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Influential conservation ecology papers of 2018

17 12 2018

For the last five years I’ve published a retrospective list of the ‘top’ 20 influential papers of the year as assessed by experts in F1000 Prime — so, I’m doing so again for 2018 (interesting side note: six of the twenty papers highlighted here for 2018 appear in Science magazine). See previous years’ posts here: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

Global warming transforms coral reef assemblages — The authors report an unprecedented, regional-scale shift in the composition of coral assemblages, reflecting markedly divergent responses to heat stress by different taxa.
Mammal diversity will take millions of years to recover from the current biodiversity crisis — … highlights the impending catastrophe that human activity is bringing to the planet, not only due to climate breakdown … but also potential loss of mammalian diversity.
Protect the last of the wild — … highlights the potentially irreversible impact humans have had on the planet, to the extent that only ~ 20% remains as wilderness.
A final warning to planet Earth — Scientists have issued numerous warnings to politicians and to the general population, but to little avail: the consumerism show must go on!
The cognition of ‘nuisance’ species — … discuss[es] the underlying cognitive abilities that may explain [invasive species] thriving in human-modified environments and then discuss[es] how this knowledge could be used to control such species.

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Tags: biodiversity hotspots, biodiversity loss, climate breakdown, climate change, cognition, coral reefs, disease, fieldwork, Fish, fisheries, fishing impacts, Great Barrier Reef, killer whales, mammals, nuisance species, plastics, predators, productivity, richness-productivity relationship, sharks, Species richness, wild areas
Categories : anthropocene, aquaculture, Australia, biodiversity, biowealth, carbon, climate change, climate shift, community ecology, connectivity, conservation, conservation biology, conservation ecology, coral reefs, decline, deforestation, demography, ecology, economics, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental policy, environmental science, exploitation, extinction, extinction debt, fish, fisheries, food, fragmentation, function, habitat loss, harvest, human overpopulation, invasive species, management, marine, marine protected area, modelling, pollination, pollution

Offshore Energy & Marine Spatial Planning

22 02 2018

I have the pleasure (and relief) of announcing a new book that’s nearly ready to buy, and I think many readers of CB.com might be interested in what it describes. I know it might be a bit premature to announce it, but given that we’ve just finished the last few details (e.g., and index) and the book is ready to pre-order online, I don’t think it’s too precocious to advertise now.

A little history is in order. The brilliant and hard-working Katherine Yates (now at the University of Salford in Manchester, UK) approached me back in 2014 to assist her with co-editing the volume that she wanted to propose for the Routledge Earthscan Ocean series. I admit that I reluctantly agreed at the time, knowing full well what was in store (anyone who has already edited a book will know what I mean). Being an active researcher in energy and biodiversity (perhaps not so much on the ‘planning’ side per se) certainly helped in my decision.

And yes, there were ups and downs, and sometimes it was a helluva lot of work, but Katherine certainly made my life easier, and she has finally driven the whole thing to completion. She deserves most of the credit.

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Tags: acoustic, aquaculture, benthic communities, benthos, biodiversity, birds, buffer zones, cables, climate change, co-location, collision, conflict, earthquake, ecosystem services, energy, energy extraction, energy security, entanglement, epifauna, eutrophication, exclusion, exclusive economic zone, Fish, fisheries, fishing, food security, gas leak, impact, infauna, intertidal, invasive species, Law of the Sea, local knowledge, marine, marine mammals, marine spatial planning, mooring lines, noise, objective function, oil and gas, oil platforms, oil spill, OSPAR, partnerships, pile-driving, pipelines, planning, platforms, pollution, portfolio theory, production, productivity, Renewable energy, renewables, resilience, resuspension, sediments, social licence, spatial planning, stakeholder engagement, stakeholders, tidal energy, trade-offs, values, wave energy, wind farms
Categories : acidification, alien species, aquaculture, biodiversity, biowealth, birds, book, carbon, climate change, climate shift, community ecology, connectivity, conservation, development, economics, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental economics, environmental policy, eutrophication, exploitation, fish, fisheries, food, habitat loss, harvest, invasive species, investment, management, marine protected area, modelling, monitoring, MPA, ocean, planning, pollution, prioritisation, research, seagrass, sustainability, toxicology, toxification

Influential conservation ecology papers of 2017

27 12 2017

As I have done for the last four years (2016, 2015, 2014, 2013), here’s another retrospective list of the top 20 influential conservation papers of 2017 as assessed by experts in F1000 Prime.

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Tags: Africa, Amazon, biodiversity, boundaries, cats, climate change, decline, depression, disturbance, dogs, drowning, elevation, eutrophication, Fish, forests, fragmentation, Genetics, Global warming, green spaces, insects, mental health, networks, nutrient cycling, ocean, oil, oil spill, oxygen, photosynthesis, phytoplankton, Planetary boundaries, Predation, predators, prey, productivity, rainfall, richness, Soil, wildebeest, zooplankton
Categories : Africa, algae, Amazon, anthropocene, biodiversity, biowealth, cat, climate change, community ecology, connectivity, conservation, conservation ecology, coral reefs, decline, deforestation, drought, ecology, ecosystem, ecosystem function, ecosystem services, environmental science, eutrophication, extinction, extinction debt, fish, fragmentation, function, genetics, habitat loss, marine, pollination, toxicology

High-altitude ecology

28 08 2014

A constant hazard in the Tibetan Plateau – yakjam

I’ve been out of the social-media loop for a few weeks, hence the abnormally long interval since my last post. As you might recall, I’ve been travelling overseas and most recently blogged from Monterey, California where I was attending a symposium on invasion genetics.

The next phase of my travels couldn’t have been more different.

The reason I couldn’t access the blog was because I was well behind the Great Firewall of China. I was, in fact, in the Tibetan region of Gansu and Sichuan Provinces in western China for most of the last 10 days. While I’ve travelled to China many times before, this was by far the most evocative, interesting and unique experience I’ve ever had in this country. Reflecting on the past 10 days while waiting in Hong Kong for my flight back to Australia, I am still reeling a little from what I saw.

Top bloke: Jiajia Liu of Fudan University

What the hell was I doing at 3500-4000 m elevation on the Tibetan Plateau? Good question. I have been most fortunate to be included in a crack team of Chinese ecologists who have designed and implemented a most impressive set of experiments in plant community ecology. The team, led by Professor Shurong Zhou and Dr. Jiajia Lui of Fudan University, has been working relentlessly to put together some of the sexiest plant ecology experiments going in China.

Having now so far published two papers from the some of the experiments (see here and here), my Chinese colleagues thought it was high time I visited the famous site. Situated at 3500 m in the Tibetan region of Gansu Province in western China, the Lanzhou University research station Azi Shi Yan Zhan is about a 20-hectare area of meadow fenced off from the grazing of the ubiquitous domestic yaks herded by the local Tibetans. If that sounds pretty exotic, let me assure you that it is. Read the rest of this entry »

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Tags: aggregation, asynchrony, biodiversity, biomass, China, community ecology, functional groups, functional traits, phylogenetic diversity, plants, productivity, resilience, Tibet, Tibetan plateau
Categories : Asia, biodiversity, cattle, China, climate change, conservation, ecosystem function, function, genetic diversity, great firewall of China, habitat loss, livestock, recovery, research, science

Essential predators

21 11 2012

Here at ConservationBytes.com, My contributors and I have highlighted the important regulating role of predators in myriad systems. We have written extensively on the mesopredator release concept applied to dingos, sharks and coyotes, but we haven’t really expanded on the broader role of predators in more complex systems.

This week comes an elegant experimental study (and how I love good experimental evidence of complex ecological processes and how they affect population persistence and ecosystem stability, resilience and productivity) demonstrating, once again, just how important predators are for healthy ecosystems. Long story short – if your predators are not doing well, chances are the rest of the ecosystem is performing poorly.

Today’s latest evidence comes from on an inshore marine system in Ireland involving crabs (Carcinus maenas), whelks (Nucella lapillus), gastropd grazers (Patella vulgata, Littorina littorea and Gibbula umbilicalis), mussels (Mytilus edulis) and macroalgae. Published in Journal of Animal Ecology, O’Connor and colleagues’ paper (Distinguishing between direct and indirect effects of predators in complex ecosystems) explains how their controlled experimental removals of different combinations of predators (crabs & whelks) and their herbivore prey (mussels & gastropods) affected primary producer (macroalgae) diversity and cover (see Figure below and caption from O’Connor et al.). Read the rest of this entry »