Academic Articles November 18th

Source: As the Oceans Warm, Hurricanes Stay Stronger Longer


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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Prioritising conservation actions for biodiversity: Lessening the impact from habitat fragmentation and climate change

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Nicholas Synes et al.
  • The interacting impacts of habitat fragmentation and climate change present a substantial threat for biodiversity, constituting a ‘deadly anthropogenic cocktail’. A range of conservation actions has been proposed to allow biodiversity to respond to those environmental changes…

The hidden biodiversity risks of increasing flexibility in biodiversity offset trades

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Sophus Ermgassen et al.
  • Market-like mechanisms for biodiversity offsetting have emerged globally as supposedly cost-effective approaches for mitigating the impacts of development. In reality, offset buyers have commonly found that required credits are scarce and/or expensive. One response has been to…

Species–habitat networks elucidate landscape effects on habitat specialisation of natural enemies and pollinators

  • Source: Ecology Letters 
  • Author(s): Francesco Lami et al.
  • We sampled pollinator and natural enemy communities in all major habitat types occurring across multiple agricultural landscapes and used species–habitat networks to determine how habitat specialisation changed along gradients in landscape composition and configuration…

Insufficient native pollinators during artificially induced early flowering decrease yield and long‐term economic viability of a tropical fruit crop

  • Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
  • Author(s): Tuanjit Sritongchuay, Kanuengnit Wayo, Michael Orr,  Alice Hughes
  • Wild bees were the main pollinator group of longan in the in‐season flowering resulting in high fruit production; whereas in the off‐season flowering honeybees and dipterans were the main pollinator group. Longan production from off‐season longan farms without managed bee produced less net profit….

Habitat-dependent outdoor recreation and conservation organizations can enable recreational fishers to contribute to conservation of coastal marine ecosystems

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): J. Raynal et al.
  • We identify potential roles for habitat-dependent outdoor recreation conservation organizations (HDORCOs) in nurturing pro-environmental attitudes and facilitating stewardship behavior among recreationists, focusing on examples from recreational fishing specialists and coastal marine ecosystems…

Farming fish in the sea will not nourish the world

  • Source: Nature Communications
  • Author(s): Ben Belton et al.
  • Contemporary narratives tend to overstate marine finfish aquaculture’s potential to deliver food security and environmental sustainability, and they often align with efforts to enclose maritime space that could facilitate its allocation to extractive industries and conservation interests and exclude fishers…

An integrated population model for estimating the relative effects of natural and anthropogenic factors on a threatened population of steelhead trout

  • Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
  • Author(s): Mark Scheuerell, Casey Ruff,  Joseph Anderson, Eric Beamer
  • The evidence for density‐dependent population regulation, combined with the substantial loss of juvenile rearing habitat in this river basin, suggests that habitat restoration could benefit this population of at‐risk steelhead. Our results also imply that hatchery programmes for steelhead need to be…

Riparian buffers act as microclimatic refugia in oil palm landscapes

  • Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
  • Author(s): Joseph Williamson et al.
  • Widely legislated riparian buffer widths of 20–30 m each side of a river may provide drier and less humid microclimatic conditions than continuous forest. Adopting wider buffers and maintaining high vegetation quality will ensure set‐asides established for hydrological reasons bring co‐benefits for…

Decades of monitoring have informed the stewardship and ecological understanding of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Michael Emslie et al.
  • Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is an iconic ecosystem that has been managed using a multi-use zoning plan over the last four decades. The Long-Term Monitoring Program (LTMP) of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) is one of the world’s longest running coral reef monitoring programs…

Forest fragmentation and defaunation drive an unusual ecological cascade: Predation release, monkey population outburst and plant demographic collapse

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Rita Portela, Rodolfo Dirzo
  • Anthropogenic habitat fragmentation combined with differential defaunation triggers complex trophic cascades. We test a Fragmentation-Defaunation Cascade Hypothesis by examining how a medium-sized monkey population outbreak led to the decline of a dominant plant…

Implications of landscape genetics and connectivity of snow leopard in the Nepalese Himalayas for its conservation

  • Source: Scientific Reports
  • Author(s): Bikram Shrestha, Pavel Kindlmann 
  • The snow leopard is one of the most endangered large mammals. Its population, already low, is declining, most likely due to the consequences of human activity, including a reduction in the size and number of suitable habitats. With climate change, habitat loss may escalate…

Landscape resistance affects individual habitat selection but not genetic relatedness in a reintroduced desert ungulate

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): L. Zecherle et al.
  • The long-term success of species reintroductions is strongly dependent on the availability of large areas of suitable habitat and the genetic make-up of the population. If available habitat is poorly connected this can hinder gene flow and lead to genetic fragmentation of the population, potentially…

Learned predators enhance biological control via organizational upward and trophic top‐down cascades

  • Source: Journal of Applied Ecology
  • Author(s): Peter Schausberger, Demet Çekin, Alena Litin
  • Our study suggests that learned natural enemies have high potential to optimize augmentative biological control on a larger scale due to favourably modulating organizational upward and trophic top‐down cascades. Abstract Learning is a behavioural change based on memory of previous experiences…

Ecological consequences of human depopulation of rural areas on wildlife: A unifying perspective

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Alejandro Martínez-Abraín et al.
  • The depopulation of rural areas by humans (or rural exodus) in southern Europe, and the associated abandonment of cropland, had marked ecological consequences on wildlife. In this report, we provide a more integrative view, and show that a rural exodus also explains other ecological phenomena…

Arthropod abundance modulates bird community responses to urbanization

  • Source: Diversity and Distributions
  • Author(s): Aimara Planillo et al.
  • We analysed the role of species interactions in wildlife community responses to urbanization. Specifically, we investigated non‐trophic associations within a bird community and the role of trophic interactions in the responses of bird species to the urbanization gradient…

Avian community response to landscape-scale habitat reclamation

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Natasha Barlow, Christopher Kirol, Bradley Fedy
  • Reclamation projects encompassing more than several square kilometers (hereafter; landscape-scale) are a recommended strategy to mitigate the impacts of energy development on wildlife. However, the response of wildlife to landscape-scale reclamation remains largely undocumented…

Co-benefits of soil carbon protection for invertebrate conservation

  • Source: Biological Conservation
  • Author(s): Angelli Flores-Rios et al.
  • We hypothesized that aligning the conservation of invertebrate biodiversity with climate change mitigation offers a solution. As both soil carbon storage and invertebrate biodiversity are positively influenced by plant diversity and productivity, a positive correlation can also be expected…

Forest degradation impacts firewood consumption patterns: A case study in the buffer zone of Inlay Lake Biosphere Reserve, Myanmar

  • Source: Global Ecology and Conservation
  • Author(s): Khin Kyaw, Tetsuji Ota, Nobuya Mizoue
  • Firewood is a major energy source, especially in developing countries. Because firewood is often collected from forest, forest quality may affect firewood consumption patterns. Here, we evaluated the impact of forest degradation on firewood consumption patterns in a rural area of Myanmar…

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