| 1. |
- Caesar, Ryan M., et al.
(författare)
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Integrating DNA data and traditional taxonomy to streamline biodiversity assessment: an example from edaphic beetles in the Klamath ecoregion, California, USA
- 2006
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516. ; 12:5, s. 483-489
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Conservation and land management decisions may be misguided by inaccurate or misinterpreted knowledge of biodiversity. Non-systematists often lack taxonomic expertise necessary for an accurate assessment of biodiversity. Additionally, there are far too few taxonomists to contribute significantly to the task of identifying species for specimens collected in biodiversity studies. While species level identification is desirable for making informed management decisions concerning biodiversity, little progress has been made to reduce this taxonomic deficiency. Involvement of non-systematists in the identification process could hasten species identification. Incorporation of DNA sequence data has been recognized as one way to enhance biodiversity assessment and species identification. DNA data are now technologically and economically feasible for most scientists to apply in biodiversity studies. However, its use is not widespread and means of its application has not been extensively addressed. This paper illustrates how such data can be used to hasten biodiversity assessment of species using a little-known group of edaphic beetles. Partial mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I was sequenced for 171 individuals of feather-wing beetles (Coleoptera: Ptiliidae) from the Klamath ecoregion, which is part of a biodiversity hotspot, the California Floristic Province. A phylogram of these data was reconstructed via parsimony and the strict consensus of 28,000 equally parsimonious trees was well resolved except for peripheral nodes. Forty-two voucher specimens were selected for further identification from clades that were associated with many synonymous and non-synonymous nucleotide changes. A ptiliid taxonomic expert identified nine species that corresponded to monophyletic groups. These results allowed for a more accurate assessment of ptiliid species diversity in the Klamath ecoregion. In addition, we found that the number of amino acid changes or percentage nucleotide difference did not associate with species limits. This study demonstrates that the complementary use of taxonomic expertise and molecular data can improve both the speed and the accuracy of species-level biodiversity assessment. We believe this represents a means for non-systematists to collaborate directly with taxonomists in species identification and represents an improvement over methods that rely solely on parataxonomy or sequence data.
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| 2. |
- Fosaa, Anna Maria
(författare)
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Biodiversity patterns of vascular plant species in mountain vegetation in the Faroe Islands
- 2004
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516. ; 10:3, s. 217-223
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Biodiversity patterns of vascular plant species were studied along altitudinal gradients in the Faroe Islands. Plants were sampled from five different mountains (150-856 m a.s.l.) at 50 m altitudinal intervals. Included in the study were 107 vascular plant species. In order to compare only altitudes with the same number of plots, three different analyses were carried out. One analysis included five mountains from 250 to 750 m a.s.l., one had three mountains from 150 to 750 m a.s.l., and the last one had two mountains from 750 to 850 m a.s.l. The patterns of biodiversity were evaluated on the basis of species richness as the total number of species at each altitudinal interval, as species turnover between altitudes and in relation to the Shannon-Wiener index. Similar patterns were found for species richness in the three analyses, although richness was higher along the whole transect when five mountains were included. For the Shannon-Wiener index, only small differences were found among the three analyses. A maximum was seen at 250 m a.s.l. and again at 500 m a.s.l. both in richness and in the Shannon-Wiener index. Maximum species turnover was found at mid-altitudes. Total vegetation cover followed the same pattern as richness. In addition to climate, the altitudinal variation of biodiversity may be affected by grazing.
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| 3. |
- Thuiller, W, et al.
(författare)
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Using niche-based modelling to assess the impact of climate change on tree functional diversity in Europe
- 2006
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516. ; 12:1, s. 49-60
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rapid anthropogenic climate change is already affecting species distributions and ecosystem functioning worldwide. We applied niche-based models to analyse the impact of climate change on tree species and functional diversity in Europe. Present-day climate was used to predict the distributions of 122 tree species from different functional types (FT). We then explored projections of future distributions under one climate scenario for 2080, considering two alternative dispersal assumptions: no dispersal and unlimited dispersal. The species-rich broadleaved deciduous group appeared to play a key role in the future of different European regions. Temperate areas were projected to lose both species richness and functional diversity due to the loss of broadleaved deciduous trees. These were projected to migrate to boreal forests, thereby increasing their species richness and functional diversity. Atlantic areas provided an intermediate case, with a predicted reduction in the numbers of species and occasional predicted gains in functional diversity. This resulted from a loss in species within the broadleaved deciduous FT, but overall maintenance of the group. Our results illustrate the fact that both species-specific predictions and functional patterns should be examined separately in order to assess the impacts of climate change on biodiversity and gain insights into future ecosystem functioning.
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| 4. |
- Andren, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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Integrating animal tracking datasets at a continental scale for mapping Eurasian lynx habitat
- 2023
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - 1366-9516 .- 1472-4642. ; 29, s. 1546-1560
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim The increasing availability of animal tracking datasets collected across many sites provides new opportunities to move beyond local assessments to enable detailed and consistent habitat mapping at biogeographical scales. However, integrating wildlife datasets across large areas and study sites is challenging, as species' varying responses to different environmental contexts must be reconciled. Here, we compare approaches for large-area habitat mapping and assess available habitat for a recolonizing large carnivore, the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx).LocationEurope.Methods We use a continental-scale animal tracking database (450 individuals from 14 study sites) to systematically assess modelling approaches, comparing (1) global strategies that pool all data for training versus building local, site-specific models and combining them, (2) different approaches for incorporating regional variation in habitat selection and (3) different modelling algorithms, testing nonlinear mixed effects models as well as machine-learning algorithms.Results Testing models on training sites and simulating model transfers, global and local modelling strategies achieved overall similar predictive performance. Model performance was the highest using flexible machine-learning algorithms and when incorporating variation in habitat selection as a function of environmental variation. Our best-performing model used a weighted combination of local, site-specific habitat models. Our habitat maps identified large areas of suitable, but currently unoccupied lynx habitat, with many of the most suitable unoccupied areas located in regions that could foster connectivity between currently isolated populations.Main Conclusions We demonstrate that global and local modelling strategies can achieve robust habitat models at the continental scale and that considering regional variation in habitat selection improves broad-scale habitat mapping. More generally, we highlight the promise of large wildlife tracking databases for large-area habitat mapping. Our maps provide the first high-resolution, yet continental assessment of lynx habitat across Europe, providing a consistent basis for conservation planning for restoring the species within its former range.
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| 5. |
- Andren, Henrik, et al.
(författare)
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Large carnivore expansion in Europe is associated with human population density and land cover changes
- 2021
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516 .- 1472-4642. ; 27, s. 602-617
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim: The recent recovery of large carnivores in Europe has been explained as resulting from a decrease in human persecution driven by widespread rural land abandonment, paralleled by forest cover increase and the consequent increase in availability of shelter and prey. We investigated whether land cover and human population density changes are related to the relative probability of occurrence of three European large carnivores: the grey wolf (Canis lupus), the Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) and the brown bear (Ursus arctos).Location: Europe, west of 64 degrees longitude.Methods: We fitted multi-temporal species distribution models using >50,000 occurrence points with time series of land cover, landscape configuration, protected areas, hunting regulations and human population density covering a 24-year period (1992-2015). Within the temporal window considered, we then predicted changes in habitat suitability for large carnivores throughout Europe.Results: Between 1992 and 2015, the habitat suitability for the three species increased in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, North-West Iberian Peninsula and Northern Scandinavia, but showed mixed trends in Western and Southern Europe. These trends were primarily associated with increases in forest cover and decreases in human population density, and, additionally, with decreases in the cover of mosaics of cropland and natural vegetation.Main conclusions: Recent land cover and human population changes appear to have altered the habitat suitability pattern for large carnivores in Europe, whereas protection level did not play a role. While projected changes largely match the observed recovery of large carnivore populations, we found mismatches with the recent expansion of wolves in Central and Southern Europe, where factors not included in our models may have played a dominant role. This suggests that large carnivores' co-existence with humans in European landscapes is not limited by habitat availability, but other factors such as favourable human tolerance and policy.
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| 6. |
- Angeler, David
(författare)
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Revealing a conservation challenge through partitioned long-term beta diversity: increasing turnover and decreasing nestedness of boreal lake metacommunities
- 2013
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516 .- 1472-4642. ; 19, s. 772-781
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim Assessing long-term (1992-2009) trends of littoral invertebrate and phytoplankton metacommunities in boreal lakes with emphasis on separating the nestedness and turnover components of beta diversity. Deriving implications for regional biodiversity conservation and management, based on a data-intensive approach with high ecological realism. Location Sweden (Northern Europe). Methods A recently published method was used to partition beta diversity into species turnover and nestedness components. Regression analyses were used to test for monotonic temporal change of these diversity fractions through time. Associations between the temporal diversity patterns of taxonomic groups and environmental variables were studied using correlation analyses. Results Turnover of both metacommunities increased monotonically over the study period, while nestedness decreased. In invertebrates, these changes correlated mainly with regional changes in acidity, while phytoplankton responded more to changing water clarity. Nestedness and turnover patterns were inversely correlated in both groups, but neither turnover nor nestedness was correlated between invertebrates and phytoplankton. Nestedness of both groups explained a lower percentage of the partitioned variance compared with turnover. Main conclusion Results suggest that all lakes contribute more equally to regional diversity over time and are, as a result, all potential targets of management actions. Not only is a regional conservation strategy logistically difficult, it is also a financially expensive expectation.
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| 7. |
- Bjelke, Ulf
(författare)
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Distribution trends of European dragonflies under climate change
- 2019
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516 .- 1472-4642. ; 25, s. 936-950
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim Poleward range shifts of species are among the most obvious effects of climate change on biodiversity. As a consequence of these range shifts, species communities are predicted to become increasingly composed of warm-dwelling species, but this has only been studied for a limited number of taxa, mainly birds, butterflies and plants. As species groups may vary considerably in their adaptation to climate change, it is desirable to expand these studies to other groups, from different ecosystems. Freshwater macroinvertebrates, such as dragonflies (Odonata), have been ranked among the species groups with highest priority. In this paper, we investigate how the occurrence of dragonflies in Europe has changed in recent decades, and if these changes are in parallel with climate change. Location Europe. Methods We use data from 10 European geographical regions to calculate occupancy indices and trends for 99 (69%) of the European species. Next, we combine these regional indices to calculate European indices. To determine if changes in regional dragonfly communities in Europe reflect climatic warming, we calculate Species Temperature Indices (STI), Multi-species Indicators (MSI) and Community Temperature Indices (CTI). Results 55 of 99 considered species increased in occupancy at European level, 32 species remained stable, and none declined. Trends for 12 species are uncertain. MSI of cold-dwelling and warm-dwelling species differ in some of the regions, but increased at a similar rate at European level. CTI increased in all regions, except Cyprus. The European CTI increased slightly. Main conclusions European dragonflies, in general, have expanded their distribution in response to climate change, even though their CTI lags behind the increase in temperature. Furthermore, dragonflies proved to be a suitable species group for monitoring changes in communities, both at regional and continental level.
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| 8. |
- Bommarco, Riccardo, et al.
(författare)
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Extinction debt for plants and flower-visiting insects in landscapes with contrasting land use history
- 2014
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Ingår i: Diversity & distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516 .- 1472-4642. ; 20:5, s. 591-599
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim Species are lost world-wide because of habitat destruction and fragmentation. Impacted communities can exhibit transient dynamics in response to such environmental changes, where slow extinctions and immigration delay the arrival to a new equilibrium. Life history traits such as generation time, resource use and dispersal capacity, as well as landscape history can be expected to affect possible extinction debt, but few have examined this for multiple taxa in the same study and particularly so for arthropods. The aim was to assess under which current and historical land use circumstances an extinction debt occurs for vascular plants and three insect taxa. Location South-eastern Sweden. Method We sampled current species richness of habitat specialist and generalist butterflies, bees, hoverflies, and vascular plants in 45 dry to mesic semi-natural grassland fragments of various size and degree of connectivity, and situated in landscapes with contrasting land use conversion history. Habitat loss was estimated in each landscape by comparing modern maps to ~45year old digitized aerial photographs. An extinction debt can be assumed if historical habitat size and connectivity better explain current species distribution than current habitat variables do. Results Bees responded rapidly to habitat loss possibly as a result of their primary nesting resource being destroyed. Interestingly, species richness of specialist plants was best explained by historical habitat connectivity, richness of hoverflies by historical habitat area, and richness of butterflies by both historical habitat area and connectivity, indicating extinction debt for these taxa. Habitat generalist butterflies and hoverflies, but not plants and bees, exhibited extinction debt mainly in relation to habitat area. No effect of landscape type was found on the observed extinction debt. Main conclusions Slow extinctions of persistent and long-lived plants might explain extinction debt for both plants and herbivorous insects linked to these plants.
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| 9. |
- Bradter, Ute, et al.
(författare)
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Habitat suitability models based on opportunistic citizen science data: Evaluating forecasts from alternative methods versus an individual-based model
- 2021
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516 .- 1472-4642. ; 27, s. 2397-2411
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim To evaluate the utility of opportunistic data from citizen science programmes for forecasting species distributions against forecasts with a model of individual-based population dynamics. Location Sweden. Methods We evaluated whether alternative methods for building habitat suitability models (HSMs) based on opportunistic data from citizen science programmes produced forecasts that were consistent with forecasts from two benchmark models: (1) a HSM based on data from systematic monitoring and (2) an individual-based model for spatially explicit population dynamics based on empirical demographic and movement data. We forecasted population numbers and habitat suitability for three realistic, future forest landscapes for a forest bird, the Siberian jay (Perisoreus infaustus). We ranked simulated forest landscapes with respect to their benefits to Siberian jays for each modelling method and compared the agreement of the rankings among methods. Results Forecasts based on our two benchmark models were consistent with each other and with expectations based on the species' ecology. Forecasts from logistic regression models based on opportunistic data were consistent with the benchmark models if species detections were combined with high-quality inferred absences derived via retrospective interviews with experienced "super-reporters." In contrast, forecasts with three other widely used methods were inconsistent with the benchmark models, sometimes with misleading rankings of future scenarios. Main conclusions Our critical evaluation of alternative HSMs against a spatially explicit IBM demonstrates that information on species absences critically improves forecasts of species distributions using opportunistic data from citizen science programmes. Moreover, high-quality information on species absences can be retrospectively inferred from surveys of the consistency of reporting of individual species and the identification skills of participating reporters. We recommend that citizen science projects incorporate procedures to evaluate reporting behaviour. Inferred absences may be especially useful for improving forecasts for species and regions poorly covered by systematic monitoring schemes.
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| 10. |
- Brunet, Jörg
(författare)
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Alien plant invasions in European woodlands
- 2017
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Ingår i: Diversity and Distributions. - : Wiley. - 1366-9516 .- 1472-4642. ; 23, s. 969-981
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim: Woodlands make up a third of European territory and carry out important ecosystem functions, yet a comprehensive overview of their invasion by alien plants has never been undertaken across this continent. Location: Europe.Methods: We extracted data from 251,740 vegetation plots stored in the recently compiled European Vegetation Archive. After filtering (resulting in 83,396 plots; 39 regions; 1970-2015 time period), we analysed the species pool and frequency of alien vascular plants with respect to geographic origin and life-forms, and the levels of invasion across the European Nature Information System (EUNIS) woodland habitats.Results: We found a total of 386 alien plant species (comprising 7% of all recorded vascular plants). Aliens originating from outside of and from within Europe were almost equally represented in the species pool (192 vs. 181 species) but relative frequency was skewed towards the former group (77% vs. 22%) due, to some extent, to the frequent occurrence of Impatiens parviflora (21% frequency among alien plants). Phanerophytes were the most species-rich life-form (148 species) and had the highest representation in terms of relative frequency (39%) among aliens in the dataset. Apart from Europe (181 species), North America was the most important source of alien plants (109 species). At the local scale, temperate and boreal softwood riparian woodland (5%) and mire and mountain coniferous woodland (<1%) had the highest and lowest mean relative alien species richness (percentage of alien species per plot), respectively.Main conclusions: Our results indicate that European woodlands are prone to alien plant invasions especially when exposed to disturbance, fragmentation, alien propagule pressure and high soil nutrient levels. Given the persistence of these factors in the landscape, competitive alien plant species with a broad niche, including alien trees and shrubs, are likely to persist and spread further into European woodlands.
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