Pedro Cardoso

University of Helsinki | HY · Finnish Museum of Natural History

While several recent studies have focused on global insect population trends, all are limited in either space or taxonomic scope. As global monitoring programs for insects are currently not implemented, inherent biases exist within most data. Expert opinion, which is often widely available, proves to be a valuable tool where hard data are limited....

Author-level performance metrics do not account for collaboration and knowledge transfer between people, institutions, and countries. We propose the i-index and r-index, publication metrics that aim to incentivize the collaboration between researchers and research institutions across borders. These indices promote benefit-sharing among countries of...

Context: Identifying how species richness (or diversity) changes with different proportions of natural and anthropized environments in the landscape is important for landscape management for conservation. Objectives: Here we propose a new method to assess biodiversity changes in landscapes with varying proportions of habitat types. Methods: Our m...

Non-parametric species richness estimators are efficient and widely used when sampling is incomplete. There is little consensus on which of the available estimators works best across taxa and regions. Until now no work compared existing algorithms with multiple datasets encompassing contrasting scenarios. We used data from 62 inventories worldwide...

Research on island species–area relationships (ISAR) has expanded to incorporate functional (IFDAR) and phylogenetic (IPDAR) diversity. However, relative to the ISAR, we know little about IFDARs and IPDARs, and lack synthetic global analyses of variation in form of these three categories of island diversity–area relationship (IDAR). Here, we un...

Knowledge of biodiversity is unevenly distributed across the Tree of Life. In the long run, such disparity in awareness unbalances our understanding of life on Earth, influencing policy decisions and the allocation of research and conservation funding. We investigated how humans accumulate knowledge of biodiversity by searching for consistent relat...

Understanding how species assemble into communities is a central tenet in ecology. One of the most elusive questions is the relative contribution of environmental filtering versus limiting similarity. Important advances in this area have been achieved by looking at communities through a functional lens (i.e., the traits they express), so as to deri...

Oceanic islands are among the most transformed ecosystems in the world, with many having experienced major biotic changes through the combined effects of species extinctions and introductions. We map global patterns of taxonomic and functional change in 64 oceanic island bird assemblages and investigate whether these patterns can be explained by ei...

Land use and climate change alter biodiversity patterns and ecosystem functioning worldwide. Land abandonment with consequent shrub encroachment and changes in precipitation gradients are known factors in global change. Yet, the consequences of interactions between these factors on the functional diversity of belowground communities remain insuffic...

Ladybirds (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) are an important beneficial group that, as other insects, are negatively affected by many human-mediated threats, including climate change, agricultural intensification, habitat loss, pollution, and biological invasions. Ecological impacts from these threats have altered the richness, abundance, and distributio...

Amidst a global biodiversity crisis, the word ‘biodiversity’ has become indispensable for conservation and management. Yet, biodiversity is often used as a buzzword in scientific literature. Resonant titles of papers claiming to have studied ‘global biodiversity’ may be used to promote research focused on a few taxonomic groups, habitats, or facets...

Subterranean ecosystems host unique biodiversity and deliver important services to humans. Yet, available data for subterranean ecosystems are limited in space and/or taxonomic scope and global monitoring programs are absent, preventing practitioners to develop effective conservation and management strategies. Expert opinion may help overcome some...

The Azores is a remote oceanic archipelago of nine islands which belongs to the Macaronesia biogeographical region hosting a unique biodiversity. The present Azorean landscape is strongly modified by the presence of man and only in small areas, where the soil or climate was too rough, have primitive conditions remained unchanged. Despite the fact t...

The Red List Index (RLI) measures change in the aggregate extinction risk of species. It is a key indicator for tracking progress toward nine of the Aichi and many proposed post‐2020 Global Biodiversity Framework Targets. Here, we consider two formulations of the RLI used for reporting biodiversity trends at national scales. Disaggregated global RL...

A long-term study monitoring arthropods (Arthropoda) is being conducted since 2012 in the forests of Azorean Islands. Named "SLAM - Long Term Ecological Study of the Impacts of Climate Change in the natural forest of Azores", this project aims to understand the impact of biodiversity erosion drivers in the distribution, abundance and diversity of A...

Humans are quickly reshaping species assemblages through the loss and gain of species at multiple scales. Extinctions and introductions are non‐random events known to be contributing to taxonomic homogenization. However, it is not yet clear if they also promote functional homogenization. Here, we assess whether extinctions and introductions are lea...

The study of functional diversity (FD) provides ways to understand phenomena as complex as community assembly or the dynamics of biodiversity change under multiple pressures. Different frameworks are used to quantify FD, either based on dissimilarity matrices (e.g., Rao entropy, functional dendrograms) or multidimensional spaces (e.g. convex hulls,...

Climate warming is considered to be among the most serious of anthropogenic stresses to the environment, because it not only has direct effects on biodiversity, but it also exacerbates the harmful effects of other human-mediated threats. The associated consequences are potentially severe, particularly in terms of threats to species preservation, as...

Background: Long-term studies are key to understand the drivers of biodiversity erosion, such as land-use change and habitat degradation, climate change, invasive species or pollution. The long-term project SLAM (Long Term Ecological Study of the Impacts of Climate Change in the natural forest of Azores) started in 2012 and focuses on arthropod mo...

The widespread use of species traits in basic and applied ecology, conservation and biogeography has led to an exponential increase in functional diversity analyses, with > 10 000 papers published in 2010–2020, and > 1800 papers only in 2021. This interest is reflected in the development of a multitude of theoretical and methodological frameworks f...

Wetlands, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world, are increasingly subjected to area loss and degradation due to land-use and climate changes. These factors impact their unique biodiversity, including numerous invertebrates that depend on them. Here we investigated the current and future habitat suitability of the aquatic spiders Argyro...

Species differ in their biological susceptibility to extinction, but the set of traits determining susceptibility varies across taxa. It is yet unclear which patterns are common to all taxa, and which are taxon-specific, with consequences to conservation practice. In this study we analysed the generality of trait-based prediction of extinction risk...

The world's islands support disproportionate levels of endemic avian biodiversity despite suffering numerous extinctions. While intensive recent research has focused on island bird conservation or extinction, few global syntheses have considered these factors together from the perspective of morphological trait diversity. Here, we provide a global...

Amidst a global biodiversity crisis, the word "biodiversity" has become indispensable for practical conservation, including as a normative term. Yet, biodiversity is often used as a buzzword in scientific literature. Resonant titles promoting to have studied "global biodiversity" may then be used to oversell research that is narrow-focused on a lim...

Current understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes underlying island biodiversity is heavily shaped by empirical data from plants and birds, although arthropods comprise the overwhelming majority of known animal species, and as such can provide key insights into processes governing biodiversity. Novel high throughput sequencing (HTS) ap...

In the internet era, the digital architecture that keeps us connected and informed may also amplify the spread of misinformation. This problem is gaining global attention, as evidence accumulates that misinformation may interfere with democratic processes and undermine collective responses to environmental and health crises. In an increasingly poll...

In a move heralded by conservationists and tech policy reformists alike, Brazil’s environmental regulatory agency has penalized Meta, the parent company of Facebook and WhatsApp, for failing to remove thousands of online posts that had been flagged for selling illegal wildlife. The ~US$2 million fine will not materially affect the world’s largest s...

Community assembly, how it changes in space and time, and how it will be affected by global threats, is one of the most pressing issues in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. To fully understand assembly rules and future community change, one has to delve into multiple interrelated factors, such as the history of environmental and habitat...

Subterranean ecosystems are among the most widespread environments on Earth, yet we still have poor knowledge of their biodiversity. To raise awareness of subterranean ecosystems, the essential services they provide, and their unique conservation challenges, 2021 and 2022 were designated International Years of Caves and Karst. As these ecosystems h...

Aim: Understanding the variation in community composition and species abundances (i.e., β-diversity) is at the heart of community ecology. A common approach to examine β-diversity is to evaluate directional variation in community composition by measuring the decay in the similarity among pairs of communities along spatial or environmental distance...

Species traits are an essential currency in ecology, evolution, biogeography, and conservation biology. However, trait databases are unavailable for most organisms, especially those living in difficult-to- access habitats such as caves and other subterranean ecosystems. We compiled an expert-curated trait database for subterranean spiders in Europe...

Wildlife trade is a major driver of biodiversity loss, yet whilst the impacts of trade in some species are relatively well-known, some taxa, such as many invertebrates are often overlooked. Here we explore global patterns of trade in the arachnids, and detected 1,264 species from 66 families and 371 genera in trade. Trade in these groups exceeds mi...

Many ecological and evolutionary studies require to quantify the degree of adaptation of subterranean species to caves or other subterranean systems. In 1962, Kenneth A. Christiansen (1924-2017) coined the term "troglomorphism" to illustrate the process of subterranean adaptation and the suite of adaptive traits of organisms ("troglomorphic traits"...

Island biota are in imminent threat from anthropogenic impacts. Of these impacts the negative effects of exotic species on the taxonomic and functional diversity of the local fauna are of particularly major concern. Aside from their impact on the diversity of native fauna, exotics may also have a detrimental effect on native interactions which, in...

For humans, caves are dark, moist, and often dangerous places. However, caves are also home to many animals that live strange lives: blind beetles that eat bat poop and appreciate it; tiny spiders that spin webs to catch insects, also known as flying food; and white salamanders that swim in cave ponds without getting lost, at least not all the time...

We analyse the consequences of species extinctions and introductions on the functional diversity and composition of island bird assemblages. Specifically, we ask if introduced species have compensated the functional loss resulting from species extinctions. Seventy‐four oceanic islands (> 100 km2) in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Late Hol...

Mass media plays an important role in the construction and circulation of risk perception associated with animals. Widely feared groups such as spiders frequently end up in the spotlight of traditional and social media. We compiled an expert-curated global database on the online newspaper coverage of human-spider encounters over the past ten years...

Our current understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes underlying island biodiversity is heavily shaped by empirical data from plants and birds, although arthropods comprise the overwhelming majority of known animal species. This is due to inherent problems with obtaining high-quality arthropod data. Novel high throughput sequencing app...

Brazil’s caves, home to diverse species and minerals, were stripped of protections by a recent presidential decree.

Online open databases are increasing in number, usefulness, and ease of use. There are currently two main global databases for spiders, the World Spider Catalogue (WSC) and the World Spider Trait (WST) database. Both are regularly used by thousands of researchers. Computational tools that allow effective processing of large data are now part of the...

In the Internet era, the digital architecture that keeps us connected and informed may collaterally amplify the spread of misinformation and falsehood1,2. The magnitude of this problem is gaining global relevance3, as evidence accumulates that misinformation interferes with democratic processes and undermines collective responses to environmental a...

Because of their ability for aerial dispersal using silk and preference for open habitats, many wolf spiders are formidable colonisers. Pioneering arachnologists were already aware of the large and colourful wolf spiders in the Madeira archipelago, currently included in the genus Hogna Simon, 1885. The origins were investigated and species boundari...

How a particular threat influences extinction risk may depend on biological traits. Empirical studies relating threats and traits are needed, but data are scarce, making simulations useful. We implemented an eco-evolutionary model to analyse how five threat types influence the extinction risk of virtual organisms differing in body size, maturity ag...

Worldwide, natural ecosystems have been replaced by intensive productive systems. This has led to an extreme simplification of habitat structure and loss of ecosystem heterogeneity but also might reduce the opportunities for species co‐occurrence. Anthropogenic disturbances offer an opportunity to explore how the functional diversity of spiders wit...

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species is central in biodiversity conservation, but insufficient resources hamper its long-term growth, updating, and consistency. Models or automated calculations can alleviate those challenges by providing standardised estimates required for assessments, or prioriti...

The trade in a wildlife species is driven by a unique combination of economic, cultural, and societal motivations, which fluctuate over time and space. Although the wildlife trade is vital for the livelihood of millions of people worldwide, it can bring serious consequences for the environment, economy, and human health when it is not well managed...

Wildlife trade is a major driver of biodiversity loss. Here we explore global patterns of trade in the arachnids. Trade in these groups exceeds millions of individuals, with 67% coming directly from the wild, and up to 99% of individuals in some genera. Up to 50% of species in popular taxa such as tarantulas are in trade, including 25% of species d...

Author-level metrics (number of publications, citations, h-index) remain prime yet controversial measures of academic performance. Among other issues, they do not account for collaboration and knowledge transfer between people, institutions and, ultimately, countries. They also do nothing to contradict the oblivion to which knowledge and data provi...

Aim Species distribution models (SDMs) have emerged as essential tools in the equipment of many ecologists, useful to explore species distributions in space and time and answering an assortment of questions related to biogeography, climate change biology and conservation biology. Historically, most SDM research concentrated on well‐known organisms,...

The widespread use of species traits to infer community assembly mechanisms or to link species to ecosystem functions has led to an exponential increase in functional diversity analyses, with >10,000 papers published in 2010–2019, and >1,500 papers only in 2020. This interest is reflected in the development of a multitude of theoretical and methodo...

Illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade (IUWT) currently presents one of the most high-profile conservation challenges. There is no "one-size-fits-all" strategy, and a variety of disciplines and actors are needed for any counteractive approach to work effectively. Here, we detail common challenges faced when tackling IUWT, and we describe some avai...

Spiders are a highly diversified group of arthropods and play an important role in terrestrial ecosystems as ubiquitous predators, which makes them a suitable group to test a variety of eco-evolutionary hypotheses. For this purpose, knowledge of a diverse range of species traits is required. Until now, data on spider traits have been scattered acro...

Illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade (IUWT) currently presents one of the most high-profile conservation challenges. There is no "one-size-fits-all" strategy, and a variety of disciplines and actors are needed for any counteractive approach to work effectively. Here, we detail common challenges faced when tackling IUWT, and we describe some avai...

Aim We analyse the functional consequences of the changes in species composition resulting from extinctions and introductions on oceanic island bird assemblages. Specifically, we ask if introduced species have compensated the functional loss resulting from species extinctions. Location Seventy-four oceanic islands (>100 km ² ) in the Atlantic, Pac...

Illegal or unsustainable wildlife trade is growing at a global level, threatening the traded species and coexisting biota, and promoting the spread of invasive species. From the loss of ecosystem services to diseases transmitted from wildlife to humans, or connections with major organized crime networks and disruption of local to global economies,...

Online open databases are increasing in number, usefulness, and ease of use. There are currently two main global databases exclusive for spiders, the World Spider Catalogue (WSC) and the World Spider Trait (WST) database. Both are regularly used by thousands of researchers. Computational tools that allow effective processing of large data are now p...

Research in Macaronesia has led to substantial advances in ecology, evolution and conservation biology. We review the scientific developments achieved in this region, and outline promising research avenues enhancing conservation. Some of these discoveries indicate that the Macaronesian flora and fauna is composed of rather young lineages, not Terti...

Aim Habitat diversity has been linked to the diversity and structure of island communities, however, little is known about patterns and processes within habitats. Here we aim to determine the contributions of habitat type and inferred dispersal frequency to the differences in taxonomic structure between assemblages in the same island habitat. Loca...

The use of functional diversity analyses in ecology has grown exponentially over the past two decades, broadening our understanding of biological diversity and its change across space and time. Virtually all ecological sub‐disciplines recognize the critical value of looking at species and communities from a functional perspective, and this has led...

The 15th UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) (COP15) will be held in Kunming, China in October 2021. Historically, CBDs and other multilateral treaties have either alluded to or entirely overlooked the subterranean biome. A multilateral effort to robustly examine, monitor, and incorporate the subterranean biome into future conservation targ...

The woodlouse hunter Dysdera spiders have colonized all Macaronesian archipelagos. We report here for the first time an evolutionary connection between the Iberian Peninsula, Madeira, and the remote archipelago of Azores. Based on museum specimens from the 1950s, we describe the first endemic Dysdera species from the Azores. Additionally, we report...

To better understand the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, it is increasingly accepted that the focus of study needs to shift from taxonomic identity to the diversity of functional traits displayed by species within a community. Such an approach allows species to be grouped according to particular functional characteristi...

More than 1 million insects have been scientifically described, with an estimated five times that number probably still to be discovered. With this diversity of species, it comes as no surprise that various insect groups play significant roles in human food production. Aboveground, many help crop production through pollination, decomposition, and m...

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