
Adriana De PalmaNatural History Museum, London · Department of Life Sciences
Adriana De Palma
Biology (BSc), Entomology (MRes), Ecology (PhD)
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59
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Introduction
Publications
Publications (59)
Bees are a functionally important and economically valuable group, but are threatened by land‐use conversion and intensification. Such pressures are not expected to affect all species identically; rather, they are likely to be mediated by the species' ecological traits.
Understanding which types of species are most vulnerable under which land uses...
Drought events are projected to increase in frequency and magnitude, which may alter the composition of ecological communities. Using a functional community metric that describes abundance, life history traits and conservation status, based upon Grime's CSR (Competitive - Stress tolerant - Ruderal) scheme, we investigated how British butterfly comm...
Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination
services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses
to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically
unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Euro...
To combat climate change, bioenergy is expected to play a more substantial role in the global energy mix, necessitating the expansion of energy crop plantations during the 21st century. Low‐quality or abandoned agricultural land is commonly proposed for growing energy crops. However, restoring such agricultural land back to natural vegetation is al...
Based on an extensive model intercomparison, we assessed trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services from historical reconstructions and future scenarios of land-use and climate change. During the 20th century, biodiversity declined globally by 2 to 11%, as estimated by a range of indicators. Provisioning ecosystem services increased several fold...
Land‐use change and habitat degradation are among the biggest drivers of above‐ground biodiversity worldwide but their effects on soil biodiversity are less well known, despite the importance of soil organisms in developing soil structure, nutrient cycling, and water drainage. Combining a global compilation of biodiversity data from soil assemblage...
Aim
Historically, climate has been a dominant driver of global vegetation patterns. Recently, ecological understanding has been updated to acknowledge the influence of human land use (the dominant driver of biodiversity change) in shaping global vegetation patterns. We test whether Raunkiær's life form, a plant classification system designed to ref...
Synthetic Nitrogen (N) usage in agriculture has greatly increased food supply over the past century. However, the intensive use of N fertilizer is nevertheless the source of numerous environmental issues and remains a major challenge for policymakers to understand, measure, and quantify the interactions and trade-offs between ecosystem carbon and t...
Background
Land-use is a major driver of changes in biodiversity worldwide, but studies have overwhelmingly focused on above-ground taxa: the effects on soil biodiversity are less well known, despite the importance of soil organisms in ecosystem functioning. We modelled data from a global biodiversity database to compare how the abundance of soil-d...
Homogenisation and intensification of agricultural ecosystems are among the most important threats to biodiversity, linked to declines in pollinators, soil biota and ecosystem functioning. Diversification has been proposed as a way to restore ecosystem functioning in agricultural landscapes. To manage agricultural land for multiple ecosystem functi...
Few biodiversity indicators are available that reflect the state of broad-sense biodiversity—rather than of particular taxa—at fine spatial and temporal resolution. One such indicator, the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), estimates how the average abundance of the native terrestrial species in a region compares with their abundances in the abse...
Concerns about the impacts of climate change have led to increased targets for biofuel in the global energy market. First-generation biofuel crops contain oil, sugar or starch and are usually also grown for food, whereas second-generation biofuel is derived from non-food sources, including lignocellulosic crops, fast-growing trees, crop residues an...
Concerns about the environmental impacts of climate change have led to increased targets for biofuel in the global energy market. First-generation biofuel crops contain oil, sugar or starch and are usually also grown for food, whereas second-generation biofuel is derived from non-food sources, including lignocellulosic crops, fast-growing trees, cr...
Island species and habitats are particularly vulnerable to human disturbances, and anthropogenic changes are increasingly overwriting natural island biogeographic patterns. However, quantitative comparisons of how native and alien assemblages respond to human disturbances are scarce. Using data from 6,242 species of vertebrates, invertebrates and p...
Aim
Understanding broad‐scale ecological patterns and processes is necessary if we are to mitigate the consequences of anthropogenically driven biodiversity degradation. However, such analyses require large datasets and current data collation methods can be slow, involving extensive human input. Given rapid and ever‐increasing rates of scientific p...
World agriculture needs to find the right balance to cope with the trilemma between feeding a growing population, reducing its impact on biodiversity and minimizing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this paper, we evaluate a broad range of scenarios that achieve 4.3 GtCO2,eq /year GHG mitigation in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land-Use (AFO...
Increased efforts are required to prevent further losses to terrestrial biodiversity and the ecosystem services that it provides1,2. Ambitious targets have been proposed, such as reversing the declining trends in biodiversity³; however, just feeding the growing human population will make this a challenge⁴. Here we use an ensemble of land-use and bi...
Geographic range size predicts species’ responses to land‐use change and intensification, but the reason why is not well established because many correlates of larger geographic ranges, such as realized niche breadth, may mediate species’ responses to environmental change. Agricultural land uses (hereafter ‘agroecosystems’) have warm, dry and more...
The main direct drivers of biodiversity loss – land/sea-use change, direct exploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive alien
species – are likely to have their greatest impacts on different kinds of species and ecosystems. I will discuss the likely
consequences of these ‘signatures’, combined with the drivers’ relative importance in recent...
Island species and habitats are particularly vulnerable to human disturbances, and anthropogenic changes are increasingly overwriting natural island biogeographic patterns. However, quantitative comparisons of how native and alien assemblages respond to human disturbances are scarce. Using data from 6,252 species (vertebrates, invertebrates and pla...
This is the submitted version of a manuscript, submitted to Nature Ecology and Evolution, regarding the Biodiversity Intactness Index.
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...
Tracking progress towards biodiversity targets requires indicators that are sensitive to changes at policy-relevant scales, can easily be aggregated to any spatial scale and are simple to understand. The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII), which estimates the average abundance of a diverse set of organisms in a given area relative to their referen...
Bee species worldwide are facing a future of further land-use change and intensification. Populations of closely-related species with similar ecological characteristics are likely to respond similarly to such pressures. Such phylogenetic signal in species' responses could undermine the stability of pollination services in agricultural and natural s...
To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts o...
Unless actions are taken to reduce multiple anthropogenic pressures, biodiversity is expected to continue declining at an alarming rate. Models and scenarios can be used to help design the pathways that sustain a thriving nature and its ability to contribute to people. This approach has so far been hampered by the complexity associated with combini...
Although people have modified the world around us throughout human history, the "Great Acceleration" has seen drivers such as land conversion, exploitation of natural populations, species introductions, pollution and human-induced climate change placing biodiversity under increasing pressure. In this paper we examine 1) how terrestrial species comm...
Few biodiversity indicators are available that reflect broad-sense biodiversity - rather than particular taxa - at fine spatial and temporal resolution. The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) reports how the average abundance of native terrestrial species in a region compares with their abundances before pronounced human impacts. BII is designed f...
To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts o...
p>Land use has already reshaped local biodiversity on Earth, with effects expected to increase as human populations continue to grow in both numbers and prosperity. An accurate depiction of the state of biodiversity on our planet, combined with identifying the mechanisms driving local biodiversity change, underpins our ability to predict how differ...
Land use has already reshaped local biodiversity on Earth, with effects expected to increase as human populations continue to grow in both numbers and prosperity. An accurate depiction of the state of biodiversity on our planet, combined with identifying the mechanisms driving local biodiversity change, underpins our ability to predict how differen...
The PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) has collated ecological survey data from hundreds of published biodiversity comparisons of sites facing different land-use and related pressures, and used the resulting taxonomically and geographically broad database (abundance and occurrence data fo...
Aim
Agricultural intensification and urbanization are important drivers of biodiversity change in Europe. Different aspects of bee community diversity vary in their sensitivity to these pressures, as well as independently influencing ecosystem service provision (pollination). To obtain a more comprehensive understanding of human impacts on bee dive...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
Figure S1: Database schema. Diversity data in yellow, GIS data in green and Catalogue of Life data in blue. The diversity tables datasource, study, site, measuredtaxon and diversitymeasurement
follow the structure described in ‘Methods’ in the main text and in Hudson et al. (2014): a datasource is associated with one or more study records, each of...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...
Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Euro...
Crossing “safe” limits for biodiversity loss
The planetary boundaries framework attempts to set limits for biodiversity loss within which ecological function is relatively unaffected. Newbold et al. present a quantitative global analysis of the extent to which the proposed planetary boundary has been crossed (see the Perspective by Oliver). Using o...
p>Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Eu...
Appendix S1: Diversity data set (including details and references for data used in this study).
Table S1: Search terms.
Table S1.2: Data sources and sample sizes, with references.
Table S1.3: Land‐use class and intensity definitions.
Figure S1.1: Map of sites used in analysis.
Appendix S2: Species traits data set.
Appendix S2.1: List of speci...
Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear[mdash]a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverag...
Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeograph...
Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeograph...
Habitat loss and degradation, driven largely by agricultural expansion and intensification, present the greatest immediate threat to biodiversity. Tropical forests harbour among the highest levels of terrestrial species diversity and are likely to experience rapid land-use change in the coming decades. Synthetic analyses of observed responses of sp...
Understanding change in population abundance is critical to understanding change in biodiversity. This chapter presents an indicator measuring change in abundance of vertebrate species over a 37-year time period from 1970 to 2007. The Living Planet Index (LPI) measures global vertebrate abundance trends over time by calculating the average change i...
Global species extinction typically represents the endpoint in a long sequence of population declines and local extinctions. In comparative studies of extinction risk of contemporary mammalian species, there appear to be some universal traits that may predispose taxa to an elevated risk of extinction. In local population-level studies, there are li...