Conservation Biology最新文献

There exists a growing suite of technologies that support significant and exciting progress in biodiversity conservation and research. Citizen scientist participation is common in this research and often focuses on data collection and labeling. Yet, ongoing challenges exist concerning trust in participatory monitoring projects engaging Indigenous Peoples or local communities. These challenges are rooted in the proliferation of Western-centric approaches to engagement and uneven power dynamics between researchers and participants. Using passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) as a model, we explored how researchers can build trust in participatory research with conservation technologies. Working closely with 12 members of a forest fringe community in Ghana, we conducted semistructured interviews investigating community members' perceptions of and concerns with ecoacoustic technologies and a series of participatory workshops exploring ecoacoustic data practices. Through our interviews, we found that 4 key themes-questioning, agency, proof, and knowledge-shaped community members' sense of trust when engaging with conservation and technology systems or practices. Our engagements highlighted a need for a dynamic consent process, which entails a set of engagements and activities tailored to community members' needs, to ensure they could make informed decisions on their involvement in research projects. To facilitate more ethical and just community engagements that result in higher quality data and more successful conservation outcomes, we recommend that researchers working with conservation technologies and marginalized communities respond to suspicion, address agency, center community knowledge, and demonstrate data practices.

Emerging biodiversity credit markets are promoted globally as a solution to financing nature recovery at scale. In southern England, which has experienced particularly strong declines in biodiversity as a result of intensification of farming practices, the Knepp Estate has pioneered trophic rewilding of marginal arable land as a nature recovery solution. The scaling up of rewilding initiatives will require long-term funding, for example, through biodiversity credits. We used DNA metabarcoding to characterize aerial invertebrate, terrestrial invertebrate, soil invertebrate, and soil fungal populations recorded from the 20-year-old rewilded Knepp estate and a conventional arable farm proposed as a nature recovery project (Boothby). We used the Wallacea Trust framework to estimate the economic value of the arable farm's restoration on the global voluntary biodiversity credit market. We also estimated the economic value of the arable farm's restoration on England's compliance offsite biodiversity net gain market. Compared with the farm, Knepp had higher conservation value (167% more species with a conservation designation, 56% rare invertebrate species) and better ecosystem functioning (33% more pollinator species, 25% more fungal symbiotrophs, 21% fewer plant pathotrophs). Knepp had higher taxon richness (40-52%) for all taxa, except soil invertebrates (-35%) and soil fungi (-10%), and higher taxon biomass (6-123%). Following the Wallacea Trust definition, we predicted a median biodiversity uplift between 69% and 92% for the farm after 30 years, worth £1,176,169-£1,559,875 at £23/credit, around 15 times less than project costs. On England's offsite biodiversity net gain market, habitat restoration could generate revenue up to £68,902,500 over 30 years, although unit supply currently outstrips demand. Although voluntary biodiversity credits are unlikely to fill the biodiversity funding gap alone, they can be combined with carbon credits to increase a project's financial viability, have global reach, may represent an additional biodiversity contribution rather than offset previous damage, and can be used to support projects unsuitable for regulatory biodiversity or carbon markets.

White-nose syndrome (WNS), caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), ranks among the most devastating wildlife diseases in recent history and is driving severe declines in North American bats. Identifying environmental factors that influence both the severity of population crashes and the potential for population persistence is essential for effective mitigation. We used a long-term dataset from hibernacula across Michigan's Upper Peninsula to evaluate how temperature variation affected M. lucifugus populations before and after Pd introduction. Our analysis incorporated 350 surveys from 48 hibernacula, and we tested 4 hypotheses: M. lucifugus populations move to cooler roosts (mean winter temperature 2-5°C) following Pd introduction; cooler hibernacula have less severe WNS-related population crashes; sites with less severe population crashes exhibit more positive population growth trajectories; and population trajectories after Pd introduction are influenced by site characteristics, including interior mean temperature. Consistent with earlier studies documenting shifts from warm to cool microclimates, our results showed broadscale redistribution of bats among hibernacula. Historically warm sites that once supported most bats were increasingly abandoned in favor of cooler hibernacula. Cooler mean winter temperature was the strongest predictor of this redistribution (-0.023, 95% CI -0.042 to -0.003); sites with lower temperatures had less severe population crashes during initial WNS infections (0.382, 95% CI 0.067-0.674) and exhibited more positive current population trajectories (0.16, 95% CI 0.06-0.26). These results highlight temperature as a key modulator of WNS severity and M. lucifugus persistence. Regions with limited thermal diversity and dominated by warm hibernacula (>7°C) may face heightened risk of severe declines. Our findings provide actionable insights for targeted management approaches, including microclimate-focused manipulations, that can enhance WNS mitigation and support long-term population stability.

Globally, coral reefs are undergoing rapid degradation due to climate change. Microbiomes associated with coral are integral to host metabolism and play critical roles in coral resilience. Determining the changes in compositions and functions of these coral commensal microbes is essential for forecasting coral responses to environmental stress and guiding conservation. We investigated the structure and function of Symbiodiniaceae and bacteria from 587 coral samples (5 orders, 62 genera, and 166 species) spanning a 15° latitudinal range in the South China Sea by combining environmental factor measurements with ITS2 and 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing analyses. The abundance of dominant Symbiodiniaceae and bacteria varied with latitude, primarily driven by sea surface temperature. A higher proportion of heat-tolerant Symbiodiniaceae (Durusdinium, C15, and C3u) and copiotrophic bacteria (e.g., Endozoicomonas and Terasakiellaceae) was observed in low-latitude corals. Increased expression of bacterial genes was associated with triglyceride and glycogen degradation, and there was a decreased expression of genes involved in their biosynthesis. These findings suggest that corals cope with heat stress by reshaping symbiont composition and abundance, thereby enhancing thermal tolerance and optimizing energy metabolism. Based on the results, we propose region-specific conservation strategies, including the introduction of heat-tolerant symbionts to low-latitude corals, reducing nutrient pollution for high-latitude corals, and emphasizing reduction in global emissions as the ultimate solution to thermal stress.

Regulations prohibiting retaliatory killing of wildlife are widespread, but their efficacy depends on individuals' perceptions of, adherence to, and willingness to cooperate with these rules. We investigated the willingness of rural communities in China to cooperate with measures to reduce human-wildfowl conflict by examining the potential influence of individual attitudes and social factors on this willingness. Through a public survey and choice experiments with 1381 participants (344 rural residents in the Sanjiang Plain conflict areas and 1037 urban residents in Harbin and Beijing), we identified 5 distinct attitudes toward retaliatory killing of wildfowl in rural areas. Among these, the deterrence-driven (compliance motivated by fear of legal punishment), law-as-principle (adherence to law as a formal obligation), and law-morality-consensus (alignment between legal rules and personal moral values) attitudes predominated. Only respondents with a law-morality-consensus attitude had a significantly higher willingness to cooperate with wildfowl conservation efforts. Regarding wildfowl management policies, rural residents preferred population reduction, whereas urban residents favored population increases. Compounded by, for example, imbalanced economic development and the unilateral burden of wildlife-related losses, this urban-rural divergence may foster a sense of conservation-related inequity in rural residents. Such perceived inequity, exacerbated by limited participation in decision-making, could diminish rural residents' voluntary cooperation and create a cycle in which high economic losses by rural residents lead to differences between urban and rural conservation values that lead to shifts in local attitudes and result in retaliatory killing by rural residents. Management should prioritize ensuring that conservation benefits accrue to local communities. Such a shift could involve implementing scientifically assessed, quota-based hunting in high-conflict areas and channeling resulting revenues into community conservation efforts.

The accelerating loss of biodiversity underscores the critical need for effective conservation strategies, particularly in the face of climate change and anthropogenic pressures. We devised a conservation planning framework that adopts a temporal stacking approach to species distribution models and landscape connectivity analyses. These models and analyses were derived from an integrated modeling and post-modeling GIS workflow and used to identify and propose conservation priority areas, also quantifying the proportion of these areas covered by existing protected areas (PAs). We applied the approach, as an example, to the genus Salamandrina, the oldest Salamandridae clade, because of its conservation and biogeographic importance. Our approach can be applied to any taxon. Specifically, we introduced and identified the steady core regions (i.e., areas predicted to remain ecologically suitable for the next 50 years) for Salamandrina. The geographic configuration of these areas, including their clustering and fragmentation degree, differed between distance-informed and distance-uninformed approaches along the Apennine chain. Those occurred in nationally designated PAs (few, large patches) and Natura 2000 sites (many and small patches), but steadiness values were generally low (often <5 out of 13), indicating scarce legal protection of temporally stable areas. We therefore propose 2 strategies to delineate areas currently unprotected that should be prioritized to reach the 30% of territories protected by 2030: increasing existing PA boundaries by estimating buffer distances and inferring stable areas outside current PAs, which we term half-century stable proposed protected areas (HCSPPAs). The buffering approach indicated a required 1-km expansion. The HCSPPAs clustered near existing PAs in northern and central Italy. In southern Italy, they were fewer and more dispersed, ranging from close to distant locations relative to current PAs. Our approach aligns with the European Union's 2030 Biodiversity Strategy and the global 30×30 conservation target because it provides a flexible and spatially informed framework to prioritize biodiversity conservation and strengthen long-term species' protection.

Biodiversity loss and socioeconomic inequities are closely linked, yet conservation efforts often prioritize ecological goals, resulting in unsustainable outcomes. We propose a justice-centered socioecological framework that integrates biodiversity conservation with human well-being based on the principles of sustainable development theory and the concepts of distributive, procedural, and recognition justice. We reviewed the recent literature on fortress and market-based conservation approaches (2020-2025) to examine their impact on local communities. This review showed that fortress conservation and market-based approaches often exclude local communities, thereby undermining their livelihoods and the sustainability of their communities. In the proposed model, participatory governance, livelihood-aligned strategies (e.g., agroecology), and policy reforms (e.g., rights-based legislation) are integrated to promote equitable and resilient outcomes. Examples of successful use of an integrated approach include Namibia's conservancies, in which wildlife is jointly managed with the community and the community receives wildlife-related income, and Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH) framework, which requires every development (road, mine, and protected area) to be screened for its effects on forest cover and cultural well-being. In these cases, there is adaptive governance (i.e., iterative, community-led rulemaking that changes based on ecological data) and redirection of subsidies from large commercial ranches to communal conservancy trusts, which positively affect biodiversity and human well-being. The GNH is a transformative and scalable approach because justice-based participatory mapping, livelihood-aligned incentives, and right-based policies are embedded in every conservation intervention, thereby aligning with global sustainability goals (e.g., UN Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 15). Centering justice in conservation planning is ethically and pragmatically essential for long-term success.

Achieving global conservation policy goals requires the ability to set and measure progress toward science-based targets for biodiversity. The species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric was developed to enable actors to set science-based targets for species. STAR scores quantify the potential contribution of actions to abate threats and restore habitat to reduce species extinction risk in a particular place and can be aggregated and disaggregated among species, threats, and areas of interest. Estimated STAR scores are based on data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List and provide initial information on the species and threats expected to be present in an area. Operationalization of the metric requires verification of the presence of species and the presence and severity of threats in the area to inform calculation of a calibration STAR score. We applied a pilot calibration process for the threat abatement component of STAR (STAR_T) in the San Jose northern subcatchments landscape in Costa Rica. We used specialist knowledge and geospatial analyses of habitat loss to determine the species present and the intensity of threats affecting them in the landscape. Calibration yielded a more even distribution of scores among threats than was apparent from estimated STAR_T and identified that reducing the threat from livestock farming and ranching had the greatest potential to reduce species extirpation risk. Calibration also showed that there is an opportunity to prevent the extinction of a critically endangered endemic amphibian, but the species' presence requires confirmation. The pilot demonstrated how specialist knowledge and geospatial analyses can be combined during calibration to produce a calibrated STAR_T score capable of informing science-based targets for species conservation. Our calibration process can be applied to other areas.

Biodiversity monitoring programs and citizen science data remain heavily biased toward the Global North. Especially in megadiverse countries with limited biodiversity records, incorporating social media data can help address existing data gaps. However, whether such data can significantly improve our understanding of range-shifting species is still unknown. We tested whether social media data improved our knowledge of the range dynamics of a rapid range-shifting butterfly, the tawny coster (Acraea terpsicore). We collated locality data from Flickr and Facebook and compared these with occurrence data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). We used species distribution models (SDMs) and niche assessments, which we calibrated with data from GBIF alone and both sources combined (GBIF and social media data) to analyze range shift dynamics. Social media data increased occurrence records by 35%, and the proportion of social media data was higher in countries poorly represented in GBIF. In addition, we obtained new distributional information from well-represented countries (e.g., Australia and Malaysia). Over time, the SDMs calibrated with GBIF and social media data showed greater expansion rates than SDMs based solely on GBIF data. The niche assessments revealed that GBIF-only data failed to capture regions with relatively low maximum temperature, relatively low precipitation and high elevation. Our results highlight the potential of harnessing social media data to track rapid biodiversity redistribution in response to climate change.