Protected areas (PAs) are a key tool for biodiversity conservation and play a central role in the Convention on Biological Diversity. Recently, the effectiveness of PAs has been questioned, and ...assessing how effective they are in enabling the future persistence of biodiversity is not trivial. Here, we focus on terrestrial PAs and clarify the terminology related to PA effectiveness, distinguishing between management and ecological aspects. We suggest that the quality of governance affects both aspects of effectiveness but recognize a lack of synthetic understanding of the topic. We present a conceptual framework linking the underlying mechanisms by which the quality of governance affects conservation outcomes in PAs and how this relates to conservation planning. We show that it is crucial to separate pressure and response and how these together will lead to the observed conservation outcomes. We urge for more focused attention on governance factors and in particular more empirical research on how to address causality and how to account for the quality of governance when prioritizing actions. Our framework is linked to the classic concepts of systematic conservation planning and clarifies the strategies available to achieve a comprehensive and effective network of PAs.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Several intergovernmental policy instruments, including the World Heritage Convention of UNESCO and the Convention on Biological Diversity, have proposed to develop integrated strategies to build ...bridges between biological and cultural diversity agendas. We contend that to succeed in this endeavor, it is crucial to link biocultural revitalization to conservation practice. Our hope with this review is to call attention to indigenous storytelling as an option worth adding to the repertoire of conservation practitioners who aim to: (1) link conservation actions to indigenous worldviews; (2) foster connections between indigenous peoples and their landscapes; (3) facilitate intergenerational transfer of indigenous knowledge; (4) support dialogue over conservation; and (5) promote local participation in conservation. Because indigenous stories are full of resonance, memory, and wisdom—in a footing that is structurally free of power imbalance between conservation practitioners and local communities—, we contend that they can be crucial to guide future efforts in biocultural conservation practice. Our review shows that deeper consideration and promotion of indigenous storytelling can lead to enhanced understanding of diverse values and perceptions around biodiversity, while offering a constructive approach for greater inclusion of indigenous peoples in conservation pursuits.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Ecology Letters (2011) 14: 484–492
Europe has the world’s most extensive network of conservation areas. Conservation areas are selected without taking into account the effects of climate change. How ...effectively would such areas conserve biodiversity under climate change? We assess the effectiveness of protected areas and the Natura 2000 network in conserving a large proportion of European plant and terrestrial vertebrate species under climate change. We found that by 2080, 58 ± 2.6% of the species would lose suitable climate in protected areas, whereas losses affected 63 ± 2.1% of the species of European concern occurring in Natura 2000 areas. Protected areas are expected to retain climatic suitability for species better than unprotected areas (P < 0.001), but Natura 2000 areas retain climate suitability for species no better and sometimes less effectively than unprotected areas. The risk is high that ongoing efforts to conserve Europe’s biodiversity are jeopardized by climate change. New policies are required to avert this risk.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Dendritic Cells Revisited Cabeza-Cabrerizo, Mar; Cardoso, Ana; Minutti, Carlos M ...
Annual review of immunology,
04/2021, Volume:
39, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Dendritic cells (DCs) possess the ability to integrate information about their environment and communicate it to other leukocytes, shaping adaptive and innate immunity. Over the years, a variety of ...cell types have been called DCs on the basis of phenotypic and functional attributes. Here, we refocus attention on conventional DCs (cDCs), a discrete cell lineage by ontogenetic and gene expression criteria that best corresponds to the cells originally described in the 1970s. We summarize current knowledge of mouse and human cDC subsets and describe their hematopoietic development and their phenotypic and functional attributes. We hope that our effort to review the basic features of cDC biology and distinguish cDCs from related cell types brings to the fore the remarkable properties of this cell type while shedding some light on the seemingly inordinate complexity of the DC field.
Evidence‐based knowledge is critical for the delineation and success of conservation interventions. However, despite limited research resources, research efforts frequently fail to target ...conservation priorities. Island endemic bats (IEBs) are a poorly studied group inhabiting some of the world's most vulnerable habitats, and for which no review of research allocation has ever been conducted.
We conducted a bibliometric review to evaluate the global research patterns for IEBs with respect to individual species, geographical distribution and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List categories. Additionally, we studied the relationship between the number of publications and changes in Red List category, and identified species‐based and area‐based priorities for future research.
IEBs are significantly more threatened than bat species that are not island endemics. However, research focusing on IEBs is scarce, centred on species of lesser conservation concern, and spatially asymmetric, overlooking areas of high IEB biodiversity. Conservation‐oriented research seems to target species facing high extinction risk, but is extremely thinly and unevenly distributed. Although we found a positive association between research effort and improvement in Red List category, an increase in extinction risk did not trigger more scientific attention. A prioritisation analysis highlighted, as the top five islands for species richness in the least‐studied and highest conservation concern IEBs: Sulawesi, Timor, New Guinea, Java, and Borneo. The ten species of highest research priority include threatened and Data Deficient species from Southeast Asian and Pacific islands.
Conservation‐oriented research seems to be too scarce to satisfy conservation needs. The observed mismatch between research allocation and conservation priorities may reflect the fact that highly endangered species are unattractive targets for fund‐raising, due to species crypticity, high research budget requirements, and high risk of project failure. However, our findings support the importance of research for the conservation of IEBs, and we therefore advocate that more attention is directed towards the least‐known species.
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BFBNIB, DOBA, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Climate change is affecting biodiversity worldwide, but conservation responses are constrained by considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude, rate and ecological consequences of expected ...climate change. Here we propose a framework to account for several sources of uncertainty in conservation prioritization. Within this framework we account for uncertainties arising from (i) species distributions that shift following climate change, (ii) basic connectivity requirements of species, (iii) alternative climate change scenarios and their impacts, (iv) in the modelling of species distributions, and (v) different levels of confidence about present and future. When future impacts of climate change are uncertain, robustness of decision-making can be improved by quantifying the risks and trade-offs associated with climate scenarios. Sensible prioritization that accounts simultaneously for the present and potential future distributions of species is achievable without overly jeopardising present-day conservation values. Doing so requires systematic treatment of uncertainties and testing of the sensitivity of results to assumptions about climate. We illustrate the proposed framework by identifying priority areas for amphibians and reptiles in Europe.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Ecosystems face both local hazards, such as over-exploitation, and global hazards, such as climate change. Since the impact of local hazards attenuates with distance from humans, local extinction ...risk should decrease with remoteness, making faraway areas safe havens for biodiversity. However, isolation and reduced anthropogenic disturbance may increase ecological specialization in remote communities, and hence their vulnerability to secondary effects of diversity loss propagating through networks of interacting species. We show this to be true for reef fish communities across the globe. An increase in fish-coral dependency with the distance of coral reefs from human settlements, paired with the far-reaching impacts of global hazards, increases the risk of fish species loss, counteracting the benefits of remoteness. Hotspots of fish risk from fish-coral dependency are distinct from those caused by direct human impacts, increasing the number of risk hotspots by ~30% globally. These findings might apply to other ecosystems on Earth and depict a world where no place, no matter how remote, is safe for biodiversity, calling for a reconsideration of global conservation priorities.
There is increasing recognition that diverse knowledge systems can work in mutually enriching ways and that Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) can enhance biodiversity conservation. However, ...studies using scientific knowledge and ILK in a complementary manner, and acknowledging convergent and especially divergent insights have remained limited. In this study, we contrasted proxies of abundances and trends of threatened and conflict-prone carnivores (caracal, cheetah, jackal, lion, leopard, spotted hyaena, striped hyaena) derived separately from scientific knowledge and ILK. We conducted camera trapping, track surveys and semi-structured interviews with local pastoralists from northern Kenya. We found convergences highlighting the need for conservation action and divergences suggesting scientific ecological sampling limitations or underlying socio-psychological phenomena. Overall, our study shows that complementing scientific knowledge and ILK as separate sources of information and opening up space for discrepancies can enrich our understanding of the status and trends of carnivores, as well as recognizing human-carnivore relationships.
Traditional ecological knowledge enables pastoralists to cope with social-ecological changes, thereby increasing the sustainability of their practices and fostering social-ecological resilience. Yet, ...there is a significant knowledge gap concerning the extent to which pastoral traditional ecological knowledge has changed over time at the global level. We aim to fill this gap through a systematic literature review of 288 scientific studies on pastoral traditional ecological knowledge. We reviewed 152 papers in detail (selected randomly from the 288) for their content, and focused specifically on 61 papers that explicitly mentioned one of the four types of knowledge transition (i.e., retention, erosion, adaptation, or hybridization). Studies on pastoral traditional knowledge represent less than 3% of all the scholarly literature on traditional ecological knowledge. Geographical distribution of the 288 case studies was largely biased. Knowledge domains of pastoral knowledge such as herd and livestock management, forage and medicinal plants, and landscape and wildlife were relatively equally covered; however, climate-related knowledge was less often studied. Of the 63 papers that explicitly mentioned transition of pastoral traditional ecological knowledge, 52 reported erosion, and only 11 studies documented explicitly knowledge retention, adaptation, or hybridization of traditional knowledge. Thus, adaptation and hybridization was understudied, although some case studies showed that adaptation and hybridization of knowledge can efficiently help pastoralists navigate among social-ecological changes. Based on the review, we found 13 drivers which were mentioned as the main reasons for knowledge transition among which social-cultural changes, formal schooling, abandonment of pastoral activities, and transition to a market economy were most often reported. We conclude that future research should focus more on the diverse dynamics of pastoral traditional knowledge, be more careful in distinguishing the four knowledge transition types, and analyze how changes in knowledge impact change in pastoral practices and lifestyles. Understanding these phenomena could help pastoralists' adaptations and support their stewardship of their rangeland ecosystems and biocultural diversity.
The Natura 2000 (N2k) is a network of protected areas, established to implement the Birds and the Habitats Directives of the European Union (EU) with the goal of conservation irrespective of national ...boundaries. We provide the first assessment of the whole terrestrial N2k using spatial prioritizations, and high-resolution vertebrate species distribution data. First, we quantified species' representation in the network, and compared it against outcomes of hypothetical optimal planning scenarios at the EU, member state, and biogeographical levels. Second, we examined the spatial configuration of N2k sites and same-sized hypothetical top priority sites based on the three planning scenarios. We found that N2k covered all vertebrate directive species, and the coverage was significantly better than with a random allocation of sites. We observed substantial differences in representation between taxa, followed by the fact that N2k succeeded better in covering threatened and directive species than non-directive species. The current species representation in N2k was closer to optimal allocations done at member states' or biogeographical levels than the EU-wide allocation. Furthermore, the N2k sites overlapped more with the EU-wide allocation and they were more evenly distributed across the EU compared to sites in all hypothetical optimal allocations. Finally, we found that the biogeographical scenario covered well the ranges of habitats directive species, following the biogeographical approach taken by the EU in the Habitats Directive. Our results show that despite N2k being moderately successful, there is substantial effectiveness to be gained from member state collaboration via potential expansions or complementary conservation policies.
•We assess the terrestrial Natura 2000 (N2k) network by spatial prioritizations.•N2k covers on average 33.6% of the ranges of vertebrate directive species.•N2k covers less of directive species' ranges than optimal allocation at the EU level.•Species representation in N2k reflects optimal allocation done at member state level.•N2k, EU-wide and national spatial priorities for vertebrates coincide only partially.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
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