation occurs leading to loss of ecosystem structure and function; and transformation, in which the ecosystem present historically can no longer persist and shifts into a fundamentally different ecosystem type with distinct structure and function. This range of potential outcomes highlights the urgent need to assess the ecological feasibility and functional implications of potential management actions. Scientists and managers can work together to quantify local-scale climatic novelty and ecosystem resilience to better predict the most likely reassembly trajectories and identify management interventions that will optimize ecosystem function. This approach would allow for more proactive planning to support persistence of ecosystem structure and function, helping to future-proof ecosystem management in a rapidly changing world.