Rui F. Fernandes

Frontiers · Editorial Office

AimModelling species distributions at the community level is required to make effective forecasts of global change impacts on diversity and ecosystem functioning. Community predictions may be achieved using macroecological properties of communities (macroecological models, MEM), or by stacking of individual species distribution models (stacked spec...

To successfully protect native biodiversity from the effects of biological invasions, local conservation priorities must be established. For this purpose, fine-grained species distribution data is required but often unavailable. We present a new approach to obtain fine-grained predictions of invasion through the development of downscaled invasion m...

As invasões biológicas e as consequentes alterações nos ecossistemas constituem sérias ameaças à biodiversidade, à provisão de serviços pelos ecossistemas e ao próprio bem-estar humano. Os modelos ecológicos constituem ferramentas importantes na determinação dos fatores que condicionam a distribuição das espécies, incluindo as invasoras, fornecendo...

Species distribution models (SDMs) studies suggest that, without control measures, the distribution of many alien invasive plant species (AIS) will increase under climate and land-use changes. Due to limited resources and large areas colonised by invaders, management and monitoring resources must be prioritised. Choices depend on the conservation v...

As anthropogenic degradation of biodiversity and ecosystems increases, so does the potential threat to the supply of ecosystem services, a key contribution of nature to people. Biodiversity has often been used in spatial conservation planning and has been regarded as one among multiple services delivered by ecosystems. Hence, biodiversity conservat...

Protected areas (PAs) play a critical role in conserving biodiversity and maintaining viable populations of threatened species. Yet, as global change could reduce the future effectiveness of existing PAs in covering high species richness, updating the boundaries of existing PAs or creating new ones might become necessary to uphold conservation goal...

Aim Species distribution information is essential under increasing global changes, and models can be used to acquire such information but they can be affected by different errors/bias. Here, we evaluated the degree to which errors in species data (false presences–absences) affect model predictions and how this is reflected in commonly used evaluati...

Correlative species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used to predict species distributions and assemblages, with many fundamental and applied uses. Different factors were shown to affect SDM prediction accuracy. However, real data cannot give unambiguous answers on these issues, and for this reason, artificial data have been increasingly used...

The popularity of species distribution models ( SDM s) and the associated stacked species distribution models (S‐ SDM s), as tools for community ecologists, largely increased in recent years. However, while some consensus was reached about the best methods to threshold and evaluate individual SDM s, little agreement exists on how to best assemble i...

Protected areas in European mountains are locations with well -known boundaries that receive protection as a result of significant and co-existing natural and socio-cultural values. Despite these boundaries, invasion by non-native tree species is one of the pressures threatening the conservation of those values. Managing the extent of species inva...

Invasion by non-native tree species is an environmental and societal challenge requiring predictive tools to assess invasion dynamics. The frequent scale mismatch between such tools and on-ground conservation is currently limiting invasion management. This study aimed to reduce these scale mismatches, assess the success of non-native tree invasion...

Ecological monitoring programmes are designed to detect and measure changes in biodiversity and ecosystems. In the case of biological invasions, they can contribute to anticipating risks and adaptively managing invaders. However, monitoring is often expensive because large amounts of data might be needed to draw inferences. Thus, careful planning i...

To identify the extent and true underlying driving forces is essential to understand processes behind biological invasions and generate policy initiatives contrasting invasion threats to biodiversity. Woody invasion by Acacia dealbata is a major process occurring and forecasted in Portuguese mountain landscape (Fernandes et al. 2014). This study tr...

The E urasian skylark A lauda arvensis is very susceptible to the negative effects of wind farms. In northern P ortugal, this evidence is particularly severe due to the skylark's preference for mountain breeding habitats where most wind farms are located. Facing the frequent failure of environmental impact assessments ( EIA ) to evaluate the cumula...