Colin Andrew Harrower

• PhD
• Analyst at UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology

Biodiversity monitoring schemes periodically measure species' abundances and distributions at a sample of sites to understand how they have changed over time. Often, the aim is to infer change in an average sense across some wider landscape. Inference to the wider landscape is simple if the species' abundances and distributions are similar at sampl...

Citizen-science data are increasingly used to contribute to our understanding of biodiversity change, but analysing such data requires suitable statistical methods, often to deal with forms of bias. We develop a new approach for modelling data from a snapshot, mass-participation citizen-science scheme for UK butterflies, the Big Butterfly Count (BB...

1. Biodiversity monitoring schemes periodically measure species’ abundances and distributions at a sample of sites to understand how they have changed over time. Often, the aim is to infer change in an average sense across some wider landscape. Inference to the wider landscape is simple if the species’ abundances and distributions are similar at sa...

Asynchrony in population abundance can buffer the effects of environmental change leading to greater community and ecosystem stability. Both environmental (abiotic) drivers and species functional (biotic) traits can influence population dynamics leading to asynchrony. However, empirical evidence linking dissimilarity in species traits to abundance...

This dataset contains 10km summarised occurrence data for terrestrial mammals as mapped in the Atlas of Mammal of Great Britain and Northern Ireland published by the Mammal Society in 2020. For each species 10km grid squares were categorised based on whether the species was recorded in that square only the current atlas time period (2000-2016), onl...

The dataset comprises one 1km habitat suitability surface for each of 5073 species of mammal, bryophyte, vascular plant, lichen, insect and non-insect invertebrate. The outputs are provided as .asc files denoting habitat suitability at a spatial resolution of 1km. The map projection is OSGB 1936 (EPSG:27700). The habitat suitability surfaces repres...

Conservation action is usually triggered by detecting trends in species’ population size, geographical range, or occupancy (proportion of sites occupied). Robust estimates of these metrics are often required by policy makers and practitioners, yet many species lack dedicated monitoring schemes. An alternative source of data for trend estimation is...

We believe that approaches to landscape modification should explicitly include farmers, given their understanding of landscape management practices, and consider climate change, so that the landscapes are designed for future environmental conditions. Climate change is an existential threat to farmers and current patterns of arable agriculture, lead...

A report by the Mammal Society for Natural Resources Wales, produced in association with Wales Mammal Biodiversity Action Forum.

The number of alien species arriving within new regions has increased at unprecedented rates. Managing the pathways through which alien species arrive and spread is important to reduce the threat of biological invasions. Harmonising information on pathways across individual sectors and user groups is therefore critical to underpin policy and action...

This document is freely available from the Natural England website and any updates will be posted there: http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/5636785878597632

The State of Nature report 2019 presents an overview of how wildlife is faring in the UK and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. Additionally, it assesses the pressures that are acting on nature, and the responses being made, collectively, to counter these pressures.

Reliable assessment of extinction risk is a key factor in the preparation of Red Lists and in prioritizing biodiversity conservation. Temporal population trends can provide important evidence for such assessments, but imperfect sampling (observation errors) and short-term stochastic variation in population levels caused by environmental variability...

Invasive alien species are widely recognized as one of the main threats to global biodiversity. Rapid flow of information on the occurrence of invasive alien species is critical to underpin effective action. Citizen science, i.e. the involvement of volunteers in science, provides an opportunity to improve the information available on invasive alien...

According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, by 2020 invasive alien species (IAS) should be identified and their impacts assessed, so that species can be prioritized for implementation of appropriate control strategies and measures put in place to manage invasion pathways. For one quarter of the IAS listed as the “100 of the world's worst”...

Prioritization of introduction pathways is seen as an important component of the management of biological invasions. We address whether established alien plants, mammals, freshwater fish and terrestrial invertebrates with known ecological impacts are associated with particular introduction pathways (release, escape, contaminant, stowaway, corridor...

Preventing the arrival of invasive alien species ( IAS ) is a major priority in managing biological invasions. However, information on introduction pathways is currently scattered across many data bases that often use different categorisations to describe similar pathways. This hampers the identification and prioritisation of pathways to meet the m...

Data S1. Developing a phylogeny of British butterflies (technical details). Table S1. Species' t‐values and co‐efficients from regressions of mean flight date and three‐monthly mean temperatures. Table S2. Temperature range (within‐ and between‐ populations) of data analysed for each species. Table S3. Results from phylogenetic MCMCglmm analysis...

Substantial progress has been made in understanding how pathways underlie and mediate biological invasions. However, key features of their role in invasions remain poorly understood, available knowledge is widely scattered, and major frontiers in research and management are insufficiently characterized. We review the state of the art, highlight rec...

IUCN Red Lists are recognized worldwide as powerful instruments for the conservation of species. Quantitative criteria to standardise approaches for estimating population trends, geographic ranges and population sizes have been developed at global and sub-global levels. Little attention has been given to the data needed to estimate species trends a...

IUCN Red Lists are recognized worldwide as powerful instruments for the conservation of species. Quantitative criteria to standardize approaches for estimating population trends, geographic ranges and population sizes have been developed at global and sub-global levels. Little attention has been given to the data needed to estimate species trends a...

Phenology shifts are the most widely cited examples of the biological impact of climate change, yet there are few assessments of potential effects on the fitness of individual organisms or the persistence of populations. Despite extensive evidence of climate-driven advances in phenological events over recent decades, comparable patterns across spec...

Agricultural expansion and intensification have been linked with losses of biodiversity and disruption of key ecosystem services in farmed landscapes. A number of mitigation and adaptation strategies e.g. agri-environment schemes, have been implemented to counter these declines but their effectiveness has been questioned by conservationists as well...

The process of invasion and the desire to predict the invasiveness (and associated impacts) of new arrivals has been a focus of attention for ecologists over centuries. The volunteer recording community has made unique and inspiring contributions to our understanding of invasion biology within Britain. Indeed information on non-native species (NNS)...

Information on non-native species (NNS) is often scattered among a multitude of sources, such as regional and national databases, peer-reviewed and grey literature, unpublished research projects, institutional datasets and with taxonomic experts. Here we report on the development of a database designed for the collation of information in Britain. T...

The results detailed in this vascular plant Red List present for the first time the current state of England’s flora measured against standardised IUCN criteria. Almost one in five species has been assessed as threatened, with many more species assessed as ‘Near Threatened’. The destruction and transformation of semi-natural habitats across the Eng...

Invasive alien species ( IAS ) are considered one of the greatest threats to biodiversity, particularly through their interactions with other drivers of change. Horizon scanning, the systematic examination of future potential threats and opportunities, leading to prioritization of IAS threats is seen as an essential component of IAS management. Our...

Table S1. The highest-risk future alien invasive species in Great Britain (based on their likelihood of arrival, establishment and impact on native biodiversity over the next 10 years) derived from consensus-building among experts. Dreissena bugensis was unanimously considered to be the highest ranking species. The others are ranked equally within...

Table S2. Species ranked as posing a medium risk (ranked equally within 31–93) with respect to likelihood of arriving, establishing and having an impact on native biodiversity in Britain over the next 10 years.

The Welsh Government has commissioned a comprehensive new ecosystem monitoring and evaluation programme to monitor the effects of Glastir, its new land management scheme, and to monitor progress towards a range of international biodiversity and environmental targets. A random sample of 1 km squares stratified by landcover types will be used both to...

Species’ distributions are likely to be affected by a combination of environmental drivers. We used a data set of 11 million species occurrence records over the period 1970–2010 to assess changes in the frequency of occurrence of 673 macro‐moth species in Great Britain. Groups of species with different predicted sensitivities showed divergent trend...

Invertebrates supporting natural pest control and pollination ecosystem services are crucial to world‐wide crop production. Understanding national patterns in the spatial structure of natural pest control and pollination can be used to promote effective crop management and contribute to long‐term food security. We mapped the species richness and fu...

The hectad (10610 km square) distributions of the 1405 native British and Irish vascular plants were classified by the SPHERIKM cluster analysis program into 20 clusters, each of which is characterised by the key species used to initiate the cluster. The clusters reflect the influence of climate, altitude, geology, and habitat on distribution patte...

The diet of E. spelaea was determined for bats captured monthly between June 2002–June 2003 at a cave entrance in Songkhla Province, Southern Thailand. Faecal analysis and pollen collected from the bats’ fur were used to identify the plant species ingested. From 1,155 diet records from 506 samples, at least eleven plant taxa were identified. Indivi...

We classified 747 species of British and Irish mosses into 10 clusters, based on their recorded distribution in 10610 km grid squares (hectads). We generated the clusters in a two-stage process using the CLUSTASPEC program, the method that we had earlier used for British and Irish liverworts and hornworts. The clusters are named after the species w...

Clustering multivariate species data can be an effective way of showing groups of species or samples with similar characteristics. Most current techniques classify the samples first and then the species. A disadvantage of classifying the samples first is that relatively subtle differences between occurrence profiles of species can be obscured. The...

The European Commission has recognized the need for more stringent action to manage biological invasions and has committed to develop a dedicated legislative instrument. Under this upcoming legislation, European countries and their relevant institutions will have additional obligations and commitments in respect to invasive alien species. In Septem...

The predation of invasive signal crayfish, Pacifastacus leniusculus (Dana, 1852) by several nesting pairs of lesser black-backed gull, Larus fuscus Linnaeus, 1758 is reported from Steep Holm (51°20.39' N, 3°6.53' W), one of two small islands located in the inner Bristol Channel, United Kingdom. This feeding activity was subsequently observed at a p...

The 300 species of British and Irish liverworts and hornworts are classified into 10 groups, based on their recorded presence in 10×10 km grid squares (hectads). A two-stage classification (CLUSTASPEC) initially amalgamated single species into clusters and then systematically removed the smallest clusters, redistributing their species until only 10...