Marco GirardelloEuropean Commission | ec · Joint Research Centre (JRC)
Marco Girardello
PhD
About
28
Publications
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964
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (28)
Aims
Taller forest canopies may harbour higher biodiversity by providing more and varied resources. No previous studies have assessed whether forest canopy height shapes the taxonomic and functional diversity of terrestrial vertebrates at global and regional scales. Here, we examine the roles of forest canopy height and other environmental variable...
Species distribution data are crucial for assessing the conservation status of species (red listing, IUCN) and implementing international conservation targets, such as those set by the International Convention on Biological Diversity. Although there have been a number of efforts aimed at aggregating biodiversity data, information on the distributio...
Aim
Raptors serve critical ecological functions, are particularly extinction‐prone and are often used as environmental indicators and flagship species. Yet, there is no global framework to prioritize research and conservation actions on them. We identify for the first time the factors driving extinction risk and scientific attention on raptors and...
Rural development policies in many Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries promote sustainable landscape management with the intention of providing multiple ecosystem services (ES). Yet, it remains unclear which ES benefits are perceived in different landscapes and by different people. We present an assessment...
Ensuring the persistence of biodiversity and ecosystem services represents a global challenge that need to be addressed with high urgency. Global priority areas can only be identified by means of an integrated prioritization approach that would not only preserve species numbers and ecosystem services, but also the evolutionary and functional compon...
Background
Conserving both biodiversity and ecosystem services is a major goal of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Hotspots for biodiversity in the Andes significantly overlap with areas with dense human populations that sustain their economy through agricultural production. Therefore, developing management forms that reconcile food provisio...
The prosperity and well-being of human societies relies on healthy ecosystems and the services they provide. However, the biodiversity crisis is undermining ecosystems services and functions. Vultures are among the most imperiled taxonomic groups on Earth, yet they have a fundamental ecosystem function. These obligate scavengers rapidly consume lar...
The use of poison by farmers to control livestock predators is a major threat to vulture populations across Eurasia and Africa. While there is now some understanding of poison use on freehold farmland regions in southern Africa, the prevalence and drivers of this practice are still unknown in communal farmlands. We surveyed 353 communal farmers in...
Climate-driven environmental change and land-use change often interact in their impact on biodiversity, but these interactions have received little scientific attention. Here we study the effects of climate-driven environmental variation (i.e. vegetation greenness) and land-use (protected versus unprotected areas) on body condition of vulture nestl...
Trophic interactions play critical roles in structuring biotic communities. Understanding variation in trophic interactions among systems provides important insights into biodiversity maintenance and conservation. However, the relative importance of bottom-up versus top-down trophic processes for broad-scale patterns in biodiversity is poorly under...
Species distribution data are critical information sources when it comes to implementing the multiple Aichi Targets set by the international Convention on Biological Diversity. Although there have been international-scale efforts to aggregate distribution data, the magnitudes and locations of the gaps in biodiversity knowledge remain unclear. In th...
A central hypothesis of ecology states that regional diversity influences local diversity through species-pool effects. Species pools are supposedly shaped by large-scale factors and then filtered into ecological communities, but understanding these processes requires the analysis of large datasets across several regions. Here, we use a framework o...
Climate change is triggering adaptation by people and wildlife. The speed and magnitude of these responses may disrupt ecological equilibria and potentially cause further biodiversity losses, but this has rarely been studied. Species inhabiting human-dominated landscapes may be particularly negatively affected by human adaptations to climate change...
The wind energy sector is steadily growing, and the number of wind turbines is expected to expand across large areas of the globe in the near future. While the development of wind energy can contribute tomitigating climate change, it also poses challenges towildlife, particularly birds, due to increased collision risk with wind turbines. Here we qu...
Effective nature conservation in human-dominated landscapes requires a deep understanding of human behaviors, perceptions and values. Human-wildlife conflicts represent relatively well-studied, global-scale conservation challenges. In Africa, vulture populations are collapsing as they fall victim to poison used by livestock farmers to kill predator...
Aims
We studied diversity, patterns of endemism and turn-over of vegetation composition in dry inter-Andean valleys (DIAVs) where little is known about the influence of the abiotic drivers controlling plant species composition and occurrences, and the life forms that contribute most to α and β diversity, respectively. This study was focused on DIAV...
Alpine biodiversity is subject to a range of increasing threats, but the scarcity of data for many taxa means that it is difficult to assess the level and likely future impact of a given threat. Expert opinion can be a useful tool to address knowledge gaps in the absence of adequate data. Experts with experience in Alpine ecology were approached to...
Species prioritisation is an important component of conservation strategies. However, identifying species that are threatened is not easy for many taxa that lack detailed information on distribution and population trends. We propose a ranking system for small mammals, based on their degree of vulnerability and their conservation value. Scores were...
Land-use change and current game management have favored an increasing population of wild ungulates (especially deer) in many regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Here, we assess the impact of high deer densities (>30 ind km−2) on the highly diverse woody vegetation of Mediterranean ecosystems, where big game have been favored for the last decades....
Farmlands represent one of the most important habitats for several bird species in Europe, but during the last few decades, agricultural landscapes have been
subject to a rapid and large-scale change, caused by the intensification and mechanization of agricultural activities, that is one of the main drivers of worldwide biodiversity decline. The hi...
Species introduction represents one of the most serious threats for biodiversity. The realized climatic niche of an invasive species can be used to predict its potential distribution in new areas, providing a basis for screening procedures in the compilation of black and white lists to prevent new introductions. We tested this assertion by modeling...
Species distribution models are used increasingly in both applied and theoretical research to understand attributes of species' environmental requirements and to predict how species are distributed. However, recent advances in species distribution modelling have shown that the use of a single modelling method can lead to biased conclusions about th...
1. Species distribution models (SDMs) are increasingly used in applied conservation biology, yet the predictive ability of these models is often tested only on detection/non-detection data. The probability of long-term population persistence, however, depends not only upon patch occupancy but upon more fundamental population parameters such as mean...
We present a model of butterfly abundance on transects in England. The model indicates a significant role for climate, but
the direction of association is counter to expectation: butterfly population density is higher on sites with a cooler climate.
However, the effect is highly heterogeneous, with one in five species displaying a net positive asso...
We analysed the spatial distribution of Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) and its relationship with the habitat attributes of the agro-ecosystems in north-western Italy. We used generalised linear
models to analyse the relationship between the occurrence of the cottontail and a series of landscape-level variables. Hierarchical
partitioning...
The composition and structure of a community of Eimeria was investigated in a population of Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) introduced into Italy. Eight Eimeria species were found, of which all but 1 had North American origins and were presumably introduced into Italy together with imported cottontails. The success of cottontails in spre...
The current study combines the use of niche modelling with a site prioritization method to identify important areas for butterfly conservation in Italy. A novel machine learning method (bagging predictors) was used to predict the distribution of 232 species of butterflies across the Italian Peninsula. The results of the models were used to identify...
Analyzing the relationships between the distribution of animal species and climatic variables is not only important for understanding
which factors govern species distribution but also for improving our ability to predict future ecological responses to climate
change. In the context of global climate change, amphibians are of particular interest be...
Projects
Projects (2)
Identify and address global raptor priorities for raptor research and conservation.
Recently vultures have come to the forefront of the global conservation agenda as many populations have seen dramatic declines. In Namibia, one of the main threats to these species is the use of poison to control livestock predators on farmlands. In order to gauge the extent of this threat and to assess how vultures are perceived by the farmers, we will be conducting interviews with communal farmers living in the north west of Namibia. The insights that we gain from the communal farmers will help to inform threat mitigation programs.
