Conservation biology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Species extinction risk is difficult to measure and often lags behind the pace of increasing threats. Here, the authors demonstrate how monitoring changes in cumulative human pressures could be used to rapidly assess potential change in species’ conservation status.

    • Moreno Di Marco
    • , Oscar Venter
    •  & James E. M. Watson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has recently been found that stress hormones accumulate in the earwax of whales. Here, the authors use these signatures of stress along with time series of ocean warming and whaling pressure to demonstrate that both stressors were correlated with baleen whale stress over several decades.

    • Stephen J. Trumble
    • , Stephanie A. Norman
    •  & Sascha Usenko

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Disentangling multiple drivers of species declines can be difficult yet is critical to species conservation. Here, the authors parse the relative contributions of deforestation and trapping to declines of native birds in Southeast Asia, finding that the extinction risk of trapped species may be underestimated.

    • William S. Symes
    • , David P. Edwards
    •  & L. Roman Carrasco

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Amphibians have seen large population declines, but the key drivers are hard to establish. Here, Miller et al. investigate trends of occupancy for 81 species of amphibians across North America and find greater sensitivity to water availability during breeding and winter conditions than mean climate.

    • David A. W. Miller
    • , Evan H. Campbell Grant
    •  & Brent H. Sigafus

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human-tiger conflict occurs where there is a higher risk of encountering tigers. Here, Struebig et al. use geographic profiling to predict risk of encounters in Sumatra, and show that combining risk measures with social data on tolerance could help prioritise regions for conflict mitigation efforts.

    • Matthew J. Struebig
    • , Matthew Linkie
    •  & Freya A. V. St. John

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wild Asian elephants have been and continue to be captured to supplement captive populations. Here, Lahdenperä et al. use records from Myanmar timber elephants to show that wild-caught elephants have increased mortality compared to captive-born elephants for many years after capture.

    • Mirkka Lahdenperä
    • , Khyne U. Mar
    •  & Virpi Lummaa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An ongoing conservation question is if we can maintain functional diversity by optimizing for preservation of phylogenetic diversity. Here, Mazel et al. show that functional diversity increases with phylogenetic diversity in some clades but not others, and thus could be a risky conservation strategy.

    • Florent Mazel
    • , Matthew W. Pennell
    •  & William D. Pearse

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Microbiota composition fluctuates in response to changes in environmental and lifestyle factors. Here, Hicks et al. show that the faecal microbiota of wild gorillas and chimpanzees is temporally dynamic, with shifts that correlate with seasonal rainfall patterns and periods of high and low frugivory.

    • Allison L. Hicks
    • , Kerry Jo Lee
    •  & Brent L. Williams

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat change and warming each contribute to species' elevational range shifts, but their synergistic effects have not been explored. Here, Guo et al. reanalyze published data and show that the interaction between warming and forest change predicts range shifts better than either factor on its own.

    • Fengyi Guo
    • , Jonathan Lenoir
    •  & Timothy C. Bonebrake

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Hunting and harvesting are generally expected to select for faster life histories in the exploited species. Here, the authors analyse data from a hunted population of brown bears in Sweden and show that regulations protecting females with dependent young lead hunting to favor prolonged maternal care.

    • Joanie Van de Walle
    • , Gabriel Pigeon
    •  & Fanie Pelletier

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Prioritising areas for conservation is hindered by disagreements over ecological targets. Here, Armsworth et al. combine a simulation approach and case study to test if considering economic return on investment aids in prioritisation, and find that its impact on reaching agreements varies greatly.

    • Paul R. Armsworth
    • , Heather B. Jackson
    •  & Nathan A. Sutton

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The expansion of agriculture and rangelands can cause ecological spillover effects across cultivated-natural ecosystem boundaries. Here, Luskin et al. show irruptions of oil palm-subsidized wild boar alter the abundance and diversity of understory trees >1 km into a primary forest reserve in Malaysia.

    • Matthew Scott Luskin
    • , Justin S. Brashares
    •  & Matthew D. Potts

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Determining the conservation status and populations trends for elusive predators has been impeded by discrepancies in how densities are calculated. Here, Luskin et al. introduce a means to standardize previous density estimates and assess the threats to the Sumatran tiger.

    • Matthew Scott Luskin
    • , Wido Rizki Albert
    •  & Mathias W. Tobler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Genetic rescue can be valuable for the conservation of small populations threatened by low genetic diversity, but it carries the perceived risk of outbreeding depression. Here, Weeks et al. report increased hybrid fitness in a rescued population of the mountain pygmy possum, which likely contributed to population growth following genetic rescue.

    • Andrew R. Weeks
    • , Dean Heinze
    •  & Ian Mansergh

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The effectiveness of marine reserves relies on whether they supply substantial recruitment outside their boundaries. Here, Andrello and colleagues use models of larval fish dispersal to show that countries most dependent on coastal fisheries receive the lowest larval supplies from marine reserves.

    • Marco Andrello
    • , François Guilhaumon
    •  & David Mouillot

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Stopover sites are crucial to migratory birds, but the influence of this habitat on population dynamics has not been quantified. Here, Studds et al. show that, among ten migratory species, the degree of reliance on disappearing stopover habitat in the Yellow Sea tidal flats predicts the extent of recent population declines.

    • Colin E. Studds
    • , Bruce E. Kendall
    •  & Richard A. Fuller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat fragmentation can lead to extinction even when some habitat remains. Here, the authors model the metapopulation dynamics of the Glanville fritillary butterfly and show that persistence depends on spatial configuration and quality of the habitat, as well as on genotype-associated dispersal rate.

    • Ilkka Hanski
    • , Torsti Schulz
    •  & Sami P. Ojanen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recovery of damaged ecosystems can vary in time and extent. Here, Moreno-Mateos and colleagues perform a meta-analysis to describe and quantify what they call recovery debt, an interim reduction in biodiversity, populations, and biogeochemical function of ecosystems during the recovery process.

    • David Moreno-Mateos
    • , Edward B. Barbier
    •  & José M. Rey Benayas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An ongoing elephant poaching crisis is threatening not only elephant populations but also the local economies that rely on nature-based tourism. Here, Naidoo and colleagues use an economic model to estimate the financial contribution of elephants to tourism and the possible consequences of their loss.

    • Robin Naidoo
    • , Brendan Fisher
    •  & Andrew Balmford

  • Article
    | Open Access

    China’s Grain for Green Program is the world’s largest reforestation program, encompassing tens of millions of hectares since 1999. Here, Hua et al. show that the majority of areas have been reforested with tree monocultures, but that planting mixed forests could increase animal biodiversity without imposing additional economic costs.

    • Fangyuan Hua
    • , Xiaoyang Wang
    •  & David S. Wilcove

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protected areas are intended to safeguard wildlife, but their effectiveness has at times been questioned. Barnes, Craigie, and colleagues show that protected areas do offer refuge—maintaining their bird and mammal abundances—but with greater success for larger-bodied species and in more developed nations.

    • Megan D. Barnes
    • , Ian D. Craigie
    •  & Stephen Woodley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human settlements are often associated with degraded landscapes. Trant and colleagues now show that near-shore settlements in British Columbia have locally enhanced forest productivity over millennia by enriching soils with calcium and phosphorous derived from shellfish remnants.

    • Andrew J. Trant
    • , Wiebe Nijland
    •  & Brian M. Starzomski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat loss and urbanization are primary components of human impact on the environment. Here, Venter et al.use global data on infrastructure, agriculture, and urbanization to show that the human footprint is growing slower than the human population, but footprints are increasing in biodiverse regions.

    • Oscar Venter
    • , Eric W. Sanderson
    •  & James E. M. Watson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Neonicotinoid as insecticide on oilseed rape can reduce bee colony density, but its effect at a large geographical scale is unclear. This study describes 18-year long wild bee tracking data in England and show neonicotinoid use is correlated with wild bee population declines at real landscape scales.

    • Ben A. Woodcock
    • , Nicholas J. B. Isaac
    •  & Richard F. Pywell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Protected areas are thought essential for biodiversity conservation, but few studies confirm that protection benefits species. Here, Gray and Hill et al. analyse a global, taxonomically broad database to show that local species richness and abundance are higher inside protected areas than outside.

    • Claudia L. Gray
    • , Samantha L. L. Hill
    •  & Jörn P. W. Scharlemann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Extinction after habit loss does not occur immediately. Here, the authors develop a model and estimate how fast extinction debt is paid off after habit loss, and show a temporal profile of species diversity decays in a power-law fashion with a half-life increasing slowly with habit size and area.

    • John M. Halley
    • , Nikolaos Monokrousos
    •  & Despoina Vokou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether conditions experienced on long-distance migrations affect breeding populations is not clear. Here, the authors tracked migrating Common Cuckoos from the UK to Africa and show that route choices affect mortality during migration, and population decline in this nocturnally migrating bird.

    • Chris M. Hewson
    • , Kasper Thorup
    •  & Philip W. Atkinson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The establishment of marine reserves in areas previously exploited by humans is recognised as an effective conservation tool. Through modelling effects of isolation from human influence, D'agata et al. show that marine reserves fall short of supporting key ecological values compared with wilderness areas.

    • Stéphanie D’agata
    • , David Mouillot
    •  & Laurent Vigliola

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Knowing which species traits may confer resilience to human-mediated stressors will help predict future impacts on biodiversity. Here, Mellin et al. show that large bodied fish with small geographic ranges are disproportionately affected by the negative impacts of human disturbance and climate variability.

    • C. Mellin
    • , D. Mouillot
    •  & M. J. Caley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The influence of species conservation on food webs is less well understood than the effects of species loss. Here, the authors test several indices against optimal food web management and find no current metrics are reliably effective at identifying species conservation priorities.

    • E. McDonald-Madden
    • , R. Sabbadin
    •  & H. P. Possingham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Forest fragmentation is thought to reduce carbon storage at forest edges. Here, using remote sensing datasets, the authors show that biomass is 25% lower within 500 m of the forest edge, and suggest that fragmentation results in a global reduction in tropical forest carbon stocks by nearly 10%.

    • Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer
    • , Ivan Ramler
    •  & Henry King

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Ex situ conservation breeding programmes for endangered species are expensive, and not always guaranteed to succeed. Here, Martin-Wintle et al.show that when captive giant pandas are given the opportunity to choose their preferred mate, copulation and birth rates increase significantly.

    • Meghan S. Martin-Wintle
    • , David Shepherdson
    •  & Ronald R. Swaisgood

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Measurements of biodiversity may differ according to the extent of area sampled, although how this changes across taxa is not well understood. Here, Schuldtet al. find that the diversity of plants, arthropods and microorganisms in a heterogeneous subtropical forest is highly nonlinear across spatial scales.

    • Andreas Schuldt
    • , Tesfaye Wubet
    •  & Helge Bruelheide

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Habitat loss typically results in biodiversity decline, yet predicting how different facets of biodiversity are affected is challenging. Here, the authors show that the geometry of area loss is crucial to predict loss of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity across three taxa on four continents.

    • Petr Keil
    • , David Storch
    •  & Walter Jetz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Some animal species tolerate the presence of humans better than others. In a meta-analysis, Samia et al. find that populations of wildlife exposed to greater levels of human disturbance are more tolerant than undisturbed populations, with large birds in urbanized areas showing the highest levels of tolerance.

    • Diogo S. M. Samia
    • , Shinichi Nakagawa
    •  & Daniel T. Blumstein

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Conservation initiatives that span multiple countries often face conflicting national priorities. Here, Beger et al.develop a framework for integrating regional priorities and national plans by identifying multi-objective and complementary conservation hotspots, and apply it to the Coral Triangle Initiative.

    • Maria Beger
    • , Jennifer McGowan
    •  & Hugh P. Possingham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Balancing biological conservation with economic development is a challenge for policymakers. Analysing a range of possible future scenarios, Runting et al, show that coordinated planning would allow the island of Borneo to simultaneously retain forested land, protect species and meet economic goals.

    • Rebecca K. Runting
    • , Erik Meijaard
    •  & Kerrie A. Wilson

  • Article |

    Climate change is causing many species to shift their distributional ranges. Here, Comte et al.show that, among stream fish, shifts at the leading edge and the trailing edge of the range are influenced by different mechanisms related to individual species traits and their phylogenetic history.

    • Lise Comte
    • , Jérôme Murienne
    •  & Gaël Grenouillet

  • Article |

    For comprehensive biodiversity conservation efforts, knowledge of the number and distribution of species is required. Here, Westgate et al.perform a meta-analysis to show that studies of cross-taxon congruence rarely give consistent results between different locations, undermining the assumption that a subset of taxa can be representative of biodiversity.

    • Martin J. Westgate
    • , Philip S. Barton
    •  & David B. Lindenmayer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mechanical cues can induce morphogenetic processes during development. Here the authors show that mechanical changes during embryonic development in both zebrafish and Drosophilalead to nuclear localization of β-catenin, which regulates genes required for early mesoderm development in both species.

    • Thibaut Brunet
    • , Adrien Bouclet
    •  & Emmanuel Farge

  • Article |

    Free-ranging domestic cats cause wildlife extinctions on islands, but their impact on wildlife in mainland areas is unclear. This study presents an estimate of mortality caused by cats in the United States, suggesting that 1.4–3.7 billion birds and 6.9–20.7 billion mammals are killed annually.

    • Scott R. Loss
    • , Tom Will
    •  & Peter P. Marra

  • Article
    | Open Access

    For conservation purposes, accurate methods are required to track cotton-top tamarins in their natural habitat. As existing census methods are not appropriate for surveying these monkeys, a lure-transect method combined with playback vocalization was used here to allow accurate counting of the animals.

    • Anne Savage
    • , Len Thomas
    •  & Felix S. Medina

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