Global Ecology and Conservation最新文献

Musk deer (Moschus spp.) are widely known for its musk and are globally endangered as a result of poaching, habitat loss, and fragmentation. To facilitate restoration of the alpine musk deer (M. chrysogaster) in existing areas, reliable estimates of population size and influencing factors are essential to assess effectiveness of conservation interventions, particularly for isolated musk deer populations in patches. In this paper, we used line transect and camera trap data collected from 2020 to 2022 in the Helan mountains to assess the population status and characterized the influencing factors of alpine musk deer. Our findings indicate that musk deer are patchily distributed in three areas of high elevation, with the population limited to less than 200 individuals, remaining below historic levels (compared to 1995). There was a significant positive correlation between the role of sympatric species on musk deer, with red fox (Vulpes vulpes), badger (Meles meles) and blue eared-pheasant (Crossoptilon auritum) having a significant effect on the out-modeled pathway. Variable but insignificant effects of anthropogenic activities were observed across all species categories, which could be due to mutual adaptation over time. Our results imply that the recovery of sensitive population in island-like habitats remains challenging and may be exacerbated by limited environment and resources. Our study underscores the necessity of establishing ecological corridors to enhance habitat connectivity for alpine musk deer, undertaking conservation genetics research on isolated populations, controlling stray dogs to maintain interspecific balance, and implementing electronic fencing to mitigate human disturbance and resource competition. This study provides basic information for understanding the population status of alpine musk deer and offers insights for conservation efforts.

With the rapid development of the Yangtze River Basin, the issue of underwater noise pollution has become increasingly severe, which has adversely affected aquatic creatures, particularly fish. Ecological fish-nest bricks (EFNBs), a new type of eco-friendly revetment, can provide a favorable habitat for fish. However, its effects on the acoustic environment remain unclear. The finite element numerical simulation method of acoustic-structure coupling is adopted to explore the acoustic environment of EFNBs, analyzing the impact of sound source frequency (within 300 Hz), structural forms, and arrangement of these bricks on the internal sound pressure level. The sound pressure level distribution of A-EFNBs were also analyzed at a distance of 0–0.5 m from the opening. A method of acoustic environment improvement is proposed, which utilizes porous polyurethane sponge (PPS) sound-absorbing material to establish a conducive acoustic environment for fish in EFNBs. The study results indicate that at low frequencies of sound source (f ≤ 150 Hz), the sound pressure level within EFNBs slightly decreases compared to the adjacent areas without EFNBs. The sound pressure level variation within the bricks increases with sound source frequency. The peak sound pressure increases with the number of openings. Interval arrangements can in general decrease sound pressure by less than 20 dB. At higher frequencies(f＞200 Hz), the sound pressure level at the opening of the A-EFNBs tends to increase. However, the PPS sound-absorbing material substantially reduces the sound pressure level by 15 –55 dB, rendering it an effective method for improving the acoustic environment for fish. The PPS sound-absorbing material is more suitable for habitat improvement of black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus) and grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idellus) with relatively low hearing thresholds among the four famous Chinese carps. The research findings can serve as a reference for designing and implementing river ecological restoration projects.

Climate change is an increasing cause of biodiversity loss. The extinction of species is the most dramatic case, but also a large number of species will be forced to migrate due to the loss of habitat. We conducted a study on the current distribution of Warburgia salutaris (Canellaceae), one of the wild harvested medicinal plant species endangered through the effects of bark harvesting and land transformation, as well as the potential future distribution, extent of occurrence and habitat quality under climate change. For that, we used current occurrence data and uncorrelated environmental variables for the years 2040–2100, under four future Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) scenarios (SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, and SSP585) for four general climatic models (GCMs). A mobility-oriented parity was conducted to identify extrapolation risk. Future prediction indicated a considerable increase of highly suitable areas under all SSPs scenarios in almost all the GCMs in southern Mozambique compared to the current distribution. Overall, the suitable area and its habitat quality increased steadily in 80 years compared to the current situation. Hence, climate change could not be argued as a threat to W. salutaris for the studied period. In this context, actions such as reintroduction and cultivation to provide alternative sources of bark supply, could be capitalised to alleviate pressure on natural populations while allowing their recovery and the establishment of new core populations.

Expanding protected areas (PAs) coverage to match countries’ conservation responsibility is vital to stemming global biodiversity loss. Uneven biodiversity distribution and conservation responsibility among countries pose challenges to the implementation of conservation targets, and currently diminish conservation effectiveness. Using primates as a global model, we evaluated the conservation responsibility of countries to assess if their PA coverage adequately meets their conservation responsibility. We quantified spatial national responsibility for primate species conservation in each country from their range size of priority conservation areas (PCAs) and protected areas coverage on PCAs. We identified the high-responsibility countries for global primate conservation as countries that held > 1 % of global PCAs. We paid particular attention to the circumstances associated with PCAs in the least developed countries, especially the overlap between PCAs and the areas containing natural assets (natural assets areas). Seventeen countries were identified as high-responsibility countries that in total covered 84 % area of global PCAs. Current protected areas only covered less than 50 % of PCAs for fifteen of these high-responsibility countries. Among these fifteen countries, four countries (DR Congo, PA coverage: 19 %; Myanmar, 9 %; Madagascar, 29 %; Laos, 22 %) were the least developed countries. Most existing PCAs (95 %; SD 6 %) in these 17 countries are located within natural assets areas, which creates tension between primate conservation and local development. Global primate conservation is a shared responsibility among the international community. Developing countries have greater responsibility than most because of the overlapping of their PCAs with natural assets areas. For developing countries to fulfill their conservation responsibilities requires international conservation resources (funding support and cooperation). Protected areas expansion has to be matched with a realizable target for each country to avoid crippling conflicts between conservation and local development. Community-based management models, including other effective area-based conservation measures, may reduce potential conflict and improve conservation effectiveness.

Understory plantation of cardamom (genus Amomum) is an ancient and widespread agroforestry practice in the eastern Himalayas and Southeast Asia, an area that supports high regional biodiversity. Cardamom provides an important cash income to rural people, and governments encourage cardamom cultivation as a replacement for slash-and-burn agriculture to alleviate poverty, aligning with the principles of the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) program initiated by the FAO. This program recognizes and supports traditional agricultural practices that contributes to biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. In this context, cardamom agroforestry not only supports local economies but also provides crucial habitat for animals, including the newly described skywalker hoolock gibbon (Hoolock tianxing). Nearly half of the remnant population of the skywalker hoolock gibbon lives in cardamom agroforest. In order to evaluate if gibbons could survive in cardamom agroforest for a relatively long term, we compared foraging behavior of gibbons over a year living in cardamom agroforests (group NA) and well-preserved forests (group BB) in Mt. Gaoligong, Yunnan, China. In response to habitat degradation caused by cardamom plantation, group NA increased feeding time and spent more time feeding on leaves. Notably, they consumed nuts of Castanopsis hystrix which is an unusual food type for gibbons. On the contrary, members of group BB rarely ate nuts though Castanopsis hystrix is abundant within its home range. However, group NA did not occupy a large home range, or travel longer in time or distance than group BB. We also monitored female reproduction of five groups for 5–13 years. Two adult females living in agroforests successfully reared two or three offspring with an inter-birth interval of five years. In addition, we surveyed group size of 16 groups (9 in agroforest vs. 7 in well preserved forests) from 2017 to 2023, and we found no significant difference in group size between habitats. Our results suggested that cardamom agroforest can sustain skywalker hoolock gibbons provided it is not too fragmented and hunting is prohibited.

Due to the rapid loss of biodiversity and financial and human resource limitations, there is an urgent need to prioritize biodiversity conservation. Setting conservation priorities is also an important part of conservation biology. Species abundance, richness and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ranks are the most commonly used methods for setting conservation priorities, but with the development of bioinformatics, many studies have also demonstrated the utility of incorporating phylogenetic diversity into species prioritization, with evolutionary distinctiveness (ED) and evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered (EDGE) being widely used to determine the prioritization of species for conservation, where ED measures the contribution of species to the overall evolutionary history, and EDGE considers both evolutionary distinctiveness and IUCN ranks. In this study, based on the vascular plant distribution data collected on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), we determined the conservation priorities of plants on the QTP according to ED and EDGE2 considering four extinction risk transformations, investigated the relationship between IUCN ranks and ED, evaluated the effects of unassessed (NA) data deficiency (DD) species on EDGE rankings, and determined the conservation efficiency of the QTP conservation network in areas with evolutionary history and explored the possibility of incorporating evolutionary history into species conservation priorities. The results showed that there was no significant relationship between the ED of vascular plants and the IUCN ranks on the QTP; the results of EDGE2 showed that the top 25 species, with 14 species common to all four transformations, possessed both high ED and IUCN ranks; when EDGE2 containing DD and NA species showed that DD and NA species accounted for a large percentage of the top 25 species for all four transformations, suggesting that they may have significant potential for evolutionary history conservation; that the conservation priority areas for endemic seed plants of the QTP are located in the Hengduan Mountains, the eastern Yarlung Zangbo River, the southern Qionglai Mountains, the western Gangdise Mountains and the southern Kunlun Mountains; and that the QTP conservation networks protect the only 38.2 % of the areas rich in evolutionary history. These results emphasize the need to incorporate evolutionary information into conservation biology, but it should also be considered in conjunction with existing taxonomic diversity methods as a complementary conservation tool to provide a new perspective on the conservation of QTP plant diversity.

Research on the functional traits of twigs is of great significance to clarify the plant life-history strategies, especially for endangered plants. However, little attention has been given to the environmental adaptation strategy of different age twigs. The dove tree (Davidia involucrata Baill.), a relict and critically endangered Chinese species, was employed as a model species. Total lamina mass and area, stem mass and length, total bract mass and area, and total petiole mass were measured for 100 current-year terminal twigs (50 per age group) from old and young dove trees in Pingwu County, Sichuan, southwest China. Then, the scaling relationships within the twig were determined using the standardized major axis (SMA) regression method. Our results showed that the significantly positive correlations among traits of D. involucrata twigs, and scaling relationships between these traits are different between the two age groups. At the twig level, isometric scaling relationships exist between stem mass and lamina size (or bract size) and between total lamina mass and total lamina area (or total petiole mass). In contrast, allometric scaling relationships exist between lamina size (total mass and area) and stem length (with a common slope > 1), and between total lamina mass and total petiole mass (with a common slope < 1). For a given stem mass, stem length and bract area, young trees have larger total lamina mass and total bract mass, larger total lamina mass and area, and larger total bract mass than old trees, respectively. The results suggest that young trees tend to have more vegetative and reproductive organ mass per unit of supporting organ mass than old trees to meet their rapid growth needs.

The Qilian Mountains constitute an important ecological security barrier in the northwest of China, with a wealth of habitat types and biological species. They have a profound impact on the surrounding area and even the world. However, due to both natural and anthropogenic influences, Achnatherum inebrians is widely distributed in this region, seriously threatening the balance of the grass-soil-livestock ecosystem. To explore appropriate restoration measures of alpine grassland of the Eastern Qilian Mountains degraded by the presence of A. inebrians, we studied the effects of restoration measures on the A. inebrians population, the grassland vegetation community, and soil characteristics following sward ripping (SR) and swarding ripping plus reseeding excellent forage (SREF) in Tianzhu County, Gansu Province; adjacent A. inebrians-type degraded alpine grassland without any measures was the control (CK). The SR and SREF inhibited A. inebrians growth and reproduction, increased the proportion of edible forage and the community species diversity, (especially aboveground biomass and sum of sub-coverage of edible forage by as much as two and three times), and improved soil nutrients and soil quality. The radar analysis showed that SREF had the best effect on the A. inebrians-type degraded alpine grassland. Correlation analysis showed that edible forage community, plant diversity, soil moisture, and available nutrient content were the main factors driving the restoration of this degraded alpine grassland. Implementing measures tailored to local conditions could effectively inhibit the spread of A. inebrians, stimulate edible forage growth, and improve the grassland plant community and soil environment. The results indicated a reasonable method of restoration for this poisonous weed-type degraded grassland and protection of the ecological environment.

Habitat loss, fragmentation, and climate change present significant threats to global plant biodiversity. Small and isolated populations residing in threatened habitats at the edge of their natural distribution are particularly vulnerable to local extinction. Rosa pulverulenta M.Bieb., had its southernmost distribution in the Mediterranean basin in Jordan, but this remnant population recently extinct in the wild. Our goal to resurrect this species is hindered by the limited availability of seeds from the extinct population and a high degree of combinational dormancy in R. pulverulenta. To preserve as many genotypes as possible for eventual reintroduction, we aimed to identify the most effective seed treatment for breaking seed dormancy, and enhancing germination, and seedling establishment. Seeds were collected one season before extinction. We applied seven pre-germination treatments. The pre-treated seeds were then germinated at three temperature regimes (4/4 °C, 20/15 °C, and 25/20 °C), simulating winter and spring germination conditions. Warm-cold stratification, integral to all pre-treatments, proved effective in dormancy release, significantly enhancing germination. The highest germination (68 %) occurred at 4 °C, particularly in seeds treated with warm-cold stratification alone. Conversely, minimal germination was observed at higher temperatures (20/15 °C and 25/20 °C), suggesting potential induction of secondary dormancy. Furthermore, warm-cold stratification, especially when followed by microbial fertilizer, positively impacted seedling survival. Our study provides insights into effectively resurrecting the southernmost boundary of R. pulverulenta distribution in the Mediterranean basin, thereby preventing the global decline in the species' extent of occurrence. Strategically releasing seed dormancy and enhancing germination has important implications on scientific efforts reversing the declining trend of biodiversity in the Anthropocene. Additionally, seed collection from populations on the brink of extinction for resurrection is crucially required as the best method to preserve their genetic diversity. Therefore, this work offers a valuable framework that can be adapted to similar conservation efforts for other endangered plant species facing comparable threats. We emphasize the importance of further investigating how climate change can negatively affect seed dormancy, germination, and plant regeneration, ultimately leading to the local extinction of threatened populations.

Climate change influences the composition of species and the phenology of insect. Species tend to appear earlier in spring and to be active later in autumn. However, species respond differently to climatic changes according to their ecological and behavioural performance. However, it has not yet been clarified which ecological characteristics determine which responses. In this study, we analysed potential phenological shifts of butterflies and burnet moths across Northern Austria over a period of four decades. To investigate this, we used extensive museum data and compared the time windows 1980 to 2000 and 2001 to 2022. We found species´ specific responses to climate change differing for spring and autumn. Species hibernating as imago or pupa as well as migratory habitat ubiquists showed particularly strong phenological responses. These species may become active immediately when weather conditions become suitable. The later occurrence of species during autumn is largely controlled by day length. Therefore, altering temperature regimes did not detectably influence autumn activity. Our study highlights that ecological specialists suffer most from climate change as these are least able to adapt to new thermal conditions and altered seasonality.