
Source: Why Monarch Butterflies Aren’t Getting Endangered Species Status
The latest academic papers on conservation. If you have a paper that you would like to share, please get in contact with us. Click on the title to follow the link to each article. Please note that some of these articles are behind a paywall.
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There will be no weekly academic articles posted next week due to the holidays. Please expect the weekly articles to resume in the new year, starting January 6th, 2021.
- Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
- Author(s): Per Jonsson et al.
- Our extension of Cumulative Impact Assessment offers a new method for mapping and practically integrating seascape connectivity with ecosystem‐based MSP and other spatial instruments for policy making, such as marine protected areas…
Assessing the habitat and functional connectivity around fenced ecosanctuaries in New Zealand
- Source: Biological Conservation
- Author(s): Olivia Burge et al.
- Fenced ecosanctuaries are a high-cost method of creating areas of pest predator-free habitat for species or populations for whom predation is a limiting factor. We assessed the amount of habitat around both fenced and unfenced ecosanctuaries in New Zealand, how connected the ecosanctuaries were to the wider landscape, and the overall landscape connectivity around ecosanctuaries, for six bird species at 18 sites…
Greater local diversity under older species pools may arise from enhanced competitive equivalence
- Source: Ecology Letters
- Author(s): Devin Leopold, Tadashi Fukami
- Ecological communities typically contain more species when located within geologically older regions. This pattern is traditionally attributed to the long‐term accumulation of species in the regional species pool, with local species interactions playing a minor role. We provide evidence suggesting a more important role of local species interactions than generally assumed…
- Source: Ecology
- Author(s): Susan Everingham, Catherine Offord, Manon Sabot, Angela Moles
- Studies assessing the biological impacts of climate change typically rely on long‐term, historic data to measure trait responses to climate through time. Here, we overcame the problem of absent historical data by using resurrected seeds to capture historic plant trait data for a number of plants…
Larger pollinators deposit more pollen on stigmas across multiple plant species—A meta‐analysis
- Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
- Author(s): Rita Földesi, Brad Howlett, Ingo Grass, Péter Batáry
- Our meta‐analysis highlights the breadth of wild pollinators that contribute to pollination effectiveness via their delivery of pollen to many crop and non‐crop plant species. However, just 25% of the observations assessed the amount of pollen deposited by fly species…
A mummified Pleistocene gray wolf pup
- Source: Current Biology
- Author(s): Julie Meachen et al.
- Here, we report detailed morphometric, isotopic, and genetic analyses of Zhùr, the mummified ancient wolf pup, that reveal details of her appearance, evolutionary relationships to other wolves and short life-history and ecology…
Effects of Legalization and Wildlife Farming on Conservation
- Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
- Author(s): Jessica Rizzolo
- Many wildlife species are impacted by unsustainable consumption. This paper used an experimental vignette survey in Mainland China to explore empirically how legalization, wildlife farming, and possible changes in consumptive acceptability affect demand for wildlife products…
- Source: Biological Conservation
- Author(s): Anne-Charlotte Vaissière, Yves Meinard
- Ecological compensation is a principle according to which negative impacts on biodiversity should be compensated for. We analyze the French case, which is one of the most developed ecological compensation policies in the world. We show that this policy is torn between two antagonistic trends…
- Source: Biological Conservation
- Author(s): Nina Da Rocha et al.
- Here we quantify whether the introduction of a new regulation that required the use of bird-scaring lines reduced seabird mortality in two of the most hazardous fisheries in the South Atlantic. We used data from BirdLife International’s Albatross Task Force and the Namibian Fisheries Observer Agency to quantify changes in seabird mortality in these fisheries before and after the introduction of these regulations…
A case for better international protection of the Sumatran Laughingthrush
- Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
- Author(s): Sarah Heinrich, Boyd Leupen, Simon Bruslund, Andrew Owen, Chris Shepherd
- The Sumatran Laughingthrush is an island endemic bird species from Indonesia. Here, we investigate Sumatran Laughingthrush trade in the European Union (EU)…
- Source: Biological Conservation
- Author(s): Manoela Lopes, Bijeesh Veettil, Dejanira Saldanha
- The objective of this research was to propose a methodology for the delimitation of a buffer zone surrounding a conservation unit within the Atlantic Forest Biome, integrating physical, biotic and socioeconomic aspects with the use of map algebra and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique…
- Source: Biological Conservation
- Author(s): Ben Gilby et al.
- Significant changes in the intensity or distribution of human activities, like during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, can cause rapid changes to the diversity, distribution and abundance of animals. These changes are usually viewed as positive for ecosystems. Here, we mapped the abundance and habitat associations of coastal vertebrates along approximately 50 km of ocean beaches on the Sunshine Coast in eastern Australia using baited trail cameras before (April–June 2018 and 2019) and during the April–May 2020 COVID-19 lockdown…
Proactive conservation to prevent habitat losses to agricultural expansion
- Source: Nature Sustainability
- Author(s): David Williams et al.
- We developed a geographically explicit model of future agricultural land clearance based on observed historical changes, and combined the outputs with species-specific habitat preferences for 19,859 species of terrestrial vertebrates. We project that 87.7% of these species will lose habitat to agricultural expansion by 2050, with 1,280 species projected to lose ≥25% of their habitat…