Population demography maintains biogeographic boundaries

Global biodiversity is organized into biogeographic regions that comprise distinct biotas. The contemporary factors maintaining differences in species composition between biogeographic regions are poorly understood. Given the evidence that populations with sufficient genetic variation can adapt to fill new habitats, it is surprising that we do not see more homogenization of species assemblages among regions. Theory suggests that the expansion of populations across biogeographic transition zones could be limited by environmental gradients that affect population demography in ways that could limit adaptive capacity, but this has not been empirically explored. Using three independently curated data sets describing continental patterns of mammalian demography and population genetics, we show that populations closer to biogeographic transition zones have lower effective population sizes and genetic diversity, and are more genetically differentiated. These patterns are consistent with reduced adaptive capacity near biogeographic transition zones. The consistency of these patterns across mammalian species suggests they are stable, predictable, and generalizable in their contribution to long-term limits on expansion and homogenization of biodiversity across biogeographic transition zones. Understanding the contemporary processes acting on populations that maintain differences in the composition of regional biotas is crucial for our basic understanding of the current and future organization of global biodiversity. The importance of contemporary, population-level processes on the maintenance of global biogeographic regions suggests that biogeographic boundaries are susceptible to environmental perturbation associated with human-caused global change.

A Bolder Conservation Future for Indonesia: Conserving Biodiversity, Carbon And Unique Ecosystem In Sulawesi

As more ambitious protected area (PA) targets for the post-2020 global biodiversity framework is set beyond Aichi Target 11, new spatial prioritisation thinking is required to expand protected areas to maximise different environmental values. Our study focuses on the biodiversity and forest-rich Indonesian island of Sulawesi, which has a terrestrial PA network that covers 10% of the island. We run scenarios to identified areas outside the current PA network and their representativeness of conservation features. We use Marxan to investigate trade-offs in the design of a larger PA network with varying coverage targets (17%, 30%, and 50%) that prioritises forest area, karst ecosystem, and carbon value as conservation features. Our first scenario required PAs to be selected at all times, and it required larger areas to meet these targets than our second scenario, which did not include existing PAs. The vast Mekongga, Banggai, and Popayato-Paguat landscapes were consistently identified as high priorities for protection in the various scenarios. The final section of our analysis used a spatially explicit three-phase approach to achieve this through PA expansion, the creation of new PAs, and the creation of corridors to connect existing PAs. Our findings identified 13,039 km2 of priority areas to be included in the current PA network, potentially assisting Indonesia in meeting the post-2020 GBF target if our approach is replicated elsewhere across Indonesia as a national or sub-national analysis like this study. We discuss various land management options through OECMs and the costs to deliver this strategy.

Biochar Rescues Native Trees in a Global Biodiversity Hotspot

Many tropical invasive species have allelopathic effects that contribute to their success in native plant communities. Pyrolyzed biomass (“biochar”) can sorb toxic compounds, including allelochemicals produced by invasive plants, potentially reducing their inhibitory effects on native species. Strawberry guava (Psidium cattleianum) is among the most important allelopathic invasive species in tropical islands and recognized as the most serious invasive species threat in the global biodiversity hotspot of Mauritius. We investigated the effects of additions of locally produced biochar on native tree species in a field experiment conducted in areas invaded by strawberry guava within Mauritius’ largest national park. Growth and survivorship of native tree species were monitored over 2 ½ years in plots subjected to four treatments: non-weeded, weeded, weeded + 25 t/ha biochar and weeded + 50 t/ha biochar. Native tree growth and survivorship were strongly suppressed by strawberry guava. Biochar treatments dramatically increased native tree performance, with more than a doubling in growth, and substantially increased native tree survivorship and species diversity, while suppressing strawberry guava regeneration, consistent with growth-promoting properties and sorption of allelochemicals. We conclude that biochars, including “sustainable biochars” produced from locally accessible biomass using low-tech pyrolysis systems, have considerable potential to counteract effects of allelopathic invaders and increase the capacity for native species regeneration in tropical island ecosystems.

Toolkit for Conservation of Urban Biodiversity

Cities present multiple opportunities to create a more sustainable future by way of enhancing resource-efficiency and fostering innovation and political and social responsibility. The imperative for biodiversity in cities therefore goes beyond simple conservation to considerations of internalizing provisions of ecosystem services, which would otherwise be sought from outside the city. By presenting a practical approach to biodiversity planning and management, this toolkit seeks to help local governments harness available resources and opportunities to address global biodiversity loss by providing them a baseline of biodiversity, which would further help them to prepare local biodiversity strategy and action plan under the mandate of Biological Diversity Act 2002 providing the scope to municipal corporations to perform all activities relevant to overall biodiversity management. The study proposes a complete framework for formulating LBSAP using the existing tools for biodiversity assessment and how it can be incorporated into the city development plan for effective implementation.

Indigenous Shamanic Worldviews as Dialogical Eco-Cosmology

This article deals with indigenous shamanic worldviews and indigenous knowledge as dialogical eco-cosmology. It shows the relevance of eco-cosmology as local indigenous ecological and spiritual knowledge in the context of global biodiversity and sustainability discourses.

European Journal of Taxonomy: a deeper look into a decade of data

The European Journal of Taxonomy (EJT) is a decade-old journal dedicated to the taxonomy of living and fossil eukaryotes. Launched in 2011, the EJT published exactly 900 articles (31 778 pages) from 2011 to 2021. The journal has been processed in its entirety by Plazi, liberating the data therein, depositing it into TreatmentBank, Biodiversity Literature Repository and disseminating it to partners, including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) using a combination of a highly automated workflow, quality control tools, and human curation. The dissemination of original research along with the ability to use and reuse data as freely as possible is the key to innovation, opening the corpus of known published biodiversity knowledge, and furthering advances in science. This paper aims to discuss the advantages and limitations of retro-conversion and to showcase the potential analyses of the data published in EJT and made findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) by Plazi. Among others, taxonomic and geographic coverage, geographical distribution of authors, citation of previous works and treatments, timespan between the publication and treatments with their cited works are discussed. Manually counted data were compared with the automated process, the latter being analysed and discussed. Creating FAIR data from a publication results in an average multiplication factor of 166 for additional access through the taxonomic treatments, figures and material citations citing the original publication in TreatmentBank, the Biodiversity Literature Repository and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Despite the advances in processing, liberating data remains cumbersome and has its limitations which lead us to conclude that the future of scientific publishing involves semantically enhanced publications.