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opencc-zeroDec 2019View details →

Lessons from a century of conservation translocations

<ol> <li>Translocation—moving individuals for release in new locations—is among the most important conservation interventions for increasing or re-establishing populations of threatened species. However, translocations often fail. To improve their effectiveness, we need to understand the features that distinguish successful from failed translocations.</li> <li>Here, we assembled and analysed a global database of translocations of terrestrial vertebrates (n=514) to assess the effects of various design features and extrinsic factors on success. Unlike previous reviews, we analysed outcomes using standardized metrics i.e. a categorical success/failure classification, and population growth rate.</li> <li>Probability of categorical success and population growth rate increased with the total number of individuals released but with diminishing returns above about 20-50 individuals. Releasing more animals may overcome stochastic variation in survival and reproduction, and could also indicate better overall resourcing of projects. There has been no increase in numbers released per translocation over time.</li> <li>Positive outcomes—reported success and high population growth—were less likely for translocation in Oceania, possibly because invasive species are a major threat on the continent and are difficult to control at translocation sites. Increased rates of categorical reported success and population growth were found for Europe and North America, suggesting the key role of historical context in positive translocation outcomes. Releases of captive animals resulted in negative population growth rates, on average, while those of wild animals were positive. We also found evidence that success differed according to the nature of the threatening process and was higher in projects that released animals over longer periods.</li> <li>Categorical success has increased throughout the 20th century, but that increase may have plateaued at about 75% since about 1990. No temporal trend in other variables explained this trend suggesting either additional unmeasured variable(s) were responsible for the improvement, or that authors have become more ready to attribute success to their efforts over time.</li> </ol>

Phylogenomics and species delimitation for effective conservation of manta and devil rays

Practical biodiversity conservation relies on delineation of biologically meaningful units. Manta and devil rays (Mobulidae) are threatened worldwide, yet morphological similarities and a succession of recent taxonomic changes impede the development of an effective conservation strategy. Here, we generate genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data from a geographically and taxonomically representative set of manta and devil ray samples to reconstruct phylogenetic relationships and evaluate species boundaries under the general lineage concept. We show that nominal species units supported by alternative data sources constitute independently evolving lineages, and find robust evidence for a putative new species of manta ray in the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, we uncover substantial incomplete lineage sorting indicating that rapid speciation together with standing variation in ancestral populations has driven phylogenetic uncertainty within Mobulidae. Finally, we detect cryptic diversity in geographically distinct populations, demonstrating that management below the species level may be warranted in certain species. Overall, our study provides a framework for molecular genetic species delimitation that is relevant to wide-ranging taxa of conservation concern, and highlights the potential for genomic data to support effective management, conservation, and law enforcement strategies.

Data for: High-resolution land value maps reveal underestimation of conservation costs in the United States

The justification and targeting of conservation policy rests on reliable measures of public and private benefits from competing land uses. Advances in Earth system observation and modeling permit the mapping of public ecosystem services at unprecedented scales and resolutions, prompting new proposals for land protection policies and priorities. Data on private benefits from land use are not available at similar scales and resolutions, resulting in a data mismatch with unknown consequences. Here I show that private benefits from land can be quantified at large scales and high resolutions, and that doing so can have important implications for conservation policy models. I develop the first high-resolution estimates of fair market value of private lands in the contiguous United States by training tree-based ensemble models on 6 million land sales. The resulting estimates predict conservation cost with up to 8.5 times greater accuracy than earlier proxies. Studies using coarser cost proxies underestimated conservation costs, especially at the expensive tail of the distribution. This might have led to underestimations of policy budgets by factors of up to 37.5 in recent work. More accurate cost accounting will help policy makers acknowledge the full magnitude of contemporary conservation challenges, and can assist with the targeting of public ecosystem service investments.

Data from: The value of time-series data for conservation planning

<ol> <li>Protected areas (PAs) are increasingly being used worldwide for the conservation and management of wildlife. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) aims at ensuring biodiversity persistence while minimizing the threats faced by the species and/or the economic costs related to protection. To account for spatio-temporal interactions between species and human threats, conservation planning for mobile wildlife requires time-series data derived from monitoring of species and human threats, a process that is costly and technically challenging. Therefore, assessments of the monitoring period needed to ensure sufficient data input in the design of efficient, adequate and representative networks of PAs are crucial.</li> <li>We demonstrated the value of time-series data in conservation planning by implementing SCP and data from different monitoring periods to identify priority conservation areas for highly mobile marine megafauna accounting for their main threat: commercial fishing. Two analyses of ten reserve-design scenarios each, replicated as many times as the data composing each scenario permitted were run in Marxan. The best solutions of the planning scenarios were statistically compared using the Cohen`s Kappa test. We also assessed differences in spatial similarity among and within scenarios using the Wilcoxon non-parametric test and a non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis. Finally, we compared the necessary cost and the area selected for each scenario.</li> <li>Our study highlights the importance of time-series ecological and socioeconomic data for the robust selection of priority conservation areas. The results revealed different thresholds of the minimum temporal data required to design efficient networks of PAs for highly mobile species, demonstrating that the incorporation of data covering longer periods to the scenarios produce a more robust selection of priority conservation areas. Conservation plans using data covering less than three years were missing important priority areas.</li> <li> Synthesis and applications. We provide a method for estimating the minimum number of years of monitoring required to design efficient networks of protected areas that ensure the persistence of highly mobile species such as cetaceans and seabirds. This method can be used within an adaptive management framework to evaluate whether a network of PAs performs as planned, and to test whether management strategies should be altered or adjusted in response to local and global changes.</li> </ol>

opencc-by-4.0Sep 2020View details →

Mitogenomes reveal alternative initiation codons and lineage-specific gene order conservation in echinoderms

Sample information, gene alignments and concatenated matrix

Wild at heart: programs to diminish negative ecological and evolutionary effects of conservation hatcheries

Hatchery programs are critical for conservation and management of many imperiled fishes. Most traditional aquaculture programs negatively affect ecological performance, genetic, and phenotypic diversity of hatchery-origin fish compared with wild counterparts. Here, we synthesize outcomes of three conservation programs aimed at enhancing 'wildness'. Each program focuses on a different species: lake sturgeon, razorback sucker, and Rio Grande silvery minnow. These species differ in key life history traits including size and age at sexual maturity, reproductive and migratory behavior, and habitat requirements. Threats to persistence of the focal taxa, however, exemplify common pressures experienced by freshwater fishes worldwide. Conservation hatchery programs for lake sturgeon, razorback sucker, and Rio Grande silvery minnow capitalize on natural spawning in the wild followed by collections of wild-fertilized eggs/larvae for hatchery rearing. Individuals are repatriated to the wild after rearing to body sizes less susceptible to mortality. Protocols include collections of eggs or larvae across the entire spawning period and at appropriate geographic scales to maximize retention of genetic diversity and, to increase the likelihood of preserving variation for heritable life history traits. Using direct and indirect evidence we show that hatchery programs that allow individuals to fulfill parts of the life-cycle in their native habitats can be conducted without compromising genetic diversity. Adoption of similar strategies in other imperiled fishes would improve understanding of species life history, and provide an incentive to protect native habitats so they may eventually support self-sustaining populations.

opencc-zeroDec 2016View details →

Data from: Mammal diversity and metacommunity dynamics in urban green spaces: implications for urban wildlife conservation

As urban growth expands and natural environments fragment, it is essential to understand the ecological roles fulfilled by urban green spaces. To evaluate how urban green spaces function as wildlife habitat, we estimated mammal diversity and metacommunity dynamics in city parks, cemeteries, golf courses, and natural areas throughout the greater Chicago, IL, USA region. We found similar a-diversity (with the exception of city parks), but remarkably dissimilar communities in different urban green spaces. Additionally, the type of urban green space greatly influenced species colonization and persistence rates. For example, coyotes (Canis latrans) had the highest, but white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) the lowest, probability of persistence in golf courses compared to other green space types. Further, most species had a difficult time colonizing city parks even when sites were seemingly available. Our results indicate that urban green spaces contribute different, but collectively important, habitats for maintaining and conserving biodiversity in cities.

opencc-zeroNov 2020View details →

Conservation planning across realms: enhancing connectivity for multi-realm species

Connectivity plays a key role in biodiversity conservation as it sustains ecological processes important for the maintenance of populations such as migrations. Connectivity is especially relevant for species that rely on different realms during their life cycle or use different realms daily or seasonally (multi-realm species). However, effort to address conservation across multiple realms have focused on identifying priority areas for conservation in a single realm (mostly marine) accounting for threats propagating from other realms or single species needs. Here, we demonstrate how to identify priority areas for conservation across three different realms (freshwater-terrestrial, estuary and marine) for multiple species, including some multi-realm species, that inhabit or move across the three realms. We use the whole Tagus River Basin, its estuary and nearby marine area as a case study. We compared the allocation of priority areas and spatial connectivity achieved under three scenarios: no-connectivity, within-realm and cross-realm connectivity scenarios. There were some differences in the spatial allocation of priority areas across scenarios. The most remarkable difference laid on the connectivity achieved under each scenario, which experienced a 3-fold increase when considering connectivity across realms, compared to solutions that considered only connectivity within each realm independently. This improvement in connectivity was especially marked for some of the species that occur across the three realms. There were, however, trade-offs between this improvement in connectivity: i) an increase in the number of planning units selected, especially in the estuary, the realm that links the other two; and ii) a decline in connectivity achieved within the freshwater—terrestrial and marine realms. Synthesis and applications: Addressing connectivity across realms deserves especial attention when planning for conservation of multi-realm species to ensure adequacy of conservation recommendations to respond to the needs of these species. Given the potential trade-offs between enhanced cross-realm connectivity and total area needed or internal within-realm connectivity, consideration of cross-realm connectivity must be cautiously evaluated and integrated in multi-realm conservation plans.

opencc-zeroOct 2021View details →

A blueprint for securing Brazil's marine biodiversity and supporting the achievement of global conservation goals

Aim: As a step towards providing support for an ecological approach to strengthening marine protected areas (MPAs) and meeting international commitments, this study combines cumulative impact assessment and conservation planning approach to undertake a large-scale spatial prioritisation. Location: Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Brazil, Southwest Atlantic Ocean Methods: We developed a prioritisation approach to protecting different habitat types, threatened species ranges, and ecological connectivity, while also mitigating the impacts of multiple threats on biodiversity. When identifying priorities for conservation, we accounted for the co-occurrence of 24 human threats and the distribution of 161 marine habitats and 143 threatened species, as well as their associated vulnerabilities. Additionally, we compared our conservation priorities with MPAs proposed by local stakeholders. Results: We show that impacts to habitats and species are widespread and identify hotspots of cumulative impacts on inshore and offshore areas. Industrial fisheries, climate change, and land-based activities were the most severe threats to biodiversity. The highest priorities were mostly found towards the coast due to the high cumulative impacts found in nearshore areas. As expected, our systematic approach showed a better performance on selecting priority sites when compared to the MPAs proposed by local stakeholders without a typical conservation planning exercise, increasing the existing coverage of MPAs by only 7.9%. However, we found that proposed MPAs still provide some opportunities to protect areas facing high levels of threats. Main conclusions: The study presents a blueprint of how to embrace a comprehensive ecological approach when identifying strategic priorities for conservation. We advocate protecting these crucial areas from degradation in emerging conservation efforts is key to maintain their biodiversity value.

opencc-zeroNov 2020View details →

Predictive genetic plan for a captive population of the Chinese goral (Naemorhedus griseus) and prescriptive action for ex situ and in situ conservation management in Thailand

Captive breeding programs for endangered species can increase population numbers for eventual reintroduction to the wild. Captive populations are typically small and isolated, which results in inbreeding and reduction of genetic variability, and may lead to an increased risk of extinction. The Omkoi Wildlife Breeding Center maintains the only Thai captive Chinese goral (Naemorhedus griseus) population, and has plans to reintroduce individuals into natural isolated populations. Genetic variability was assessed within the captive population using microsatellite data. Although no bottleneck was observed, genetic variability was low (allelic richness = 7.091 ± 0.756, He = 0.455 ± 0.219; He < Ho) and 11 microsatellite loci were informative that likely reflect inbreeding. Estimates of small effective population size and limited numbers of founders, combined with wild-born individuals within subpopulations, tend to cause reduction of genetic variability over time in captive programs. This leads to low reproductive fitness and limited ability to adapt to environmental change, thereby increasing the risk of extinction. Management of captive populations as evolutionarily significant units with diverse genetic backgrounds offers an effective strategy for population recovery. Relocation of individuals among subpopulations, or introduction of newly captured wild individuals into the captive program will help to ensure the future security of Chinese goral. Implications for future conservation actions for the species are discussed herein.

FIGURE 3 in Recent findings of Isthmohyla pictipes (Anura: Hylidae) in Costa Rica: variation and implications for conservation

FIGURE 3. Tadpole of Isthmohyla pictipes (UCR 23382) at stage 25 (Gosner 1960). (A): Dorsal view. (B): Lateral view. (C): Ventral view. (D): Oral disc.

FIGURE 5 in Recent findings of Isthmohyla pictipes (Anura: Hylidae) in Costa Rica: variation and implications for conservation

FIGURE 5. Dorsal and ventral views of Isthmohyla pictipes adults collected in Cuericí, Costa Rica. (A–B): Female (UCR 23366). (C–D): Female (UCR 23364). (E–F): Male (UCR 23363).

FIGURE 2 in Recent findings of Isthmohyla pictipes (Anura: Hylidae) in Costa Rica: variation and implications for conservation

FIGURE 2. Isthmohyla pictipes from San Gerardo de Dota (not collected). (A): Adult female with diurnal coloration. (B, D–E): Adult female with a green uniform dorsum. (C, F–G): Adult male with white stripes on the outer edges of the forearms and on the upper lip.

FIGURE 9 in Phylogenetic analysis of the South American sharpshooter genus Scopogonalia Young, 1977 (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), with implications for conservation

FIGURE 9. Geographical distribution of Scopogonalia. Biomes were classified according to WWF´s Ecoregion of the World (Olson et al. 2001).

FIGURE 1 in Phylogenetic analysis of the South American sharpshooter genus Scopogonalia Young, 1977 (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), with implications for conservation

FIGURE 1. Species of Scopogonalia, dorsal habitus. (A) Scopogonalia agkistroides, (B) S. alba, and (C) S. dolixoura (from the Yellow-Brown Clade), (D) S. amazonensis, (E) S. euxloa, and (F) S. osteiphera (from the green paraphyletic group) (all described by Leal & Cre"o-Duarte in Leal et al. 2016).

FIGURE 8 in Phylogenetic analysis of the South American sharpshooter genus Scopogonalia Young, 1977 (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), with implications for conservation

FIGURE 8. Apices of valvula II of ovipositor of Scopogonalia osteiphera (A), S. agkistroides (B), and S. alba (C). The ventral margin (VM) of the dentate apical portion is longer than the dorsal margin (DM) in A, shorter in B, and approximately the same length in C (character 59, states 2, 1, and 0, respectively). Scale bars: 0.05 mm (A), 0.1 mm (B, C).

FIGURE 5 in Phylogenetic analysis of the South American sharpshooter genus Scopogonalia Young, 1977 (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), with implications for conservation

FIGURE 5. Forewings (schematic) of Rotigonalia olivacea (A) and Scopogonalia subolivacea (B). IAC: inner anteapical cell; MAC: median anteapical cell. IAC and MAC are closed basally in A (characters 19 and 20, state 0) and open in B (characters 19 and 20, state 1). Scale bars: 1 mm.

FIGURE 4 in Phylogenetic analysis of the South American sharpshooter genus Scopogonalia Young, 1977 (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), with implications for conservation

FIGURE 4. Heads (schematic) of Rotigonalia regina (A) and Scopogonalia subolivacea (B), frontal view. The arrows in A show the lobes of the swollen clypeus (character 11, state 1); the arrow in B shows the dark brown to black macula in the transition from crown to face (character 1, state 1). Scale bars: 1 mm.

FIGURE 7 in Phylogenetic analysis of the South American sharpshooter genus Scopogonalia Young, 1977 (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), with implications for conservation

FIGURE 7. Teeth of median portion of ovipositor (schematic) of Scopogonalia osteiphera (A) and S. agkistroides (B). In A, the sclerotized portion is thin (character 57, state 0) and the tooth is inclined trapezoid (character 58, state 2). In B, the sclerotized portion is thick (character 57, state 1) and the tooth is triangular (character 58, state 0). Scale bars: 0.02 mm (A), 0.05 mm (B).

FIGURE 3 in Phylogenetic analysis of the South American sharpshooter genus Scopogonalia Young, 1977 (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cicadellidae), with implications for conservation

FIGURE 3. Chosen tree of the phylogenetic analysis of Scopogonalia (in bold) and outgroups obtained with implied weighting (k = 15). White circles (Ǫ) indicate homoplastic transformations and black circles indicate (●) non-homoplastic transformations. Character numbers are indicated above symbols and character states below. Characters with ambiguous transformations are circled with red lines. T.: Tretogonia; C.: Cyclogonia; R.: Rotigonalia; P.: Plerogonalia; S.: Scopogonalia.