Jan C Axmacher

• Dr rer. nat.
• Professor (Full) at University College London

Aim Species abundance data is commonly used to study biodiversity patterns. In this context, comparing α‐ and β‐diversity across incomplete samples can lead to biases. Therefore, it is essential to employ methods that enable standardised and accurate comparisons of α‐ and β‐diversity across varying sample sizes. In addition, biodiversity studies al...

Satellite-based remote sensing approaches provide a cost-efficient means to collect information on the world’s forests and to repeatedly survey large, or inaccessible, forest areas. However, it may not always be possible to ground truth–associated findings using direct ecological field surveys conducted by trained forest scientists. Local ecologica...

Unsustainable trade in big cats affects all species in the genus, Panthera, and is one of the foremost threats to their conservation. To provide further insight into the impact of policy interventions intended to address this issue, we examine the case study of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), which in the early 1990s was one of the world’s lar...

Anthropogenic climate change is altering precipitation regimes at a global scale. While precipitation changes have been linked to changes in the abundance and diversity of soil and litter invertebrate fauna in forests, general trends have remained elusive due to mixed results from primary studies. We used a meta- analysis based on 430 comparisons f...

Species abundance data is commonly used to study biodiversity patterns. In this context, estimating α-diversity based on incomplete samples can lead to 'undersampling biases'. It is therefore essential to employ methods that enable accurate comparisons of β-diversity across varying sample sizes. This involves relying on biodiversity measures that a...

Background Northern ecosystems are strongly influenced by herbivores that differ in their impacts on the ecosystem. Yet the role of herbivore diversity in shaping the structure and functioning of tundra ecosystems has been overlooked. With climate and land-use changes causing rapid shifts in Arctic species assemblages, a better understanding of the...

China's adoption of an “ecological civilization” strategy since 2012 demonstrates its vision to move toward more sustainable development models while promoting green energy and strengthening environmental protection. However, China's continuing heavy reliance on fossil fuels, especially coal, masks the complex positive trends in energy use, more su...

This note describes several records of climbing behaviour by Asian Badger Meles leucurus, both wild and captive animals, in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The Asian Badger is one of the less well-known members of the family Mustelidae, and this note adds to the limited knowledge of the species’s behaviour and potential ability to access alter...

Anthropogenic climate change is altering precipitation regimes at a global scale. While precipitation changes have been linked to changes in the abundance and diversity of soil and litter invertebrate fauna in forests, general trends have remained elusive due to mixed results from primary studies. We used a meta-analysis based on 352 comparisons fr...

Globally, insect pollinators that are linked to increased yields in many crops have experienced severe population declines. Crop diversification is often proposed as an effective conservation measure to boost pollinator populations. Here, we investigate the potential benefits of mixed oilseed rape/milk vetch cultivation for wild pollinator communit...

Following the historic destruction of China's forests, large protected forest landscapes have been reestablishment across the country in recent decades. Currently, the species assemblages inhabiting these landscapes remain widely unknown. Here, we aim to establish whether the new temperate forest landscapes in Eastern China, composed of plantation,...

The provision of critical ecosystem services like carbon sequestration by peatlands has been degraded around the globe. Peatland restoration represents an opportunity to tackle the twin global emergencies of climate breakdown and biodiversity decline. Nonetheless, restoration success relies on a sound understanding of recovery trajectories associat...

The hydro-ecological impacts of 40 UK Climate Projections 2018 scenarios on a restored lowland England river floodplain are assessed using a MIKE SHE / MIKE 11 model. Annual precipitation declines for 60% of scenarios (range: -26%–21%, with small, <5%, declines for the central probability level). Potential evapotranspiration increases for all proba...

In modern agricultural landscapes, constructing ‘ecological networks’ is regarded as an efficient way to conserve biodiversity and maintain ecosystem services. Here we aimed to develop an approach to design ecological corridor by employing the ecological source - resistance surface - ecological corridor framework in combination with semi-natural ha...

We provide a preliminary assessment of a previously overlooked wildlife trade, the legal trade in badgers (Meles leucurus and Arctonyx spp.) and badger-derived products in South Korea. A new phase of the trade emerged in the 1990s with the establishment of wildlife farms to supply demand for badger as an edible and medicinal resource, including as...

While the protected area covers >15% of the planet's terrestrial land area and continues to expand, factors determining its effectiveness in conserving endangered species are being debated. We investigated the links between direct anthropogenic pressures, socioeconomic settings and the coverage of vertebrate taxa by China's protected area network,...

Although illegal wildlife trade (IWT) represents a serious threat to biodiversity, research into the prevalence of illegal plant collection and trade remains scarce. Because cacti and succulents are heavily threatened by overcollection for often illegal, international ornamental trade, we surveyed 441 members of the cacti and succulent hobbyist col...

Estimating the number of species in a community is important for assessments of biodiversity. Previous species richness estimators are mainly based on nonparametric approaches. Although parametric asymptotic models have been applied, they received limited attention due to specific limitations. Here, we introduce parametric models fitting the probab...

Biodiversity in China coexists alongside large ethnically diverse rural human populations within linked ‘biocultural’ social–ecological systems. Cumulative and changing local anthropogenic pressures linked to human population growth and economic development are driving unsustainable resource exploitation, habitat loss and extensive species declines...

Aims Channelization and artificial embankments have altered the natural flood regime of many rivers, impacting the hydrological characteristics of floodplain ecosystems and their biological communities. This study was undertaken on a floodplain meadow to assess spatial patterns of plant communities in relation to soil physical and chemical conditio...

Reforested areas can act as important carbon (C) sinks. In China, extensive reforestation has been carried out in mountainous regions, with resulting C storage affected by forest age, forest type and environmental settings. Evaluations of forest C sequestration therefore require a detailed spatio-temporal analysis of C storage dynamics. Here, we us...

Context The Sanjiangyuan region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau—also known as the “Three Rivers’ Headwaters”—is the origin of the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong Rivers and therefore the key water source for hundreds of millions of downstream residents. Protecting this region’s ecosystems is a key priority for sustainable development in China and Asia....

1. Traditional smallholding-dominated agricultural landscapes in Southern China are increasingly homogenized and consolidated, resulting in large mono-cropped fields and impoverished pollinator communities. The exact impact of this farmland consolidation on composition and functional traits of wild bee communities remains poorly understood. 2. We s...

In arid and semi-arid regions worldwide, grassland plant species richness is highly sensitive to climate change. Studies assessing local grassland richness patterns have yielded inconsistent trends toward climate change, partly due to differences in recording approaches, environmental conditions, and local flora. Remote sensing presents a valuable...

Agricultural intensification has caused severe declines in ground-dwelling arthropods and associated ecosystem services. The conservation and re-establishment of semi-natural habitats in agricultural landscapes represent widely accepted measures to counter these declines. The effectiveness of these measures nonetheless varies between target taxa an...

Over the last four decades, China has experienced rapid parallel economic development and urbanization, leading to internal mass -migrations of its people from increasingly marginalized rural areas to urban centers where job opportunities and wealth are now concentrated. We compare the relative temporal growth trends in population-related and land-...

兴安落叶松林是大兴安岭地区代表性的植被类型，其生物多样性具有独特性。步甲是森林生态系统环境和多样性的指示性物种，以及认识环境变化和生物多样性特征的关键物种。为研究大兴安岭地区兴安落叶松林步甲群落多样性的时间动态，分析步甲群落对时间变化的响应规律，于2019年5月下旬-8月下旬步甲活跃期，利用陷阱诱捕法在兴安落叶松林5个样地中采集步甲标本共15属34种1149头，其中大兴安岭地区地理新纪录物种7种，中国地理新纪录物种6种。研究结果表明，通缘步甲属（Pterostichus）和大步甲属（Carabus）物种丰富度最高；通缘步甲属未定种5（Pterostichus eximius）为极优势物种，对时间变化最敏感。兴安落叶松林小生境类型的多样化和步甲休眠期的选择是步甲群落个体数和物种数随时间变化呈双...

Electrofishing is a well‐established and widely used method for surveying fish populations. Nonetheless, its effectiveness is impacted by numerous factors, including water chemistry, habitat type and fish species. Both physiological and behavioural responses make bottom‐dwelling ‘benthic’ fish which lack swim bladders (e.g. European bullhead Cottus...

While the urban landscapes of the early Anthropocene may appear hostile to large carnivores, humans and leopards (Panthera pardus) are known to co-inhabit major urban centres like Mumbai (India), Nairobi (Kenya) and Johannesburg (South Africa). We provide evidence that the presence of leopards in urban landscapes is not, however, a new phenomenon a...

In line with general biodiversity losses across agricultural landscapes, insect pollinators have experienced recent sharp declines. A range of conservation measures have been developed to address these declines, with plant-pollinator interaction networks providing key insights into the effectiveness of these measures. For the first time, we studied...

Context The Sanjiangyuan region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (also known as the “Three Rivers’ Headwaters”) is the origin of Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong Rivers and therefore the key water source for hundreds of millions of downstream residents. Protecting this region’s ecosystems is a key priority for sustainable development in China and Asia. An...

1. As crayfish invasions continue to threaten native freshwater biota, a detailed understanding of crayfish distribution and population structure becomes imperative. Nonetheless, most current survey methods provide inadequate demographic data. The quantitative ‘Triple Drawdown’ (TDD) dewatering method has highlighted the importance of such data, ye...

With invasive crayfish becoming increasingly widespread, evidence-based management is crucial to protect freshwater ecosystems. Knowledge of the structure and function of invasive crayfish populations allows for an effective evaluation of management efforts. Recent methodological developments have enabled the first truly quantitative studies of UK...

There are numerous ways to estimate the true number of species in a community based on incomplete samples. Nonetheless, comparable approaches to estimate the number of species shared between two incompletely sampled communities are scarce. Here, we introduce the ‘total expected species shared' (TESS) measure and provide the R function for its calcu...

Agricultural intensification has caused losses of global biodiversity and associated ecological services. Agro-ecological landscape assessments are therefore often based on the area of remaining semi-natural habitats due to their ability to promote biodiversity. Due to their structural diversity and often less intensive management in comparison to...

1. We carried out three choice experiments with 6116 nocturnal lepidopteran individuals (95 species, 7 families, 32075 counts), each replicated 105 times during the seasons of two years. Moths were released indoors at the centre of a 10 x 10 m area with different lamps placed at each corner. 2. In experiment 1, lamps emitted UV (peak at 365 nm), bl...

1. To be effective, the next generation of conservation practitioners and managers need to be critical thinkers with a deep understanding of how to make evidence‐based decisions and of the value of evidence synthesis. 2. If, as educators, we do not make these priorities a core part of what we teach, we are failing to prepare our students to make an...

In the intensively farmed, homogenous agricultural landscape of the North China Plain, family graveyards form distinct cultural landscape features. In addition to their cultural value, these graveyards represent semi-natural habitat islands whose potential roles in biodiversity conservation and ecological functioning has remained poorly understood....

The restoration of highly terrestrialized farmland ponds that combines the removal of woody vegetation and pond sediment greatly enhances aquatic biodiversity. Nonetheless, questions remain regarding the historical precedent of pond restoration, and particularly if post‐restoration aquatic macrophyte communities resemble pre‐terrestrialization asse...

Freshwater crayfish can be successful invaders that threaten native biota and aquatic ecosystems in numerous countries worldwide. Nonetheless, the inability of conventional crayfish survey techniques like trapping and handsearching to yield quantitative population data has limited the understanding of crayfish invasion biology and associated ecolog...

1. Declines in pollinating invertebrates across intensively cultivated landscapes linked to reductions in flower-rich habitats constitute a key threat to biodiversity conservation and the provision of ecosystem services. Over recent decades, many ponds in agricultural landscapes have become overgrown with woody vegetation, resulting in heavily shade...

Dramatic declines in diurnal pollinators have created great scientific interest in plant–pollinator relationships and associated pollination services. Existing literature, however, is generally focused on diurnal pollinating insect taxa, especially on Apidae (Hymenoptera) and Syrphidae (Diptera) pollinators, while nocturnal macro-moths that compris...

While China is promoting the re‐establishment of forests across the country on a globally unprecedented scale, the biodiversity harboured by the resulting secondary and plantation forests remains poorly understood. Here, we assess the carabid diversity at Zhangguangcai Mountains in northeastern China that comprise a unique mosaic of mature forest r...

Throughout the tropics, hunting and fishing are critical livelihood activities for many Indigenous peoples. However, these practices may not be sustainable following recent socio-economic changes in Indigenous populations. To understand how human population growth and increased market integration affect hunting and fishing patterns, we conducted se...

Semi‐natural habitats are regularly shown to affect the diversity of predatory invertebrates at both local and landscape scales. In this study, we investigated the effects of three different vegetated field margins and the surrounding landscape composition on two common natural enemy taxa, carabids and spiders, in wheat fields of the North China Pl...

Measures of β‐diversity characterizing the difference in species composition between samples are commonly used in ecological studies. Nonetheless, commonly used dissimilarity measures require high sample completeness, or at least similar sample sizes between samples. In contrast, the Chord‐Normalized Expected Species Shared (CNESS) dissimilarity me...

The National Nature Reserve (NNR) network forms a central element in China's governmental strategy to conserve the country's vast biodiversity and its varied ecosystems. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of the existing NNR network in protecting China's highly diverse habitats and the fauna and flora they contain has remained unclear. Here, we analyze...

Aim Although biodiversity is in sharp decline around the globe, collectiing precise information on changes in overall species richness remains extremely challenging. Efficient and reliable proxy methods are therefore needed, with the diversity of higher taxa representing one such potential proxy for species‐level diversity. Nonetheless, the stabili...

Farmland bird populations have experienced severe declines across Europe and elsewhere. Agricultural intensification is believed to be a main factor behind these declines, with losses of non-cropped features, such as farmland ponds, identified as a key driver. Since the 1950s, many European farmland ponds have been in-filled or, through lack of man...

Rapid urbanization has greatly changed traditional villages in rural areas of China. This paper aims to assess sustainability and obtain its spatio–temporal dynamics, analyze the cause of sustainability changing conditions, and offer suggestions on the sustainable development of traditional villages. We integrated human disturbances into a minimum...

Capsule: There is seasonal variation in the benefits that birds can take from restored farmland ponds. Aims: To evaluate season-specific benefits of farmland pond restoration for local bird communities. Methods: Bird communities were recorded at unmanaged overgrown and managed open-canopy farmland ponds over the breeding, post-breeding and winter s...

Growing recognition of the importance of ponds for landscape-scale biodiversity has led to considerable interest in their conservation, focusing on new pond creation, or existing pond restoration. However, there is a third approach; the re-excavation of "ghost ponds"; former ponds deliberately filled-in due to agricultural intensification. Previous...

Aim Following the near‐complete destruction of China's forest ecosystems during the 20th century, recent reforestation programmes have created large‐scale mosaics of protected secondary and plantation forests. These restored forests are often assumed to have limited biodiversity conservation value, but large‐scale evaluations of their diversity are...

Wild bees provide important pollination services for crops and wild plants. While land use intensification has resulted in steep declines of wild bee diversity across agricultural landscapes, the creation of semi-natural habitats has been proposed as a counter-measure. However, the relative value of semi-natural and natural habitats in promoting wi...

Intensively managed flowering crops like canola (Brassicales: Brassicaceae) (oilseed rape, OSR) provide significant short-term nectar resources for pollen consumers. They may also play important roles as annual "service strips" in temporarily promoting predatory invertebrates. We set out to test this assumption by comparing overall and functional g...

Agricultural intensification and the associated loss of non-cropped habitats have caused a major decline in UK farmland bird populations since the 1970s. As a consequence, there is an urgent need to implement effective conservation and habitat restoration measures in agricultural landscapes. Over the last 40–50 years, due to the cessation of tradit...

Two new Pterostichus species (Coleoptera, Carabidae) in the subgenus Feroperis Lafer, 1979 are described from Zhangguangcai Mountain, northeastern China: Pterostichus (Feroperis) silvestris Sun & Shi, sp. n. and Pterostichus (Feroperis) maryseae Sun & Shi, sp. n. Detailed descriptions and illustrations of the male endophallus and female reproductiv...

Ponds represent a large potential resource for biodiversity in agricultural areas of lowland Europe though many are lost through natural succession towards damp woodland depressions (terrestrialisation). Managing ponds back towards their former open-water state may result in dramatic increases of biodiversity, even on heavily farmed land. Here, evi...

Reclamation of salinity-affected land for intensive agricultural production represents a highly promising pathway towards feeding our increasing global population. Nonetheless, biodiversity and ecosystem service responses to agricultural intensification in desalinized landscapes remain poorly understood. In our study, we analyzed long-term diversit...

The loss of flower-rich habitats and agricultural intensification have resulted in significant losses of wild bee diversity from agricultural landscapes that is increasingly threatening the pollination of zoochorous agricultural crops and agricultural sustainability. However, the links of different wild bee functional trait groups with habitat type...

Agricultural intensification has resulted in major losses of biodiversity due to landscape homogenization and an increasing use of agrochemicals. It has often been assumed that associated changes in environmental conditions are impacting composition and diversity of two main ground-dwelling generalist predator taxa, carabid beetles and epigaeic spi...

Thirty UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) scenarios are simulated using a MIKE SHE/MIKE 11 model of a restored floodplain in eastern England. Annual precipitation exhibits uncertainty in direction of change. Extreme changes (10% and 90% probability) range between –27% and +30%. The central probability projects small declines (<–4%). Wetter winter...

Extensive habitat destruction and pollution have caused dramatic declines in aquatic biodiversity at local to global scales. In rivers, the reintroduction of large woody debris is a common method aimed at restoring degraded ecosystems through “rewilding.” However, causal evidence for its effectiveness is lacking due to a dearth of replicated before...

The widespread loss of wetlands due to agricultural intensification has been highlighted as a major threat to aquatic biodiversity. However, all is not lost as we reveal that the propagules of some aquatic species could survive burial under agricultural fields in the sediments of ‘ghost ponds’ - ponds in-filled during agricultural land consolidatio...

Aims We aim to document elevational richness patterns of geometrid moths in a globally replicated, multi‐gradient setting, and to test general hypotheses on environmental and spatial effects (i.e. productivity, temperature, precipitation, area, mid‐domain effect and human habitat disturbance) on these richness patterns. Location Twenty‐six elevati...

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...

We analyzed the influence of climate change over the past 50 years on the radial growth of two tree species: Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) and Yezo spruce (Picea jezoensis), located on Changbai Mountain, Northeast China, using a dendrochronology approach to understand factors that limit the altitude for tree species. Elevated temperatures increase...

Are we entering a new ‘Golden Age’ of biogeography, with continued development of infra-structure and ideas? We highlight recent developments, and the challenges and opportunities they bring, in light of the snapshot provided by the 7th biennial meeting of the International Biogeography Society (IBS 2015). We summarize themes in and across 15 sympo...

Biodiversity declines in agricultural landscapes represent a major conservation challenge. In the UK, some agricultural landscapes contain high pond densities, but many farmland ponds have become terrestrialised since the 1960s, with input of organic material resulting in a decrease in the size and depth of ponds that eventually transform into wet...

Channelization and embankment of rivers has led to major ecological degradation of aquatic habitats worldwide. River restoration can be used to restore favourable hydrological conditions for target species or processes. However, the effects of river restoration on hydraulic and hydrological processes are complex and are often difficult to determine...

In response to ecological degradation triggered by the widespread destruction of mature forests, China’s government has established re- and afforestation programmes on a globally unprecedented scale. The value of the resulting forest ecosystems for biodiversity conservation remains widely unknown, particularly in view of highly diverse invertebrate...

High cross-taxon congruence in species diversity patterns is essential for the use of surrogate taxa in biodiversity conservation, but presence and strength of congruence in species turnover patterns, and the relative contributions of abiotic environmental factors and biotic interaction towards this congruence, remain poorly understood. In our stud...

A dataset of 3,250,404 measurements, collated from 26,114 sampling locations in 94 countries and representing 47,044 species. The data were collated from 480 existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database was assemb...

Mountainous regions harbor high levels of biodiversity, while often experiencing substantial pressure from agricultural production. Our current understanding of factors driving changes in the highly diverse species assemblages of these regions is generally limited. We used variance partitioning based on redundancy analysis to establish the effects...

Understanding the diversity and composition of species assemblages and identifying underlying biotic and abiotic determinants represent great ecological challenges. Addressing some of these issues, we investigated the α-diversity and phylogenetic composition of species-rich geometrid moth (Lepidoptera: Geometridae) assemblages in the mature tempera...