
Darren M EvansNewcastle University | NCL · School of Natural and Environmental Sciences
Darren M Evans
DPhil
About
135
Publications
57,584
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Introduction
I study the impacts of environmental change on the structure and dynamics of ecological networks and the consequences for plant and animal populations.
I lead the Ecology Academic Group at Newcastle University, UK, as well as my own lab: the Network Ecology Group. I am Senior Editor of the Journal of Animal Ecology.
Additional affiliations
Education
September 1996 - September 1999
Publications
Publications (135)
Oak processionary moth ( Thaumetopoea processionea ) (OPM) Linnaeus, 1758 (Lepidoptera: Notodontidae) is a serious forestry pest and risk to public health in the UK. The economic and environmental cost of chemical pesticides in managing OPM has driven the need for sustainable, strategies which fit into integrated pest management frameworks, includi...
Insects play a vital role in ecosystem functioning, but in some parts of the world, their populations have declined significantly in recent decades due to environmental change, agricultural intensification and other anthropogenic drivers. Monitoring insect populations is crucial for understanding and mitigating biodiversity loss, especially in agro...
Political responses to the COVID-19 pandemic led to changes in city soundscapes around the globe.From March to October 2020, a consortium of 261 contributors from 35 countries brought togetherby the Silent Cities project built a unique soundscape recordings collection to report on local acousticchanges in urban areas. We present this collection her...
Nutrients can shape ecological interactions but remain poorly integrated into ecological networks. Concepts such as nutrient‐specific foraging nevertheless have the potential to expose the mechanisms structuring complex ecological systems. Nutrients also present an opportunity to predict dynamic processes, such as interaction rewiring and extinctio...
Biomonitoring of agriculturally important insects is increasingly vital given our need to understand: (a) the severity of impacts by pests and pathogens on crop yield and health and (b) the impact of environmental change and land management on insects, in line with sustainable development and global conservation targets.
Traditional entomological t...
Insect populations are declining in many parts of the world, but a lack of long-term monitoring data is impeding our ability to understand and mitigate the causes of insect biodiversity loss. Whilst high-throughput sequencing (HTS) approaches, such as DNA metabarcoding, have the potential to revolutionize insect biomonitoring through rapid scalable...
Insects play a vital role in ecosystem functioning, but in some parts of the world their populations have declined significantly in recent decades due to anthropogenic environmental change. Monitoring insect populations is crucial for understanding and mitigating biodiversity loss, especially in agro-ecosystems where a focus on pests and beneficial...
Biomonitoring of agriculturally important insects is increasingly important given our need to understand a) the severity of impacts by pests and pathogens on crop yield and health, and b) the impact of environmental change and land management on insects, in line with sustainable development and global conservation targets. Traditional entomological...
Street lights are not only a major source of direct light pollution emissions, but stock has been transitioning to light-emitting diode (LED) technology in many parts of the world, resulting in increases in the blue part of the visible spectrum that is more harmful to biodiversity and human health. But LEDs can be modified more easily than conventi...
Artificial light at night (ALAN) is eroding natural light cycles and thereby changing species distributions and activity patterns. Yet little is known about how ecological interaction networks respond to this global change driver. Here, we assess the scientific basis of the current understanding of community-wide ALAN impacts. Based on current know...
Light pollution has emerged as a burgeoning area of scientific interest, receiving increasing attention in recent years. The resulting body of literature has revealed a diverse array of species-specific and context-dependent responses to artificial light at night (ALAN). Because predicting and generalizing community-level effects is difficult, our...
The urgent need for highly resolved and broad biomonitoring has never been greater as challenges such as climate change, agricultural intensification and biodiversity loss increasingly threaten the integrity of ecosystems globally. There has been unprecedented progress in the operationalisation of such biomonitoring by leveraging technological adva...
Mangrove forests, benefitting millions of people, experience significant degradation. Global recognition of the urgency of halting and reversing this trend have initiated numerous restoration activities. Restoration success is typically evaluated by estimating mangrove survival and area restored, while diversity and structure of vegetation, as prox...
Mangroves are complex, unique, and dynamic ecosystems that host organisms that have special physiological adaptations to fluctuations in salinity, temperature, and pH. Gastropods have an important role in the mangrove ecosystem for food cycles and webs by helping to provide nutrients and micro-habitats for microbes. Micro-fungi isolated from mangro...
Over the past quarter‐century, environmental DNA (eDNA) has been ascendant as a tool to detect, measure and monitor biodiversity (species and communities), as a means of elucidating biological interaction networks, and as a window into understanding past patterns of biodiversity. However, only recently has the potential of eDNA been realized in the...
Interactions between plants and pollinators, and thus pollination, are network-based processes. Many early studies of plant-pollinator networks focused on interactions within agroecosystems, providing a substantial knowledge-base around agricultural pollinators and how they can be promoted. There is therefore an opportunity to use network ecology t...
Wallacea—the meeting point between the Asian and Australian fauna—is one of the world's largest centers of endemism. Twenty-three million years of complex geological history have given rise to a living laboratory for the study of evolution and biodiversity, highly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. In the present article, we review the historic...
The complex network of interactions between species makes understanding the response of ecosystems to disturbances an enduring challenge. One commonplace way to deal with this complexity is to reduce the description of a species to a binary presence-absence variable. Though convenient, this limits the patterns of behaviours representable within suc...
Dietary metabarcoding has vastly improved our ability to analyse the diets of animals, but it is hampered by a plethora of technical limitations including potentially reduced data output due to the disproportionate amplification of the DNA of the focal predator, here termed ‘the predator problem’. We review the various methods commonly used to over...
Ecological networks have classically been studied at site and landscape scales, yet recent efforts have been made to collate these data into global repositories. This offers an opportunity to integrate and upscale knowledge about ecological interactions from local to global scales to gain enhanced insights from the mechanistic information provided...
Nutrients are a critical driver of species interactions (e.g., plant-herbivore, predator-prey and host-parasite) but are not yet integrated into network ecology analyses. Ecological concepts like nutrient-specific foraging and nutrient-dependent functional responses could provide a mechanistic context for complex ecological interactions. These conc...
Dietary metabarcoding has vastly improved our ability to analyse the diets of animals, but it is hampered by a plethora of technical limitations including potentially reduced data output due to the disproportionate amplification of the DNA of the focal predator, here termed ‘the predator problem’. We review the various methods commonly used to over...
1. Candy-striped spiders (Enoplognatha spp.; Araneae: Theridiidae) are among Britain's commonest theridiid spiders and are potential immigrant biocontrol agents of many pests in arable fields. Though the presence of these spiders in proximity to agriculture is dependent on the availability of suitable leaves for their egg deposition, their preferen...
The global challenge of feeding two billion more people by 2050, using more sustainable agricultural practices whilst dealing with uncertainties associated with environmental change, requires a transformation of food systems. We present a new perspective for how advances in network science can provide novel ways to better understand, harness, and r...
Declines in pollinating insects and wildflowers have been well documented in recent years. Climate change is an emerging threat to insect pollinators and their food plants, but little is known about how whole communities of interacting species will be affected or what impacts there may be on ecosystem services such as pollination. Using a novel ope...
Advances in network ecology offer new tools for the sustainable management of agroecosystems. Plants in field margins may be involved in different processes of agronomic importance - indirectly affecting crops by supporting shared pollinators, hosting natural enemies of pests or acting as pest reservoirs. In this work, we explored the use of motifs...
Advances in network ecology offer new tools for the sustainable management of agroecosystems. Plants in field
margins may be involved in different processes of agronomic importance - indirectly affecting crops by supporting
shared pollinators, hosting natural enemies of pests or acting as pest reservoirs. In this work, we explored
the use of motifs...
The construction of increasingly detailed species-interaction networks is extending the potential applications of network ecology, providing an opportunity to understand complex eco-evolutionary interactions, ecosystem service provision and the impacts of environmental change on ecosystem functioning. Dietary metabarcoding is a rapidly growing tool...
Managing agricultural environments in a way that maximises the provision of multiple ecosystem services is a significant challenge in the development of sustainable and secure food systems. Advances in network ecology provide a way forward, particularly in arable landscapes, as they incorporate mutualistic and antagonistic interactions associated w...
Mangroves are uniquely important ecosystems, for preserving biodiversity, sustaining livelihoods and mitigating against climate change. However they are degraded globally and are therefore a priority for ecosystem restoration. To date, the assessment of mangrove restoration outcomes is generally poor, and the limited studies that do exist are focus...
The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is one of the most endangered biodiversity hotspots in world and restinga ecosystems are exposed to intense degradation. The restoration of these ecosystems is challenging as there is a lack of understanding, among other aspects, of how plants interact with pollinators. Ecological networks are useful for assessing rest...
Recent estimates suggest that a quarter of species globally are under threat of extinction. Understanding what happens to ecological networks of interacting organisms when they lose a significant fraction of species is thus essential for assessing, and potentially mediating, the current biodiversity crisis. We introduce and explore a framework for...
Reported declines in insect populations have sparked global concern, with artificial light at night (ALAN) identified as a potential contributing factor. Despite strong evidence that lighting disrupts a range of insect behaviors, the empirical evidence that ALAN diminishes wild insect abundance is limited. Using a matched-pairs design, we found tha...
Climate change is a key driver of increased wildfire activity globally. Whilst the recovery of plant communities after fire is generally understood, the impacts on ecological processes, such as pollen transport by insects, have received little attention. We investigated the effects of wildfire on diurnal insects and pollen transport over 2 years fo...
Parasitoids are key ecosystem service providers within sustainable agriculture and integrated pest-management strategies due to their function as biocontrol agents.
There is a dearth of data regarding how parasitoids fit within wider communities of interacting species, but such information is essential for the successful implementation of conserva...
Understanding how climate change will affect agro-ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide is a significant global challenge. Investigating this topic requires a holistic approach that can capture the complexity of agro-ecosystems and assess impacts on the physical, biological, and socio-economic aspects of the system. The Drivers-Pressur...
A participatory monitoring programme of an exceptional modification of urban soundscapes during Covid-19 containment.
1. The night-time environment is increasingly being lit, often by broad-spectrum lighting, and there is growing evidence that artificial light at night (ALAN) has consequences for ecosystems, potentially contributing to declines in insect populations.
2. Moths are species-rich, sensitive to ALAN, and have undergone declines in Europe, making them...
The intensity of pastoral management in areas of High Nature Value farming is declining in some regions of Europe but increasing in others. This affects open habitats of conservation concern, such as the British uplands, where bird species that benefit from low‐intensity grazing may be most sensitive to such polarization. While experimental manipul...
Advances in molecular ecology offer unprecedented opportunities to understand the ecology and evolution of insects, the complex ways in which they interact and their role in ecosystem functioning. Rapidly developing DNA sequencing technologies are resolving previously intractable questions in taxonomic and functional biodiversity and provide signif...
Wildfires drive global biodiversity patterns and affect plant–pollinator interactions, and are expected to become more frequent and severe under climate change. Post‐fire plant communities often have increased floral abundance and diversity, but the effects of wildfires on the ecological process of pollination are poorly understood. Nocturnal moths...
Artificial light at night (ALAN) is an increasingly important driver of global change. Lighting directly affects plants, but few studies have investigated indirect effects mediated by interacting organisms. Nocturnal Lepidoptera are globally important pollinators, and pollen transport by moths is disrupted by lighting. Many street lighting systems...
It is unclear how sustained increases in temperature and changes in precipitation, as a result of climate‐change, will affect crops and their interactions with agricultural weeds, insect pests and predators, due to the difficulties in quantifying changes in such complex relationships. We simulated the combined effects of increasing temperature (by...
Complex networks of interactions involving multiple plant and microbial species have consequences for ecosystem productivity and energy movement through higher trophic levels, but the sensitivity of these networks to environmental change is uncertain. The fast developing field focused on the construction of ecological networks involving multiple pl...
1. Moths are globally relevant as pollinators but nocturnal pollination remains poorly understood. Plant–pollinator interaction networks are traditionally constructed using either flower‐visitor observations or pollen‐transport detection using microscopy. Recent studies have shown the potential of DNA metabarcoding for detecting and identifying pol...
The urgent need to restore biodiversity and ecosystem functioning challenges ecology as a predictive science. Restoration ecology would benefit from evolutionary principles embedded within a framework that combines adaptive network models and the phylogenetic structure of ecological interactions. Adaptive network models capture feedbacks between tr...
Moths are globally relevant as pollinators but nocturnal pollination remains poorly understood. Plant-pollinator interaction networks are traditionally constructed using either flower-visitor observations or pollen-transport detection using microscopy. Recent studies have shown the potential of DNA metabarcoding for detecting and identifying pollen...
Determining the host-parasitoid interactions and parasitism rates for invasive species entering novel environments is an important first step in assessing potential routes for biocontrol and integrated pest management. Conventional insect rearing techniques followed by taxonomic identification are widely used to obtain such data, but this can be ti...
Determining the host-parasitoid interactions and parasitism rates for invasive species entering novel environments is an important first step in assessing potential routes for biocontrol and integrated pest management. Conventional insect rearing techniques followed by taxonomic identification are widely used to obtain such data, but this can be ti...
Ecological network analysis (ENA) provides a mechanistic framework for describing complex species interactions, quantifying ecosystem services, and examining the impacts of environmental change on ecosystems. In this chapter, we highlight the importance and potential of ENA in future biomonitoring programs, as current biomonitoring indicators (e.g....
Ecological network analysis (ENA) provides a mechanistic framework for describing complex species interactions, quantifying ecosystem services, and examining the impacts of environmental change on ecosystems. In this chapter, we highlight the importance and potential of ENA in future biomonitoring programs, as current biomonitoring indicators (e.g....
Background
The analysis of ecological networks can be affected by sampling effort, potentially leading to bias. Ecological network structure is often summarised by descriptive metrics but these metrics can vary according to the proportion of the total interactions that have been observed. Therefore, to know the likely degree of bias, it is valuable...
Recent work has suggested that emergent ecological network structure exhibits very little spatial or temporal variance despite changes in community composition. However, the changes in network interactions associated with turnover in community composition have seldom been assessed. Here we examine whether changes in ecological networks are best det...
Among drivers of environmental change, artificial light at night is relatively poorly understood, yet is increasing on a global scale. The community-level effects of existing street lights on moths and their biotic interactions have not previously been studied. Using a combination of sampling methods at matched-pairs of lit and unlit sites, we foun...
In a recent review, Pimm et al. (2015) highlight emerging technologies in protecting biodiversity. While their list is noteworthy, the authors’ exclusion of innovations in genomic research, with the exception of single-species DNA barcoding methods, was surprising given recent advances in genome-editing technology and its potential application to c...
Significant advances in both mathematical and molecular approaches in ecology offer unprecedented opportunities to describe and understand ecosystem functioning. Ecological networks describe interactions between species, the underlying structure of communities and the function and stability of ecosystems. They provide the ability to assess the robu...
Ecological systems comprise of individuals and species interacting with each other and their environment, and these interactions combine to form complex networks. The maintenance of biodiversity and many ecosystem functions depend upon these eco- logical interactions. Humans, their crops and livestock can also be considered as part of these network...
Aphidiinae are mostly composed of specialist parasitoids and the few species described as generalist are suspected to be composed of cryptic specialists, almost indistinguishable based on morphological characteristics. The use of molecular markers has proven to be a useful tool for revealing cryptic species complexes and here we use seven mitochond...
1. The role of nocturnal moths within plant-pollinator networks is poorly understood but could be important in the context of declining biodiversity and the ecosystem services they provide.
2. For the first time, this study examined the role of moths as pollen vectors in the Mediterranean Biodiversity Hotspot. Light traps were used to sample moths...
2015. The cascading impacts of livestock grazing in upland ecosystems: a 10-year experiment. Ecosphere 6(3):42. Abstract. Livestock grazing is a major driver of land-use change, causing significant biodiversity loss globally. Although the short-term effects of livestock grazing on individual species are well studied, a mechanistic understanding of...
A major challenge in network ecology is to describe the full-range of species interactions in a community to create highly-resolved food-webs. We developed a molecular approach based on DNA full barcoding and mini-barcoding to describe difficult to observe plant – leaf miner – parasitoid interactions, consisting of animals commonly regarded as agri...
[Extract] Governments, businesses, financial institutions and local communities are increasingly using biodiversity offsets, also known as compensatory mitigation, as a putative mechanism to achieve 'no net loss' (NNL) of biodiversity as a result of specific development projects (McKenney & Kiesecker, 2010; Quetier & Lavorel, 2011; Gardner et al.,...