As I did last year and the year before, here’s another arbitrary, retrospective list of the top 20 influential conservation papers of 2015 as assessed via F1000 Prime.
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- Changing habitat areas and static reserves: challenges to species protection under climate change — the finding that species’ ranges are shrinking in situ, instead of shifting in location, is important and novel, which can only be discovered by taking such a spatially realistic landscape approach ...
- Have ecosystem services been oversold? — … provides a much needed questioning of current frameworks for the valuation of ecosystem services and the uses they are put to …
- Reframing the land-sparing/land-sharing debate for biodiversity conservation — This is an excellent paper, and one I’ve already covered. The F1000 review has this to say: … there need not be a choice between land sparing and land sharing; … [rather], a sustainable future will need to involve both large reserves as well as biodiversity-friendly farming practices …
- Accelerated modern human-induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction — … Compare the … [Pope’s] encyclical and [this] scientific paper, and you will see that the Pope is even more extreme than the scientists in denouncing our impact on biodiversity …
- Competition on the range: science vs. perception in a bison-cattle conflict in the western USA — … Because of this (well-known, but seemingly ignored) trophic dynamic, relaxing coyote removal is likely to decrease lagomorph densities with positive effects to cattle …
- Marine defaunation: animal loss in the global ocean — … This paper adds to many previous cries of alarm, and it provides further fuel towards the appreciation of how great our harm is to the integrity of the biosphere, but, I want to stress it again, it also contains hope. Due to the reproductive patterns of most marine species, their populations can recover …
- Pollinator floral provisioning by a plant invader: quantifying beneficial effects of detrimental species — … it adds to knowledge of trade-offs between positive and negative ecological interactions, which is a useful approach to advance ecosystem services research …
- Predator-free New Zealand: conservation country — … addresses the possibility of upscaling invasive predator (carnivore) control from relatively small offshore islands to eventually the two main islands of New Zealand (26 million ha) in 50 years.
- Immigration can destabilise tri-trophic interactions: implications for conservation of top predators — … Given the endangered status of many large carnivores and an effort to protect them by establishing safe migration routes, the results of this paper have important ramifications for conservation biology …
- Larger trees suffer most during drought in forests worldwide — … Whatever the reasons, greater sensitivity of large trees to drought is potentially bad news for the global carbon cycle. These forest behemoths store vast quantities of carbon in their stems, roots, and branches …
- Warning times for species extinctions due to climate change — … authors calculate that roughly half of listed species are likely to go extinct within 20 years of being listed as critically endangered.
- Evaluating taboo trade-offs in ecosystems services and human well-being — … it applies an existing psychological classification of trade-offs to ecosystem services. Trade-offs are said to occur among material things, among non-material things, and sometimes between non-material and material things …
- Public health impacts of ecosystem change in the Brazilian Amazon — … protected areas can greatly increase or greatly decrease malaria incidence in the surrounding population …
- Seed coating with a neonicotinoid insecticide negatively affects wild bees — … suggesting that the effects of neonicotinoid use on wild pollinator populations may be greater than previously thought and implying that honeybee studies cannot be reliably extrapolated to other species.
- Predicting climate-driven regime shifts versus rebound potential in coral reefs — … Factors associated with recovery were high densities of juvenile corals, a structurally complex reef assemblage, and water depths below 6 m. The levels of herbivory and nutrients were significant but weaker predictors of regime shifts. Interestingly, whether or not a site was located in a Marine Reserve had no bearing on the recovery trajectory.
- Environment and development. Get the science right when paying for nature’s services — … propose clear guidelines based on scientific principles for calculating payments for ecosystem services. These recommendations offer a sound basis for beginning to establish consistent, science-based metrics for furthering the use of fair payment for ecosystem services to address the opposing goals of conservation and development.
- The IPBES Conceptual Framework — connecting nature and people — … This is a must-read for anyone working on ecosystem services. It highlights the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) conceptual framework.
- Metapopulation dynamics on ephemeral patches — … authors add a new dimension to metapopulation modeling by allowing metapopulations on ephemeral patches to utilize pulsed dispersal at the end of the patch lifetime.
- Walk on the wild side: estimating the global magnitude of visits to protected areas — I’ve also covered this one before, and here’s a little snippet of why it’s important: … Such powerful social and economic evidence of the importance of protected areas might assist in convincing those who do not place much intrinsic value on biodiversity conservation that the world needs more – not fewer – protected areas.
- Marine reserves can enhance ecological resilience — … provide important theoretical illustration that MPAs can be compatible with sustainable exploitation of marine fishery resources; as such, spatial management is further encouraged …
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CJA Bradshaw
