Claire Wordley

University of Cambridge | Cam · Department of Zoology

The responses of bats to land-use change have been extensively studied in temperate zones and the neotropics, but little is known from the palaeotropics. Effective conservation in heavily-populated palaeotropical hotspots requires a better understanding of which bats can and cannot survive in human-modified landscapes. We used catching and acoustic...

p>The pernicious problem of evidence complacency, illustrated here through conservation policy and practice, results in poor practice and inefficiencies. It also increases our vulnerability to a ‘post-truth’ world dealing with ‘alternative facts’.</p

As Bolivia approaches presidential elections in October 2019, the country’s environmental leadership is at stake. We discuss urgent challenges and opportunities for reconciling conservation and societal needs in this mega-diverse country.

To conserve biodiversity it is imperative that we understand how different species respond to land use change, and determine the scales at which habitat changes affect species' persistence. We used habitat suitability models (HSMs) at spatial scales from 100–4000 m to address these concerns for bats in the Western Ghats of India, a biodiversity hot...

Evidence-based conservation relies on reliable and relevant evidence. Practitioners often prefer locally relevant studies whose results are more likely to be transferable to the context of planned conservation interventions. To quantify the availability of relevant evidence for amphibian and bird conservation we reviewed Conservation Evidence, a da...

Efforts to tackle the current biodiversity crisis need to be as efficient and effective as possible given chronic underfunding. To inform decision‐makers of the most effective conservation actions, it is important to identify biases and gaps in the conservation literature to prioritize future evidence generation. We used the Conservation Evidence d...

Conservation Research, Policy and Practice - edited by William J. Sutherland April 2020

Cambridge Core - Ecology and Conservation - Conservation Research, Policy and Practice - edited by William J. Sutherland

Evidence-based conservation relies on robust and relevant evidence. Practitioners often prefer locally relevant studies whose results are more likely to be transferable to the context of planned conservation interventions. To quantify the availability of relevant evidence for amphibian and bird conservation we reviewed Conservation Evidence, a data...

Conservation practitioners, policy-makers and researchers work within shared spaces with many shared goals. Improving the flow of information between conservation researchers, practitioners and policy-makers could lead to dramatic gains in the effectiveness of conservation practice. However, several barriers can hinder this transfer including lack...

Conservation efforts to tackle the current biodiversity crisis need to be as efficient and effective as possible. To inform decision-makers of the most effective conservation actions, it is important to identify biases and gaps in the conservation literature to prioritize future evidence generation. We assessed the state of this global literature b...

We face interconnected planetary emergencies threatening our climate and ecosystems. Charlie J. Gardner and Claire F.R. Wordley argue that scientists should join civil disobedience movements to fight these unprecedented crises.

A recent paper claiming evidence of global insect declines achieved huge media attention, including claims of “insectaggedon” and a “collapse of nature.” Here, we argue that while many insects are declining in many places around the world, the study has important limitations that should be highlighted. We emphasise the robust evidence of large and...

What Works in Conservation 2018 - Volume 52 Issue 4 - Claire Wordley, Silviu Petrovan, Rebecca Smith, Lynn Dicks, Nancy Ockendon, William Sutherland

Restoring nature with evidence - Volume 52 Issue 3 - Claire Wordley, Nancy Ockendon, David Thomas

Systematic reviews have transformed medicine, but a more cost-effective means of appraisal is needed for fields in which data are sparse and patchy, argue William J. Sutherland and Claire F. R. Wordley. Systematic reviews have transformed medicine, but a more cost-effective means of appraisal is needed for fields in which data are sparse and patchy...

In 2008, a group of conservation scientists compiled a list of 100 priority questions for the conservation of the world's biodiversity [Sutherland et al. (2009) Conservation Biology, 23, 557–567]. However, now almost a decade later, no one has yet published a study gauging how much progress has been made in addressing these 100 high‐priority questi...

We used capture (mist-netting) and acoustic methods to compare the species richness, abundance, and composition of a bat assemblage in different habitats in the Western Ghats of India. In the tropics, catching bats has been more commonly used as a survey method than acoustic recordings. In our study, acoustic methods based on recording echolocation...

Biodiversity conservation is often described as a crisis discipline, with conservationists rushing from one emergency to the next. This frequently leaves limited resources available to evaluate the effectiveness of the conservation interventions that have been implemented. Furthermore, for those seeking out scientific evidence for conservation deci...

Salim Ali's Fruit Bat Latidens salimalii is an IUCN Red listed Endangered species known only from a few locations in southern India. Here we report three records of Latidens salimalii from the Valparai plateau and Anamalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu where this species has not been previously recorded. This bat was caught in riparian habitats close...

Many bat species occur in Indian coffee plantations and despite sporadic reports of damage to commercial coffee crops, the literature shows little evidence for these claims. Measures that have been proposed to 'control' fruit bats are likely to be ineffective and even counter-productive. Instead, insect-eating bats should be encouraged by planters...

Bats play crucial roles in ecosystems, are increasingly used as bio-indicators and are an important component of tropical diversity. Ecological studies and conservation-oriented monitoring of bats in the tropics benefit from published libraries of echolocation calls, which are not readily available for many tropical ecosystems. Here, we present the...

Color variation across and within populations can play an important role in speciation and our understanding of the maintenance of genetic variation. Trait polymorphisms may be important in reproductive isolation and speciation. Conversely, if 2 morphs exist within a species, then the classical question of how the polymorphism is maintained in the...

Online sequence databases can provide valuable resources for the development of cross-species genetic markers. In particular, mining expressed tag sequences (EST) for microsatellites and developing conserved cross-species microsatellite markers can provide a rapid and relatively inexpensive method to develop new markers for a range of species. Here...