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.

Identifying the locations and drivers of high-risk interfaces between humans and wildlife is crucial for managing zoonotic disease risk. We suggest that continent-wide improvements to residential housing in Africa are inadvertently creating artificial roosting habitat for synanthropic free-tailed bats (family Molossidae), and that improved buildings are a rapidly accelerating exposure interface that needs urgent research attention and investment. Along a residential gradient in rural southern Kenya, we mapped building use by free-tailed bats in 1109 buildings. We show that bats often roost in human-occupied buildings, with almost one-in-ten buildings exhibiting evidence of bat occupation (9.2%) and one-in-13 found to contain active bat roosts (7.6%). We identified modern-build styles and triangular roofing as building-level predictors of bat occupation, and the proportion of modern buildings as a landscape-level predictor of bat occupancy. Humane preemptive exclusion of bats (by sealing bat entry points to buildings) and restoration of natural roosting habitats should be prioritized as One Health land-use planning strategies in rural Africa.

To promote sustainable fisheries under climate change, fisheries managers must apply appropriate adaptation measures. However, little is known about how species interactions shift with climate change and the potential effectiveness of such adaptation measures. Here, we modeled the application of a species control measure in a lake ecosystem using a temperature-dependent food-web model containing different thermal guilds. A warm-adapted predator (bass, Micropterus spp) was removed to locally mitigate undesirable effects of climate warming on a cool-adapted species (walleye, Sander vitreus). Nevertheless, a warming-induced thermally mediated trophic cascade can lead to expected and unexpected outcomes, with bass removal depending on food-web linkages. With low levels of bass predation on juvenile walleye, walleye persist in warmer temperatures when bass are present (not controlled) than when bass are absent (controlled). Therefore, we encourage managers to use caution and consider various scenarios of food-web changes, to determine when species control may be effective for climate adaptation.

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.