Pia Lentini

• BSc (Hons), PhD
• Senior Scientist at Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research

Many threatened species persist only as relict populations occupying a fraction of their former distribution, in habitats which may not be optimal for supporting viable populations. Following population growth of one such species, the kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), conservation managers are faced with the challenge of identifying suitable locations...

Nest boxes are often promoted as substitute structures for hollow-dependent fauna, but are they generally effective? In a long-term bat-box monitoring project in south-eastern Australia, box occupancy was dominated by one common and widespread urban-adapted species, Gould's wattled bat Chalinolobus gouldii. In contrast, the 13 other bat species in...

Aim Although urbanization impacts many species, there is little information on the patterns of occurrences of threatened species in urban relative to non‐urban areas. By assessing the extent of the distribution of threatened species across all A ustralian cities, we aim to investigate the currently under‐utilized opportunity that cities present for...

Pressure to conserve biodiversity with limited resources has led to increasing use of species distribution models (SDMs) for spatial conservation prioritization. Published spatial prioritization exercises often focus on well-studied groups, with data compiled from on-line databases of ad-hoc collections. Conservation plans generally aim to protect...

Biodiversity conservation requires transformative change in our relationships with nature. Innovative policy can support this change, yet designing and implementing such policy requires new knowledge and culture shifts. Transdisciplinary research partnerships between academia and government can support these changes, yet they entail friction betwee...

Assessment, mitigation and monitoring of onshore wind turbine collision impacts on wildlife: A systematic review of the international peer-reviewed literature, and its relevance to the Victorian context. Available at https://www.ari.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/746060/ARI-Technical-Report-389-Systematic-review-of-onshore-wind-farm-collisi...

Endemic to Victoria, the range-restricted, Critically Endangered Leadbeater’s possum (Gymnobelideus leadbeateri) historically had a much broader distribution from south-east of Melbourne, through the wet forests of eastern Victoria, and extending into New South Wales. Undetected populations of this cryptic species may persist within forested sectio...

Shade‐grown coffee farming supports biodiversity and generates additional sustainability outcomes, though the drivers of this approach are poorly understood. Previous research on coffee sustainability has focused on producers or consumers, potentially overlooking the role of retailers in commodity supply chains. We conducted semi‐structured intervi...

Introduction Coffee is a ubiquitous global commodity that is cultivated with a wide range of practices, each with different, yet poorly understood trade‐offs between management intensity, yield, and biodiversity. For example, monocultures prioritise coffee production, but do not necessarily deliver the highest coffee yields, nor the greatest profit...

Responses to nature conservation challenges should incorporate transdisciplinary approaches, and there is growing research interest in behaviour change insights and interventions. However, there are knowledge gaps relating to promotion of conservation behaviours and how broader systems shape intervention effectiveness. This further compounds situat...

With a global footprint of 10 million hectares across 12.5 million farms, coffee is among the world’s most traded commodities. The coffee industry has launched a variety of initiatives designed to reduce coffee’s contribution to climate change and biodiversity loss and enhance the socio-economic conditions of coffee producers. We systematically rev...

Abstract Citizen‐science projects focused on ecology and conservation have been growing in popularity in recent years, offering many opportunities for researchers and volunteers alike. Two principal approaches to citizen‐science projects in ecology can be characterized as the data‐first approach and the question‐first approach. Here, we highlight t...

Bats in urban environments depend on human-made structures or remnant natural habitats for roosting. Bat boxes are commonly used artificial structures that aim to replace lost tree or building roosts, but they are not a universal solution, or panacea, as few species use them, and other options exist that more closely mimic natural tree cavities. As...

Interest in carving cavities directly into trees to provide habitat for hollow‐dependent wildlife is rapidly growing amongst researchers, conservation practitioners, community groups and land managers. Monitoring programs have shown that some of the designs and approaches used to create these structures encourages uptake by fauna. However, evidence...

Aim Occurrence records for cryptic species are typically limited or highly uncertain, leaving their distributions poorly resolved and hampering conservation. This can apply to well‐studied species, and increased survey effort and/or novel methods are required to improve distribution data. Here, we paired species distribution modelling (SDM) with de...

Artificial hollows are commonly used to mitigate the scarcity of den and nest sites that threatens fauna species globally, but there is a risk that these do not provide suitable microclimates for the populations they are intended to support. We monitored temperature, humidity and occupancy in artificial dens (nest boxes and chainsaw-carved cavities...

The rate of loss of tags used to mark individuals is an important consideration in wildlife research and monitoring. Passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags (or microchips) generally have high retention rates; however, tag loss rates for small mammals such as insectivorous bats are poorly understood. We double‐marked a population of Gould's wattl...

Here, we respond to a forum piece claiming the use of "passive" traps (e.g. pan and vane traps) leads to "flawed" results. We outline how poor scholarship, such as cherry-picking and misrepresenting results, led the authors to their unfounded conclusions. We state that we value constructive discussion around the issue of bee sampling protocol, par...

This report investigates the opportunities for threatened species conservation within Australian cities and towns

This report provides an overview of the CAUL Urban Wildlife App and a summary of the data collected and related research activities from January 2017 to November 2020. It is intended as a brief introduction to the goals of the app and each of its modules, as well as a way to report back and thank the hundreds of citizen scientists who have contribu...

Nest boxes are often used to provide supplementary roosts for cavity-dependent wildlife, but little is known about if they influence faunal community composition. Long-term monitoring of bat boxes in south-eastern Australia indicated that their use was dominated by one generalist species (Chalinolobus gouldii), causing concern that installing bat b...

Nocturnal arthropods form the prey base for many predators and are an integral part of complex food webs. However, there is limited understanding of the mechanisms influencing invertebrates at urban water bodies and the potential flow-on effects to their predators. This study aims to: (i) understand the importance of standing water bodies for noctu...

Species population dynamics are driven by spatial and temporal changes in the environment, anthropogenic activities and conservation management actions. Understanding how populations will change in response to these drivers is fundamental to a wide range of ecological applications, but there are few open‐source software options accessible to resear...

Urban environments are arguably among the most suitable targets for conservation science, as they represent opportunities to preserve both species and habitats under threat while at the same time allowing people to engage with nature. We highlight the need for conservation within urban environments using species whose recovery is entirely dependent...

Island biogeography theory posits that species richness increases with island size and decreases with isolation. This logic underpins much conservation policy and regulation, with preference given to conserving large, highly connected areas, and relative ambivalence shown toward protecting small, isolated habitat patches. We undertook a global synt...

Species’ movements affect their response to environmental change but movement knowledge is often highly uncertain. We now have well‐established methods to integrate movement knowledge into conservation practice but still lack a framework to deal with uncertainty in movement knowledge for environmental decisions. We provide a framework that distingu...

Bat boxes are often used to provide supplementary roosting habitats; however, little is known of their impacts on community composition. Data collected from a 25-year box-monitoring and 31-year harp trapping case study provides preliminary evidence that the installation of boxes may have contributed to one species, Gould’s wattled bat (Chalinolobus...

Over the last 20 years, there has been a notable increase in the presence of flying-foxes (Pteropodidae) in urban areas in Australia. Flying-foxes congregate during the day in camps which at times may contain many thousands of individuals. The associated noise, smell, mess and concerns about disease transmission can result in significant conflict w...

The creation of supplementary habitats that effectively mimic the physical and thermal characteristics of natural tree hollows should be a key priority for landscape restoration and biodiversity offset programs. Here, we compare the thermal profiles of natural tree hollows with three types of artificial hollows designed for small marsupial gliders...

Feral cats have been identified as a major threat to Australian wildlife- however, their impacts on the critically endangered Leadbeater's possum (Gymobelideus leadbeateri) are unknown. Here, we describe camera trap observations of a feral cat hunting at nest boxes occupied by Leadbeater's possum. Seven feral cats were subsequently captured within...

Thermal properties of tree hollows play a major role in survival and reproduction of hollow-dependent fauna. Artificial hollows (nest boxes) are increasingly being used to supplement the loss of natural hollows; however, the factors that drive nest box thermal profiles have received surprisingly little attention. We investigated how differences in...

All original data. Biophysical model and POSEM trial data. (CSV)

Daytime maximum, mean and minimum (± SD) ambient temperature (°C). Data were recorded at: (a) five bat box sites in Melbourne, Australia, from 10 February to 15 April 2015, and at the La Trobe University Zoology Reserve (the glider and possum box site) during (b) summer (7–29 January 2015) and (c) winter (10 July to 1 August 2015). (PPTX)

All original data. Glider and possum box temperature data. (CSV)

All original data. Bat box temperature data. (CSV)

Amount of semi-natural habitats (permanent grasslands, woodlands and hedgerows) and their level of fragmentation are among the main determinants of wild bee diversity in agricultural landscapes. However, their impact on the distribution of bee ecological traits has received little attention. In this study, we aimed to explore whether changes in the...

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...

El huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus) es el ciervo más amenazado de Sudameŕica; desde el asentamiento europeo, su hábitat se ha reducido 50% y su población en 99%. Diversas influencias antrópicas han conducido a una seria fragmentación del hábitat de la especie y su población actual se estima en menos de 2.500 individuos. Pese a diversos esfuerzos, la...

Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Euro...

Animal‐borne telemetry has revolutionized our ability to study animal movement, species physiology, demography and social structures, changing environments and the threats that animals are experiencing. While there will always be a need for basic ecological research and discovery, the current conservation crisis demands we look more pragmatically a...

Table S1. Landscape‐scale measures of urbanization. Table S2. The number of calls from insectivorous bats recorded at 93 sites (58 wetlands and 35 non‐wetland habitat sites). Table S3. Model selection results for landscape and wetland models.

Wetlands support unique biota and provide important ecosystem services. These services are highly threatened due to the rate of loss and relative rarity of wetlands in most landscapes, an issue that is exacerbated in highly modified urban environments. Despite this, critical ecological knowledge is currently lacking for many wetland-dependent taxa,...

The rising popularity of biodiversity offsetting as a tool for balancing biodiversity losses from development with equivalent gains elsewhere has sparked debate on many fronts. The fundamental questions are the following: Is offsetting good, bad, or at least better than the status quo for biodiversity conservation outcomes, and what do we need to k...

p>Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Eu...

Accurate survival estimates are needed to construct robust population models, which are a powerful tool for understanding and predicting the fates of species under scenarios of environmental change. Microbats make up 17% of the global mammalian fauna, yet the processes that drive differences in demographics between species are poorly understood. We...

Substantial advances have been made in our understanding of the movement of species, including processes such as dispersal and migration. This knowledge has the potential to improve decisions about biodiversity policy and management, but it can be difficult for decision makers to readily access and integrate the growing body of movement science. Th...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are used to inform a range of ecological, biogeographical and conservation applications. However, users often underestimate the strong links between data type, model output and suitability for end-use. We synthesize current knowledge and provide a simple framework that summarizes how interactions between data type...

Dispersal knowledge is essential for conservation management, and demand is growing. But are we accumulating dispersal knowledge at a pace that can meet the demand? To answer this question we tested for changes in dispersal data collection and use over time. Our systematic review of 655 conservation-related publications compared five topics: climat...

The consideration of information on social values in conjunction with biological data is critical for achieving both socially acceptable and scientifically defensible conservation planning outcomes. However, the influence of social values on spatial conservation priorities has received limited attention and is poorly understood. We present an appro...

Although the concept of connectivity is decades old, it remains poorly understood and defined, and some argue that habitat quality and area should take precedence in conservation planning instead. However, fragmented landscapes are often characterized by linear features that are inherently connected, such as streams and hedgerows. For these, both r...

Schemes designed to make farming landscapes less hostile to wildlife have been questioned because target taxa do not always respond in the expected manner. Microbats are often overlooked in this process, yet persist in agricultural landscapes and exert top-down control of crop pests. We investigated the relationship between microbats and measures c...

Stock routes have been a feature of the Australian landscape since the mid-1800s. Originally established to provide corridors of forage and shelter for livestock droved 'on the hoof', the vegetation within them remained standing while vast tracts in the surrounding landscape were cleared to make way for agriculture. However, livestock are now more...

Summary The Stock Route Network (SRN) is a vast system of public land, comprising vegetated strips and small reserves across the eastern length of the Australian continent. Now predominantly following the road system, this network was historically established to allow for the movement of livestock prior to truck and railway transport. Owing to decl...

The Stock Route Network (SRN) of New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland is a large-scale system of predominantly roadside remnant vegetation, which was established in the 1800s to allow livestock to be moved. Proposed changes to the management of the SRN could result in some portions of it being sold to private landholders, or subjected to long-term...

We investigated the potential role of the travelling stock route network, Australia, in the conservation of declining birds. We surveyed 32 linear remnants and 24 adjacent agricultural fields of crop, native pasture or exotic pasture, for woodland birds. Compared to surrounding agricultural fields, linear remnants provided better habitat for woodla...