Alice Hughes

The University of Hong Kong | HKU · School of Biological Sciences

Hainan Island has the most extensive and well‐preserved tropical forests in China. With rapid economic development of Hainan, biodiversity is increasingly at risk. Determining the spatial patterns of plant diversity in Hainan and explaining the drivers behind plant diversity are important considerations in assessing and maximizing the effectiveness...

Our knowledge of biodiversity hinges on sufficient data, reliable methods, and realistic models. Without an accurate assessment of species distributions, we cannot effectively target and stem biodiversity loss. Species range maps are the foundation of such efforts, but countless studies have failed to account for the most basic assumptions of relia...

NOTE: This manuscript and the package behind it are still undergoing tests and development. Once these are complete and a final version is accepted we will update the input data, package versions, and rerun all queries (values will change). Please contact James for further queries of collaborations in the meantime. Abstract: Species occurrence da...

With the ongoing sovereign debt and biodiversity crises in many emerging economies, applications of debt-for-nature swaps as a dual solution for sovereign debt and nature conservation have been re-emerging. We analyze how debt-for-nature swaps (DNS) can be scaled to protect biodiversity priority areas and reduce debt burden. We build a dataset for...

Over the past two decades, soybean cultivation has become one of the principal replacements for forests in the Brazilian Amazon. Previous studies showed that the conversion of forests into large-scale soybean farms has different effects on local and regional climate than other forms of land use, e.g., conversion to pasture. The bio-geophysical feed...

The rate and extent of global biodiversity change is surpassing our ability to measure, monitor and forecast trends. We propose an interconnected worldwide system of observation networks — a global biodiversity observing system (GBiOS) — to coordinate monitoring worldwide and inform action to reach international biodiversity targets.

The challenges of bee research in Asia are unique and severe, reflecting different cultures, landscapes, and faunas. Strategies and frameworks developed in North America or Europe may not prove applicable. Virtually none of these species have been assessed by the IUCN and there is a paucity of public data on even the basics of bee distribution. If...

Bats frequently inhabit caves and other subterranean habitats and play a critical role in subterranean food webs. With escalating threats to subterranean ecosystems, identifying the most effective measures to protect subterranean-roosting bats is critical. We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation and management int...

The emergence of SARS-CoV in 2002 and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 has led to increased sampling of related sarbecoviruses circulating primarily in horseshoe bats. These viruses undergo frequent recombination and exhibit spatial structuring across Asia. Employing recombination-aware phylogenetic inference on bat sarbecoviruses, we find that the closest-infer...

Sustainable green space is essential in urban areas to maintain and improve human well-being. However, to better understand the impact of environmental and socioeconomic changes on the sustainability of tropical urban green space landscapes, work is needed to explore the patterns of plant diversity and its drivers in urban green spaces. We explore...

Measuring genetic diversity of wild species using DNA-based data remains resource intensive and time-consuming for nearly all species. Yet, genetic assessments are needed for global conservation commitments including the Convention on Biological Diversity and for governments and managers to evaluate conservation progress and to prioritize species a...

Address available for data acquisition of "Ecological redlines provide a mechanism to maximize conservation gains in Mainland Southeast Asia".

Guedes and colleagues’ call to eliminate taxonomic eponyms stems from intense ongoing debates. The International Code on Zoological Nomenclature Commission has categorically stated that it will not do this; doing so would eliminate the stability that the code provides and would sow chaos at a time when scientists must work together to mitigate the...

Supplemental information of Ecological redlines provide a mechanism to maximize conservation gains in Mainland Southeast Asia

With the recent launch of the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework (GBF), and the associated monitoring framework, understanding the framework and data needed to support it is crucial. Unfortunately, whilst the monitoring framework was meant to provide key data to monitor progress towards goals and targets, most indicators are too unclear...

Introduction: Most global biodiversity is in developing economies. Decades of capacity building should have built sufficient in-country capacity to develop biodiversity baselines; yet has effort provided the expertise to build these baselines? Methods: Grants and access to research opportunities are often linked to success in publishing, with the H...

Bats represent the second largest mammal group, with over 1400 known species dispersed across six continents. Bats are unique in many ways. Notably, their incredible longevity, with a life span of up to ten times longer than what might be expected from their body size and a unique ability to tolerate viruses without displaying any symptoms, means t...

Unsustainable wildlife trade is a major threat to many species, but quantifying trade remains challenging, as seizure data provides an incomplete understanding. For this reason, integrating multiple types of information, including interviews with actors involved in trade, is crucial if we are to understand the problem better. Hence, in this study,...

Exploitation of wildlife represents one of the greatest threats to species survival according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Whilst detrimental impacts of illegal trade are well recognised, legal trade is often equated to being sustainable despite the lack of evidence or data in the majority...

Fungal pathogens have become an increasingly important topic in recent decades. Yet whilst various cankers and blights have gained attention in temperate woodlands and crops, the scope for fungal pathogens of animals and their potential threat has received far less attention. With a shifting climate, the threat from fungal pathogens is predicted to...

Aim Understanding the considerable variability and drivers of global leaf photosynthetic capacity [indicated by the maximum carboxylation rate standardized to 25°C ( V c,max25 )] is an essential step for accurate modelling of terrestrial plant photosynthesis and carbon uptake under climate change. Although current environmental conditions have ofte...

December 2022 finally saw the historic agreement of the Kunming‐Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM‐GBF), a landmark framework that sets to halt and reverse global biodiversity loss by remedying the multifaceted drivers behind biodiversity declines around the planet. The KM‐GBF follows on from the Aichi targets, which aimed to prevent furthe...

Bats are routinely neglected in conservation, often regarded as uncharismatic and constantly maligned despite their provision of economic and ecosystem services. Yet many species are threatened, and while the loss of roosting and foraging habitat has been explored, the impacts of hunting on species survival are less well understood. Here, we analys...

The commercial trade in frogs and their body parts is global, dynamic and occurs in extremely large volumes (in the thousands of tonnes/yr or billions of frogs/yr). The European Union (EU) remains the single largest importer of frogs’ legs, with most frogs still caught from the wild. Amongst the many drivers of species extinction or population decl...

Native bee species in the United States provide invaluable pollination services. Concerns about native bee declines are growing, and there are calls for a national monitoring program. Documenting species ranges at ecologically meaningful scales through coverage completeness analysis is a fundamental step to track bees from species to communities. I...

Myanmar is one of the most biodiverse countries in the Asia-Pacific region due to a wide range of climatic and environmental heterogeneity. Floristic diversity in Myanmar is largely unknown, resulting in a lack of comprehensive conservation plans. We developed a database of higher plants in Myanmar derived from herbarium specimens and literature so...

The loss of biodiversity due to overexploitation is well known, but a review and regulation of species used in the frogs’ legs trade has yet to be accomplished. This problem relates to supply (the capture and trade of wild populations) and demand (the main consumer being the EU). The EU’s responsibility should not be ignored, since unsustainable im...

Exploitation of wildlife represents one of the greatest threats to species survival according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Whilst detrimental impacts of illegal trade are well recognised, legal trade is often equated to being sustainable despite the lack of evidence or data in the majority...

Human population (often treated as overpopulation) has long been blamed as the main cause of biodiversity loss. Whilst this simplistic explanation may seem convenient, understanding the accuracy of the statement is crucial to develop effective priorities and targets to manage and reverse ongoing biodiversity loss. If untrue, the assertion may under...

Species are fundamental biological units, but their discovery and delimitation requires appropriate data and methods. To better circumscribe species, we must improve our species concepts and bolster the underlying data resources necessary to enact them. Here, we provide six prescriptions for better collecting and synergizing our knowledge on specie...

Species are fundamental biological units, but their discovery and delimitation requires appropriate data and methods. To better circumscribe species, we must improve our species concepts and bolster the underlying data resources necessary to enact them. Here, we provide six prescriptions for better collecting and synergizing our knowledge on specie...

Wildlife trade represents a major threat to global biodiversity. Yet preventing species losses from unsustainable trade requires detailed knowledge of patterns and processes of trade to enable targeted interventions. Bangladesh represents a possible lynchpin in global trade for certain groups, yet its role has largely been overlooked until present....

Aichi Target 11 committed governments to protect ≥17% of their terrestrial environments by 2020, yet it was rarely achieved, raising questions about the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework goal to protect 30% by 2030. Asia is a challenging continent for such targets, combining high biodiversity with dense human populations. Here, we evaluated a...

Wildlife markets are hotspots for illegal wildlife trade, with traders operating as a result of weak monitoring and law enforcement. Knowledge of species traded, sources, and routes used for transport is needed to identify illegal wildlife trade markets and intervene to stem trade. We conducted surveys in 13 wildlife markets across Bangladesh every...

Protecting and restoring the degraded arid lakes are globally urgent issues. We document a potential recovery of the dried salt-lake, Lop Nur called "the Sea of Death" which is located at the terminus of the largest inland basin in China, the Tarim River Basin. The changes and relationship of surface water with climate parameters and groundwater in...

There is a global concern of pollinator declines and linked ecosystem service losses. However, although land-use changes are a primary threat to biodiversity, how land-use change affects pollinator communities, pollination networks and fruit-set of food crops is poorly understood. The impact of land-use changes is especially understudied in tropica...

Our understanding of broad-scale biodiversity and functional trait patterns is largely based on plants, and relatively little information is available on soil arthropods. Here, we investigated the distribution of termite diversity globally and morphological traits and diversity across China. Our analyses showed increasing termite species richness w...

To what degree plant ecosystems thermoregulate their canopy temperature ( T c ) is critical to assess ecosystems' metabolisms and resilience with climate change, but remains controversial, with opinions from no to moderate thermoregulation capability. With global datasets of T c , air temperature ( T a ), and other environmental and biotic variable...

We present the results of our 14th horizon scan of issues we expect to influence biological conservation in the future. From an initial set of 102 topics, our global panel of 30 scientists and practitioners identified 15 issues we consider most urgent for societies worldwide to address. Issues are novel within biological conservation or represent a...

Biodiversity in arid-lands is very sensitive to some forms of perturbation and very slow to recover. • Arid-lands are vulnerable to agriculture such as grazing of cattle and irrigation, which need certification standards to ensure best practice and reduce impact. • Combined efforts of researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and local communities...

Bats provide an excellent case study for studying evolution due to their remarkable flight and echolocation capabilities. In this study, we sought to understand the phenotypic evolution of key traits in Rhinolophidae (horseshoe bats) using phylogenetic comparative methods. We aim to test the phylogenetic signals of traits, evaluated the best‐fit ev...

Background Family Rhinolophidae (horseshoe bats), Hipposideridae (leaf-nosed bats) and Rhinonycteridae (trident bats) are exclusively distributed in the Old-World, and their biogeography reflects the complex historic geological events throughout the Cenozoic. Here we investigated the origin of these families and unravel the conflicting family origi...

The Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework currently is under development as part of the Convention of Biodiversity's aim to prevent global biodiversity losses by 2050, but targets can only be effectively developed and assessed if the data used for them are fit for purpose. The monitoring framework has been discussed at length and ensuring appropr...

The strategic goals of the United Nations and the Aichi Targets for biodiversity conservation have not been met. Instead, biodiversity has continued to rapidly decrease, especially in developing countries. Setting a new global biodiversity framework requires clarifying future priorities and strategies to bridge challenges and provide representative...

The biological diversity on our planet is in crisis as a result of human activity, and the trends of different elements of biodiversity—species, ecosystems and genetic diversity—are almost all negative. The biodiversity crisis has been well documented by scientists (IPBES 2019) and recognized by world leaders and politicians (e.g., UN General Assem...

Climate change is a major factor influencing the species distribution and population diversity of living creatures. In this study, the ecological niche model (ENM) MaxEnt was used to evaluate habitat suitability and predict potential habitats of two sympatric fig species, i.e., Ficus squamosa and F. heterostyla, in the Xishuangbanna region of China...

Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is one of the leading causes of the decline in high‐value species. Crime reduction strategies to counter IWT can have unintended effects, with crime displacement occurring when offenders react to such interventions. Despite the value of understanding how and why displacement occurs for informing conservation strategies,...

Pollinators play an important role in ecosystems, but global climate change threatens the diversity and geographical distribution of pollinators. Bees are some of the most important pollinators and are particularly sensitive to climate change and environmental change. Apis laboriosa and Apis dorsata are two species of giant honeybees distributed in...

Around 56% of the world's population live in cities, with rapid urbanisation in developing regions. However, most ecological studies focus on developed countries. Here, we conduct a global analysis on bird diversity for 48,180 cities and assess the drivers of avian diversity. Productivity is one of the best indicators of diversity across biomes, bu...

The commercial trade in frogs and their body parts is global, dynamic, and occurs in extremely large volumes (in the thousands of tonnes/yr or billions of frogs/yr). The European Union remains the single largest importer of frogs’ legs, with most frogs still caught from the wild. Among the many drivers of species extinction or population decline (e...

Significant efforts have been made to characterize viral diversity in bats from China. Many of these studies were prospective and focused mainly on Rhinolophus bats that could be related to zoonotic events. However, other species of bats that are part of ecosystems identified as virus diversity hotspots have not been studied in-depth. We analyzed t...

Karst habitats are hotspots of diversity and endemism. Their naturally fragmented distributions across broad geographic landscapes have led to the complex array of smaller evolutionary ecosystems that present unique challenges from a conservation perspective. Comprehensive biodiversity assessments of karst habitats have revealed that these ecosyste...

Farmland birds are declining globally due to anthropogenic activities, with particularly few studies in Asian agricultural landscapes. Various studies have examined the impacts of landscape heterogeneity on farmland bird composition, but few have considered seasonal changes in bird diversity and examined functional feeding guild assemblages. Here,...

Understanding species responses to climatic change over extended timescales helps elucidate past and future extinction events. Amphibians are one of the most environmentally sensitive groups and yet showed high resilience to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (KPg) mass extinction, an event marked by sudden cooling and drought. To understand this past resili...

Many threatened birds use the mosaic of agricultural landscapes for foraging and breeding. Despite the reliance of many species on these habitats, few studies have investigated factors influencing the breeding ecology of storks in agricultural landscapes. We assessed site-level variables (tree height and location of nest tree; human habitation or n...

Destruction of natural habitat, land-use changes and biological invasion are some of the major threats to biodiversity. Both habitat alteration and biological invasions can have impacts on pollinator communities and pollination network structures. This study aims to examine the effect of an invasive plant, praxelis (Praxelis clematidea; Asteraceae)...

Understanding patterns of species distribution and diversity plays a vital role in biodiversity conservation. Such documentation is frequently lacking for bats, which are relatively little studied and often threatened. The Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot in peninsular India is a bat hotspot with 63 species. We conducted a comprehensive bat surve...