Nicolas Titeux

Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) | LIST · Environmental Research & Innovation (ERIN)

Species distribution models built with geographically restricted data often fail to capture the full range of conditions experienced by species across their entire distribution area. Using such models to predict distribution shifts under future environmental change may, therefore, produce biased projections. However, restricted-scale models have th...

The climatic preferences of the species determine to a large extent their response to climate change. Temperature preferences have been shown to play a key role in driving trends in animal populations. However, the relative importance of temperature and precipitation preferences is still poorly understood, particularly in systems where ecological p...

Species distribution models analyse how species use different types of habitats. Their spatial predictions are often used to prioritize areas for conservation. Individuals may, however , prefer settling in habitat types of low quality compared to other available habitats. This ecological trap phenomenon is usually studied in a small number of habit...

Niche‐based models often ignore spatial variation in the climatic niche of a species across its occupied range and the related variation in the response to changing climate conditions. This assumption may lead to inaccurate predictions of species distribution shifts under climate change. Models have been developed to address this issue, but most of...

Effective policies to halt biodiversity loss require knowing which anthropogenic drivers are the most important direct causes. Whereas previous knowledge has been limited in scope and rigor, here we statistically synthesize empirical comparisons of recent driver impacts found through a wide-ranging review. We show that land/sea use change has been...

Aim Species distribution models have become important tools for studying changes in biodiversity. Most studies use these models to evaluate the impact of global changes on biodiversity. For that purpose, scenarios are used that are based on changes in land use and/or land cover, or on climatic changes. However, the temporal transferability of such...

Modelling the distribution of breeding birds for the Second European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA2), promoted by the European Bird Census Council (EBCC), was challenging and required the test and development of robust statistical procedures to provide accurate maps of species distribution. To de-velop the maps of EBBA2, we explored several modelling o...

Hybridisation between domestic and wild taxa can pose severe threats to wildlife conservation, and human induced hybridisation, often linked to species' introductions and habitat degradation, may promote reproductive opportunities between species for which natural interbreeding would be highly unlikely. Using a biome specific approach, we examine t...

Aim Habitat loss and degradation is one of the main threats to biodiversity worldwide. Ecological modelling community has been increasingly incorporating habitat changes in the species distribution models (SDMs). However, the effect that the uncertainty arising from the standard procedures of land‐use/land‐cover (LULC) mapping can have on SDMs has...

Poleward range shifts under climate change involve the colonization of new sites and hence the foundation of new populations at the expanding edge. We studied oviposition site selection in a butterfly under range expansion (Lycaena dispar), a key process for the establishment of new populations. We described and compared the microhabitats used by t...

Behavioural plasticity during habitat selection plays a key role in determining whether organisms may thrive under human- induced rapid environmental changes. As organisms rely on environmental cues to make decisions, these behavioural responses may be maladaptive. We studied the European stonechat Saxicola torquatus as a model open-habitat bird sp...

Despite the scientific consensus on the extinction crisis and its anthropogenic origin, the quantification of historical trends and of future scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services has been limited, due to the lack of inter-model comparisons and harmonized scenarios. Here, we present a multi-model analysis to assess the impacts of land-us...

The main direct drivers of biodiversity loss – land/sea-use change, direct exploitation, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species – are likely to have their greatest impacts on different kinds of species and ecosystems. I will discuss the likely consequences of these ‘signatures’, combined with the drivers’ relative importance in recent...

To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts o...

To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts o...

To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts o...

What is IPBES? IPBES—the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—was established in 2012 to serve a role linking the science and knowledge about nature and nature’s benefits to people with policy and decision-making. IPBES has many expert groups, including one that focusses on Scenarios and Models of Biodiversity of Ecosy...

Measures of fitness such as reproductive performance are considered reliable indicators of habitat quality for a species. Such measures are, however, only available in a restricted number of sites, which prevents them from being used to quantify habitat quality across landscapes or regions. Alternatively, species presence records can be used along...

In the last decade, new technologies changed the way to collect, store and share scientific data. In this context, citizens now directly contribute to the conservation of wild populations. Actually, co-ordinated citizen science surveys ensure that the distributions and population trends of European breeding birds are relatively well documented, as...

Over the last decade, the conversion of annual-rotation based crops or grassland areas into non-food perennial crops has been increasingly prevalent in European farming systems. This shift is associated with major changes in management practices and has created new environmental conditions and resources for wildlife. Impacts on birds have been exam...

Scientific Reports 7 : Article number: 41591 10.1038/srep41591 ; published online: 30 January 2017 ; updated: 02 May 2017 In this Article, Figure 4 is a duplication of Figure 5. The correct Figure 4 appears below as Figure 1 .

In human-modified environments, organisms may prefer to use habitats where their reproductive performance is lower compared to alternative options. Many such ecological traps occur in seasonally changing environments. Although the timing of breeding has been shown to impact reproductive performance in a variety of organisms, it has never been consi...

One of the main objectives of the Second European Breeding Bird Atlas (EBBA2) is to provide maps showing bird occurrence at a 10 x 10 km resolution for as many of the European breeding bird species as possible. With almost 120,000 10 x 10 km squares across Europe, it would be practically impossible to carry out comprehensive surveys in each spatial...

Temporal baselines are needed for biodiversity, in order for the change in biodiversity to be measured over time, the targets for biodiversity conservation to be defined and conservation progress to be evaluated. Limited biodiversity information is widely recognized as a major barrier for identifying temporal baselines, although a comprehensive qua...

Co-ordinated Citizen Science surveys have ensured that the distributions and population trends of European breeding birds are relatively well documented, as are the mid-winter distributions and abundances of wintering waterfowl. However, the majority of European bird populations are migratory and there are huge gaps in our knowledge of their distri...

Over the last decade, nonfood perennial crops have been increasingly prevalent in European farming systems. Here, vegetation structure and crop management greatly differ from conventional crops and may likely impact farmland birds. Impacts on birds have been examined for bioenergy agricultural systems, such as miscanthus plantations and short rotat...

Intergovernmental platforms acting as authoritative and independent bodies at the interface between research and policy have been essential in raising concerns about the importance of environmental sustainability within and beyond the scientific community. One such platform – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; www.ipcc.ch) – has b...

Efficient management of biodiversity requires a forward-looking approach based on scenarios that explore biodiversity changes under future environmental conditions. A number of ecological models have been proposed over the last decades to develop these biodiversity scenarios. Novel modelling approaches with strong theoretical foundation now offer t...

An inventory of the reindeer lichens (Cladonia species belonging to the Clad-ina group) in Luxembourg. – Almost all Luxembourg localities from where the five known species of reindeer lichens have been reported in the past have been carefully surveyed between 2011 and 2015. The size and structure of each population, details on habitat, and possible...

In human-modified environments, ecological traps may result from a preference for low-quality habitat where survival or reproductive success is lower than in high-quality habitat. It has often been shown that low reproductive success for birds in preferred habitat types was due to higher nest predator abundance. However, between-habitat differences...

Arthropods, and insects in particular, constitute important food resources for several higher trophic levels like birds. Their abundance and diversity is likely to differ between habitat types depending on the local conditions and resources. This may have important consequences for arthropod consumers that occupy structurally different habitat type...

Global environmental changes challenge traditional conservation approaches based on the selection of static protected areas due to their limited ability to deal with the dynamic nature of driving forces relevant to biodiversity. The Natura 2000 network (N2000) constitutes a major milestone in biodiversity conservation in Europe, but the degree to w...

In Europe, and particularly in the Mediterranean Basin, the abandonment of traditional land-use practices has been reported as one of the main causes of decline for open-habitat species. Data from large-scale bird and butterfly monitoring schemes in the north-east Iberian Peninsula were used to evaluate the impact that land abandonment has had on l...

EuroBirdPortal (EBP) is a new initiative that will combine data from on-line recording schemes to model the distributions, abundances and phenology of European birds throughout the year. The project currently collates data from over 100,000 observers in 21 European countries, with an initial data set covering 55 species from 2010 to 2013. The EBP w...

Up-to-date knowledge on species distribution is needed for efficient biodiversity conservation and management decision-making. Implementing efficient sampling strategies to identify previously unknown locations of species of conservation-concern is therefore a key challenge. Both structured expert judgement and habitat suitability models may help t...

Long-term biodiversity monitoring data are mainly used to estimate changes in species occupancy or abundance over time, but they may also be incorporated into predictive models to document species distributions in space. Although changes in occupancy or abundance may be estimated from a relatively limited number of sampling units, small sample size...

Table A1. Environmental variables calculated in the secondary sampling units and used in the modelling procedures

Table S2. Environmental variables calculated in the 1-km resolution squares and used to identify the environmental strata in Luxembourg

Table S1. Red-backed shrike territories recorded during the period 2000–2009 in Luxembourg and used as a common source of basic information to design the expertbased and model-based sampling strategies. Geographical coordinates (XY) are given using the Luxembourg 1930 Gauss coordinate system. The spatial precision of each record is provided in mete...

Appendix S1. Further explanation about expert selection and qualification

Global change may strongly affect the geographic distribution of species and induce local extinc-tions of populations. These changes are expected to induce a loss of intraspecific genetic diversity that may, in turn, induce a decrease in the adaptation potential of the species under changing environmental conditions. Species with limited dispersal...

The Centre de recherche public – Gabriel-Lippmann was designated to coordinate the implementation of the biodiversity-monitoring programme in Luxembourg, with an emphasis on species of European Community interest (Habitats Directive 92/43/EEC). Sampling and data collection procedures were developed to document the conservation status of species at...

This report presents the European Grassland Butterfly Indicator, based on national Butterfly Monitoring Schemes (BMS) in 19 countries across Europe, most of them in the European Union. The indicator shows that since 1990 till 2011 butterfly populations have declined by almost 50 %, indicating a dramatic loss of grassland biodiversity. This also mea...

Species distribution models often assume a changing climate (dynamic climate variables) but unchanged land use (static land use variables) to estimate future species distribution shifts. However, scenarios of projected land use change are available to calculate dynamic land use variables. Surprisingly, the importance of using dynamic instead of sta...