Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment最新文献

In navigating the biodiversity crisis, a major uncertainty is the conservation status of inconspicuous, yet megadiverse and functionally crucial, soil organisms. Massive datasets on soil biota are accumulating through molecular sampling approaches, but to date these datasets have provided only limited input into conservation planning and management. We investigated how environmental DNA (eDNA) data of soil macrofungi contribute to regional Red List assessments, which are currently based on fruiting bodies (hereafter, fruit-bodies). In our test region of Estonia (northern Europe), which contained ~15,000 fruit-body records for 1583 assessed species, an average soil sample increased the range estimates of Threatened and Near Threatened fungal species by 0.18%. Five hundred soil samples almost doubled their known localities and added 19% previously unrecorded species. However, even after accumulating >1000 soil samples, about half of the Threatened and Near Threatened species known by fruit-bodies remained undetected through eDNA techniques. Effective conservation assessment of soil fungi thus requires both fruit-body and eDNA data; therefore, special efforts are needed to make these data available to conservationists.

Supplementary feeding of garden birds and gamebirds is a common practice worldwide. Bird feed is rich in phosphorus (P), which plays a key role in animal health and ecosystem function. However, much of the P in bird feed originates from mined rock deposits, which is then transported thousands of kilometers to feeder stations, where it represents an external source of nutrients for recipient ecosystems. Here, we demonstrate that diffusion of P by birds and other animals from feeder stations to ecosystems can represent a nontrivial contribution to local biogeochemical cycles. Using the UK as a case study, we show that supplementary bird feeding supplies 2.4 (range: 1.9–3.0) gigagrams of P per year across the UK, a flux similar in magnitude to atmospheric deposition. Phosphorus provided to garden birds alone is equal to that supplied through the application of garden fertilizers. In natural and semi-natural ecosystems, additional feeder-derived P inputs may exacerbate eutrophication at the local scale and adversely impact biodiversity.

In the Anthropocene, ecosystems are changing along with their capacity to support human well-being. Monitoring ecosystem services (ESs) is required to assess the changing state of human–nature interactions. To standardize the monitoring of multiple facets of ESs, the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) recently proposed the essential ecosystem service variables (EESVs), which are organized into six classes: Ecological Supply, Use, Demand, Anthropogenic Contribution, Instrumental Value, and Relational Value. We apply the EESV framework to three case studies in British Columbia, Canada, each targeting a single ES. Using trend and intervention analysis, we show how EESVs are changing and affected by policy. We discuss key challenges and solutions while providing guidance on how to quantify EESVs. Finally, we demonstrate the potential of EESVs to harmonize metrics across conceptual frameworks, monitor ES change, and provide decision support to assess progress under various international policy conventions.

The volume of and interest in unstructured participatory science data has increased dramatically in recent years. However, unstructured participatory science data contain taxonomic biases—encounters with some species are more likely to be reported than encounters with others. Taxonomic biases are driven by human preferences for different species and by logistical factors that make observing certain species challenging. We investigated taxonomic bias in reports of butterflies by characterizing differences between a dedicated participatory semi-structured dataset, eButterfly, and a popular unstructured dataset, iNaturalist, in spatiotemporally explicit models. Across 194 butterfly species, we found that 53 species were overreported and 34 species were underreported in opportunistic data. Ease of identification and feature diversity were significantly associated with overreporting in opportunistic sampling, and strong patterns in overreporting by family were also detected. Quantifying taxonomic biases not only helps us understand how humans engage with nature but also is necessary to generate robust inference from unstructured participatory data.