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Abstract

Conservation aims to preserve species and ecosystem services. If rare species contribute little to ecosystem services, yet are those most in need of preservation, tradeoffs may exist for these contrasting objectives. However, little attention has focused on identifying how, when, and where rare species contribute to ecosystem services and at what scales. Here, we review distinct ways that ecosystem services can positively depend on the presence, abundance, disproportionate contribution or, counterintuitively, the scarcity of rare species. By contrast, ecosystem services are less likely to depend on rare species that do not have a unique role in any service or become abundant enough to contribute substantially. We propose a research agenda to identify when rare species may contribute significantly to services.

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... Other studies have found that whether species benefit or suffer from a disturbance depends mainly on their identity, their traits, and how well their traits match the prevailing environmental conditions (Bauer et al., 2021;Lind et al., 2013;Seabloom et al., 2015). Due to their unique trait combinations, rare species thus may play a key role in maintaining stability and ecosystem functioning (Dee et al., 2019;Mouillot et al., 2013;Xiong et al., 2020). ...
... Our approach underscores the view that species that are presently rare nonetheless carry much of a system's ability to respond to changing conditions (Dee et al., 2019;Xiong et al., 2020). Specifically, we found that rare species contribute to stability by compensating for the biomass loss of dominant, vulnerable species. ...
... Specifically, we found that rare species contribute to stability by compensating for the biomass loss of dominant, vulnerable species. However, rare species may also contribute based on their unique trait combinations (Dee et al., 2019;Mouillot et al., 2013;Xiong et al., 2020), as asynchronously fluctuating species responses will enhance stability even in communities without species interactions (Hautier et al., 2014;Loreau & de Mazancourt, 2013). Overall, our findings reinforce recent calls for the need to protect more species than are presumed critical given the enhanced value of biodiversity for maintaining stability and functioning for ecosystems under global change (Dee et al., 2017(Dee et al., , 2019White et al., 2020). 2 and 3. Charlotte Kunze wrote the first draft of the paper and conducted the initial analyses with substantial input from Helmut Hillebrand and Ian Donohue. ...
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Ecosystems worldwide are experiencing a range of natural and anthropogenic disturbances, many of which are intensifying as global change accelerates. Ecological responses to those disturbances are determined by both the vulnerabilities of species and their interspecific interactions. Understanding how individual species contribute to the (in‐)stability of an aggregated community property, or function, is fundamental to ecological management and conservation. Here, we present a framework to identify species contributions to stability based on their absolute and relative responses to disturbances. Using simulations, we show that these two dimensions enable identification of (de‐)stabilizing species and reveal that competitive dominance determines the magnitude of both absolute and relative contributions to stability. Applying our framework to empirical data from a multi‐site mesocosm experiment showed that species contributions varied among treatments, sites, and seasons. Despite this dependency on both biotic and abiotic contexts, species contributions were generally constrained by their relative dominance in undisturbed conditions. Rare species contributed positively to stability, while dominant species contributed negatively, indicating compensatory dynamics. Our framework offers an important step toward a more mechanistic understanding of ecological stability based on species performance.
... Third, natural and experimental communities greatly differ in the presence of regionally rare species. Experimental communities are mostly composed of common, dominant species (Dee et al., 2023;Enquist et al., 2019), thus overlooking the role of rare species, which recent work suggests play a key role in shaping BEF relationships (Dee et al., 2019;Gross et al., 2017;Le Bagousse-Pinguet et al., 2021;Wright et al., 2017). ...
... Ultimately, rare species may also play a relevant role in ecosystem functioning (Dee et al., 2019;Gross et al., 2017;Le Bagousse-Pinguet et al., 2021;Wright et al., 2017); thus, we tested the effect of rarity on EMF. To classify species based on their rarity, we calculated the indices of species restrictedness (Ri) and functional uniqueness (Ui) proposed by Grenié et al. (2017). ...
... This result can be explained by the positive relationship between SR and ecosystem functioning: indeed, species-rich communities are likely to embrace a larger number of rare species than species-poor communities. Consequently, increasing SR also increases the number of rare species, which can generate positive interspecific interactions (mutualism and facilitation) that enhance ecosystem functioning (Dee et al., 2019;Wright et al., 2017). However, in contrast with previous studies, suggesting that rare species can influence ecosystem functioning disproportionally by displaying some unique functional traits important for the ecosystem (Gross et al., 2017;Le Bagousse-Pinguet et al., 2021); in this study, the effect was not mediated by rare functional traits, as rare species exhibited a combination of traits similar to more common species. ...
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Understanding the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) is crucial to predicting the consequences of ongoing global biodiversity loss. However, what drives BEF relationships in natural ecosystems under globally changing conditions remains poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we applied a trait‐based approach to data from coastal dune plant communities distributed along a natural environmental stress gradient. Specifically, we compared the relative importance of below‐ground and above‐ground traits in predicting productivity, decomposition, water regulation, carbon stock and nutrient pools, and tested how these BEF relationships were modulated by environmental stress and the presence of rare species that are typically excluded from experimental systems. Below‐ground traits were just as important as above‐ground traits in driving ecosystem functioning. Moreover, despite having low abundances, rare species positively influenced ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF). However, most biodiversity effects became weaker as environmental stress increased. Our study shows that to understand variation in ecosystem functioning we must consider below‐ground traits as much as above‐ground ones. Moreover, it highlights the importance of conserving rare species for maintaining EMF. However, our findings also suggest that rapid global change could dampen the positive effects of diversity on ecosystem functioning. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
... [17,[23][24][25][26][27][28] and this was the only intertidal chiton that we ever found, making this rare finding remarkable. Rare species frequently remain unnoticed, but they are valuable to understand overall ecosystem function and resilience because of their uniqueness [29][30][31]. This notion emphasizes the value of reporting findings of rare species in natural ecosystems. ...
... In 1170 intertidal plots surveyed along 350 km of coastline in 2008, we found 4 chitons, but they occurred in wave-sheltered habitats at low elevations. Rare species frequently remain unnoticed, but they are valuable to understand overall ecosystem function and resilience because of their uniqueness [29][30][31]. This notion emphasizes the value of reporting findings of rare species in natural ecosystems. ...
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Chitons are a group of mollusks (polyplacophores) that differ from the mollusks that are most often found on marine rocky shores (bivalves and gastropods). On the Atlantic coast of North America, chitons have been reported in subtidal habitats from Newfoundland (Canada) to New England (USA). Here, we report the finding of Boreochiton ruber at the mid-to-high intertidal zone in a wave-exposed habitat in Nova Scotia (Canada). After surveying various coastal locations across Nova Scotia for 20 years (2004 to 2024), this was the only intertidal chiton we ever found in such habitats, making this an extremely rare occurrence. Rare species may contribute in unique ways to community functioning, making their reports valuable for biodiversity and ecosystem research.
... Emergy-based biodiversity from the perspective of Species' Significance (ESS) measures the significance of rare species in global biodiversity within a specific region (pink area in Figure 1). Rare species play a crucial role in ecosystem services through their interactions with other species (Dee et al., 2019). Despite their low numbers, rare species significantly impact ecosystems and biodiversity beyond expectations (Dee et al., 2019). ...
... Rare species play a crucial role in ecosystem services through their interactions with other species (Dee et al., 2019). Despite their low numbers, rare species significantly impact ecosystems and biodiversity beyond expectations (Dee et al., 2019). Hence, considering their rarity and significance in global biodiversity conservation is essential. ...
Article
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Biodiversity credits are increasingly recognized as a potential instrument to incentivize and bolster efforts in biodiversity conservation. Nevertheless, their efficacy is impeded by a dearth of research. To mitigate these constraints, this study introduces a comprehensive and integrated framework for appraising biodiversity credits. Drawing upon the Emergy Accounting methodology, the framework encompasses four key perspectives: Emergy‐based Ecosystem Potential (EEP), Emergy‐based Ecosystem Network (EEN), Emergy‐based “Species' to Human” contributions (ESH), and Emergy‐based Species' Significance. Furthermore, this study scrutinizes the trajectory of biodiversity credits across 31 provinces spanning from 2000 to 2050, considering 220 distinct scenarios. The findings reveal that China has attained the no net loss (NNL) objective concerning conventional area‐based conservation targets, with forest cover encompassing 27% of the total land area. However, biodiversity credits at the ecosystem level exhibit an escalating trend, with growth rates ranging from 0.73% to 1.0%, while credits at the species level depict a decremental trend, with an approximate growth rate of −0.21%. Under a scenario of moderate growth, projections for the year 2030 indicate that the EEP credit is poised to accrue approximately 4.76E + 20 solar emjoules (sej), the EEN credit is forecasted to accumulate around 1.03E + 21 sej, and the ESH credit is anticipated to decline by 1.46E + 23 sej within the context of the NNL paradigm. These outcomes underscore the necessity of delineating differentiated biodiversity goals, and furnish insights into the dynamics of supply and demand pertaining to biodiversity credits within the ambit of offsetting schemes across the nation.
... 193 In each of the five sampling zones, a high proportion of rare species was recorded. Rare species are defined as those with restricted distribution, low population abundance, or a combination of both (Dee et al. 2019). The highest number of rare species (16) was recorded in the NW and W, followed by the SE with 10 species (each with fewer than 10 individuals). ...
... In this sense, results of the indexes we employed (ACE) showed that the grasshopper communities in each of the zones were structured with relatively few dominant species in terms of abundance and many rare species. However, as Dee et al. (2019) mentioned, rare species can have subtle or hidden (i.e. difficult to detect) direct and indirect impacts on ecosystem services through species interactions. ...
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This study, spanning 37 years, assessed the diversity of grasshopper communities across much of the Pampas region. Ninety-five sampling sites were established in Buenos Aires and La Pampa provinces. Five zones were defined: Northeast (NE), Northwest (NW), Southeast (SE), Southwest (SW), and West (W). Each site was categorized according to the dominant vegetation. A total of fifty grasshopper species from three families were collected. Acrididae was the most diverse (41 species). Rarefaction analysis indicated that the SE was the zone with the lowest species richness (Q0). The NE, SW, and W showed higher diversity (Q1), while NE was less diverse according to Q2. The PCA revealed varying abundances of species across zones, with some species more abundant in specific areas (e.g., Dichroplus maculipennis and Borellia bruneri in SE). The highest species count (50) was in grassland with grass dominance. The CA showed significant associations between grasshopper species and different grasslands (e.g., Covasacris pallidinota, Dichroplus maculipennis, and Parorphula graminae in Halophilous grassland). Beta diversity highlighted species turnover as key component in the SW, W, and NE, while in the SE it was nestedness. In the NW, turnover and species loss components affected beta diversity. Communities were dominated by a few species, with three or four species representing over 50% of the community. Some abundant species declined or disappeared over time, while others appeared later. These results provide the first quantitative analysis of the grasshopper fauna across much of one of South America’s most heavily modified ecosystems, the grasslands of the Argentine Pampas region. Implications for insect conservation For decades, the Pampas grasslands have been undergoing a significant transformation, with the replacement of grasslands by highly productive agroecosystems. Grasshoppers are among the most abundant insects in grasslands. Therefore, understanding whether this transition to intensive agroecosystems has affected the richness and diversity of grasshoppers is an important question. The results of this study highlight the importance of long-term ecological research (37 years), which has coincided with a period of significant agricultural intensification across the region. This intensification has resulted in a homogenization and fragmentation of natural grasslands, with consequent impacts on associated fauna. The observed trends of this study probably reflect the current state of the grasshopper fauna in the Pampas during the last decades, in an increasingly managed agroecosystem context.
... For example, rare species often demonstrate low biomass (Kempel et al., 2018;Vincent et al., 2020), low seed output (Boyd et al., 2022), small reproductive structures (Boyd et al., 2022), and limited genetic variation (Boyd et al., 2022). Furthermore, rare species contribute disproportionately to ecosystem services through functional trait diversity (Dee et al., 2019;Jain et al., 2014). Although many of the unique traits of rare species have been characterized, it is unknown if these traits are selected for under the conditions of rarity (Rabinowitz, 1981). ...
... Rare plant species are small (Kempel et al., 2018;Vincent et al., 2020), allocate less resources to belowground biomass, less fecund (Boyd et al., 2022), functionally distinct (Dee et al., 2019;Jain et al., 2014), and are typically considered inferior competitors (Vincent et al., 2020) in comparison to common species. These characteristics are often attributed to ecological as well as anthropogenic factors such as land use change, habitat reduction, invasive encroachment, and shifts to relevant climate envelopes. ...
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Species rarity is a common phenomenon across global ecosystems that is becoming increasingly more common under climate change. Although species rarity is often considered to be a stochastic response to environmental and ecological constraints, we examined the hypothesis that plant rarity is a consequence of natural selection acting on performance traits that affect a species range size, habitat specificity, and population aggregation; three primary descriptors of rarity. Using a common garden of 25 species of Tasmanian Eucalyptus, we find that the rarest species have 70% lower biomass than common species. Although rare species demonstrate lower biomass, rare species allocated proportionally more biomass aboveground than common species. There is also a negative phylogenetic autocorrelation underlying the biomass of rare and common species, indicating that traits associated with rarity have diverged within subgenera as a result of environmental factors to reach different associated optima. In support of our hypothesis, we found significant positive relationships between species biomass, range size and habitat specificity, but not population aggregation. These results demonstrate repeated convergent evolution of the trait‐based determinants of rarity across the phylogeny in Tasmanian eucalypts. Furthermore, the phylogenetically driven patterns in biomass and biomass allocation seen in rare species may be representative of a larger plant strategy, not yet considered, but offering a mechanism as to how rare species continue to persist despite inherent constraints of small, specialized ranges and populations. These results suggest that if rarity can evolve and is related to plant traits such as biomass, rather than a random outcome of environmental constraints, we may need to revise conservation efforts in these and other rare species to reconsider the abiotic and biotic factors that underlie the distributions of rare plant species.
... Endemic species and their genetic diversity are essential components of the world's biodiversity (Malcolm et al., 2006;Frankham et al., 2017;Manes et al., 2021;Kraus et al., 2023). These species frequently show unique genetic variation and adaptations to their local environments, and play a vital role in ecosystem function, providing important and often irreplaceable ecosystem services, such as pollination, seed dispersal, or habitat provision (Lyons et al., 2005;McConkey et al., 2006;Gaston, 2012;Mouillot et al., 2013;Dee et al., 2019). Not last, many endemic species are iconic to local human communities, and their conservation can help to preserve entire regional biotas (Cardinale et al., 2012;Dee et al., 2019;Cardoso et al., 2020). ...
... These species frequently show unique genetic variation and adaptations to their local environments, and play a vital role in ecosystem function, providing important and often irreplaceable ecosystem services, such as pollination, seed dispersal, or habitat provision (Lyons et al., 2005;McConkey et al., 2006;Gaston, 2012;Mouillot et al., 2013;Dee et al., 2019). Not last, many endemic species are iconic to local human communities, and their conservation can help to preserve entire regional biotas (Cardinale et al., 2012;Dee et al., 2019;Cardoso et al., 2020). At the same time, given their narrow geographic distribution, endemic species are also especially threatened of extinction by various factors, including habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation, climate change, alien species, overexploitation, and disease (Soulé and Wilcox, 1991;Fontaine et al., 2007;Burlakova et al., 2011;Manes et al., 2021;Mayani-Parás et al., 2021;Kraus et al., 2023). ...
... Given that NC species (such as Spoon-billed Sandpiper Eurynorhynchus pygmeus and Far Eastern Curlew Numenius madagascariensis; Table S3) often have a narrower range, reduced population, and less competitive capacity (IUCN, 2021;Dee et al., 2019), they could be at risk of being competitively excluded from the local community. Such exclusion poses more risk in northerly, smaller tidal flat areas, where competition is potentially more intensive than in other areas in the Yellow Sea. ...
... The loss of NC species in a community can thus help counterbalance the detrimental impact of habitat loss, since they have similar functions and roles as other less common species. This is especially true when considering the decline in ecosystem services caused by the decrease in biodiversity (Carmona et al., 2021;Dee et al., 2019). ...
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Migratory stopping regions are regarded as geographic bottlenecks. However, knowledge about constraints on migratory communities remains limited. This study proposed hypothetical spatial constraints (SCs) and tested the predictions by examining the response of multifaceted shorebird diversity to the tidal flat area and latitude of the stopping sites along the Yellow Sea coast. We estimated species richness (SR), phylogenetic and functional diversity (PD and FD) by building a species-level phylogenetic tree and measuring five functional traits of all species, using data on the shorebird community at 11 internationally important stopping sites of 2020–2021. We used multiple linear regression models and null models to examine the relationships between diversity metrics and stopping site variables (area and latitude). Functional and phylogenetic rarity of non-least concern species was calculated to estimate their risk of disappearance. The three dimensions of biodiversity decreased with decreasing area despite different slopes (i.e., FD was less sensitive to area than SR, whereas PD was lost more rapidly in smaller areas). In addition, only FD increased at sites approaching the terminal stopping area, implying that SR and PD were restricted from growing by latitude. Inferred from the PD and FD patterns, competitive exclusion tends be the dominant mechanism structuring the community, and the FD-inferred process was intensified in smaller sites toward the northerly terminal site. The area- and latitude-shaped diversity patterns indicate SCs on the migratory community, while a more intensive process of competitive exclusion tends to take place in smaller and near-terminal stopping sites. Consequently, the threatened shorebirds with less competitive capacity may be more prone than others in the SCs. This study highlighting the significance of the multifaceted biodiversity in monitoring the impacts of SCs and facilitating the development of conservation strategies in internationally critical migration bottlenecks.
... The decline of rare species is generally not considered to significantly impact ecosystem structure and function. At the same time, theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that rare species contribute proportionally more to ecosystem function than common species (Dee et al. 2019). Therefore, the conservation of rare species has attracted significant attention from conservationists ). ...
... Thus, biodiversity loss may affect ecosystem function if the lost species has characteristics in the community that cannot be replaced by other species (Jain et al. 2014). Rare species generally have unique combinations of functional traits (Lavergne et al. 2003), and determining the proportion of rare species that contribute to ecosystem function can be done by assessing functional traits (Dee et al. 2019). ...
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It is widely accepted that rare species are the first species to become extinct after human-induced disturbances. However, the functional importance of rare species still needs to be better understood, especially in alpine meadow communities with harsher habitats, where the extinction rate of rare species may be higher. This study established a 1.85 × 10⁵ m² permanent research sample plot on the eastern Tibetan Plateau. We investigated data from 162 plots at 6 different sampling scales in alpine meadows to determine the contribution of rare and common species to alpine meadow communities’ structural and functional variability. The results showed that (1) Asteraceae (Compositae) was the dominant family in the surveyed localities. The trends of species diversity indices were the same, and all of them increased with the increase of sampling scale, and the plant community showed apparent scale effects. (2) The community construction of rare species at small scales with high occupancy transitioned from neutral processes to ecological niche processes, while the community construction of common species at different sampling scales was all dominated by ecological niche processes. (3) The trait values of rare species at different sampling scales were different from those of common species, and their distribution in FEs (functional entities) was also different, indicating that they contributed differently to the ecological functions of the communities. Rare species with lower abundance in the surveyed communities had a higher proportion of FEs, indicating that rare species had a more significant proportion of contribution to FEs. The functional redundancy (FR) of rare species was lower than that of common species, and the functional vulnerability (FV) was higher than that of common species. Therefore, the loss of rare species is more likely to cause the loss of community ecological functions, affecting the function and resilience of alpine meadow ecosystems.
... If common species drive ecosystem functions, CWMs may therefore be the metric of choice for studies relating environmental change to community functional change. Yet rare species, although poorly known and sampled , can also be important to ecosystem function (Burner, Drag, et al., 2022;Dee et al., 2019;Mouillot et al., 2013;Simpson et al., 2022), necessitating a measure that better explores the links between species' traits and their niches. ...
... Whereas CWM trait values demonstrate the role of the environment in shaping trait values in realized assemblages, trait-informed Γ parameters in JSDMs test for generalizable patterns in how traits affect the distributions of individual species, whether rare or common. This JSDM trait metric, important for studies of community functional structure in situations where less common species play a role (Dee et al., 2019), is also helpful in ecological studies where the primary interest is in determining the link between species traits and their niches. However, we are not aware of studies comparing conclusions drawn from these two measures. ...
Article
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Functional trait approaches are common in ecology, but a lack of clear hypotheses on how traits relate to environmental gradients (i.e., trait-niche relationships) often makes uncovering mechanisms difficult. Furthermore, measures of community functional structure differ in their implications, yet inferences are seldom compared among metrics. Community weighted mean trait values (CWMs), a common measure, are largely driven by the most common species and thus do not reflect community-wide trait-niche relationships per se. Alternatively, trait-niche relationships can be estimated across a larger group of species using hierarchical joint species distribution models (JSDMs), quantified by a parameter Γ. We investigated how inferences about trait-niche relationships are affected by the choice of metric. Using deadwood dependent (saproxylic) beetles in fragmented Finnish forests, we followed a protocol for investigating trait-niche relationships by (1) identifying environmental filters (climate, forest age, and deadwood volume), (2) relating these to an ecological function (dispersal ability), and (3) identifying traits related to this function (wing morphology). We tested 18 hypothesized dispersal relationships using both CWM and Γ estimates across these environmental gradients. CWMs were more likely than Γ to show support for trait-niche relationships. Up to 13% of species’ realized niches were explained by dispersal traits, but the directions of effects were consistent with fewer than 11-39% of our 18 trait-niche hypotheses (depending on the metric used). This highlights the difficulty in connecting morphological traits and ecological functions in insects, despite the clear conceptual link between landscape connectivity and flight-related traits. Caution is thus warranted in hypothesis development, particularly where apparent trait-function links are less clear. Inferences differ when CWMs versus Γ estimates are used, necessitating the choice of a metric that reflects study questions. CWMs help explain effects of environmental gradients on community trait composition, whereas the effects of traits on species’ niches are better estimated using hierarchical JSDMs.
... In the past decade, the science underpinning policy and monitoring for NCP-related targets has rapidly advanced, particularly in modelling ecosystem functions and services to enable the mapping of crucial benefits such as climate-change mitigation, hazard regulation, water purification and pollination, from local to global scales [2][3][4] . However, mapping these benefits for rapid decision-making has obscured decades of research on how community structure supports ecosystem function, including the roles of wildlife and individual species' presence or abundance 3,5 . In most target-setting and monitoring efforts, maintaining a given area or certain configuration of habitat is often assumed to be sufficient for managing NCP; the composition or abundance of species living in the habitat is not considered. ...
Article
Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) are increasingly incorporated in modern conservation policy and management frameworks; however, the contributions of wildlife remain underrepresented in the NCP science that informs policy and practice. In this Perspective, we explore wildlife’s role in NCP. We use existing evidence to map wildlife contributions onto the conceptual framework of NCP and find that wildlife directly supports 12 of 18 NCP categories. We identify NCP provided or supported by wildlife as wildlife’s contributions to people (WCP). Knowledge gaps regarding WCP are prevalent, and failure to identify or account for WCP in policy and management could prevent both NCP and biodiversity targets from being achieved. To improve understanding of WCP and its integration into conservation decision-making, advances in monitoring and modelling wildlife are required and taxonomic, geographic and cultural biases in existing research should be addressed. These advances are necessary to connect biodiversity policies aimed at protecting wildlife species with NCP policies intended to ensure the long-term delivery of benefits to people, and to achieve widespread sustainable relationships with nature.
... A similar logical inconsistency besets analyses that focus on functional distinctiveness as a basis for identifying priority species for conservation actions such as reintroductions [60] or the designation of protected areas [48,51]. Functional distinctiveness [61] (or functional uniqueness [62]) reflects the extent to which a species' traits make it dissimilar to others in the same community. Given that species with high functional distinctiveness make unique contributions to the functional diversity-and so, presumably, to the function-of the communities they belong to, it makes sense to consider them as conservation priorities within the context of those communities. ...
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Whereas preventing species extinctions remains a central objective of conservation efforts, it must be complemented by the long-term preservation of functional ecosystems and of the benefits humans derive from them. Here, I review recent approaches that explicitly account for functionality in setting large-scale conservation priorities, discussing their promise while highlighting challenges and pitfalls. Crossing data on species’ distributions and ecological traits has enabled the mapping of global patterns of functional diversity and functional rarity and the identification of species that stand out for their functional distinctiveness. However, the priorities identified through these general indices do not directly address ecosystem functionality, instead, they are methods for ensuring the representation of individual functional traits as intrinsically valuable biodiversity elements. Three other approaches integrate functionality into large-scale priorities by taking into account the specific context of each ecosystem, site or species: the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Ecosystems, Key Biodiversity Areas and the Green Status of Species. Currently at various stages of development, testing and implementation, these approaches are playing an increasingly important role in the definition, implementation and monitoring of global- and national-scale conservation strategies to ensure the long-term persistence of ecosystem functions and associated ecosystem services. This article is part of the discussion meeting issue ‘Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future’.
... Changes in the ecosystem occur through abundant microorganisms and rare microorganisms [11]. It was undeniable that abundant microorganisms could dominate the function of ecosystems [12], but rare microorganisms played an important role in ecosystems as a potential driving force for the function of microbial communities [13][14][15][16][17]. Therefore, people paid more attention to rare microorganisms. ...
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Drought can seriously affect the yield and quality of tea. The interaction between rhizosphere microorganisms and tea plants could enhance the drought resistance of tea plants. However, there are few studies on the effects of abundant and rare microorganisms on tea plants. In this study, the contributions of abundant and rare bacteria in the rhizosphere microorganisms of ‘FudingDabaicha’ and ‘Baiye No.1’ to the resistance of tea plants to drought stress were studied using 16SrRNA sequencing, co-occurrence network analysis, and PLS-PM modeling analysis. By measuring the contents of superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT), malondialdehyde (MDA), proline, soluble sugar and soluble protein, it was found that the activity of antioxidant enzymes and the content of osmotic substances increased significantly after drought stress (p < 0.001). In the co-occurrence network of the two varieties, the average degree, clustering coefficient, and modularity index of the rare bacteria were greater than those of the abundant bacteria, and the path coefficient of the rare bacteria to drought was greater than that of the abundant bacteria. The contribution of rare microorganisms in ‘FudingDabaicha’ to drought stress was greater than that in ‘Baiye No.1’. The rare bacteria of the two varieties were positively correlated with amino acids and negatively correlated with lipids. The results of this study will provide new insights for the use of rhizosphere microorganisms in improving the drought resistance of tea plants. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12870-024-05860-5.
... Kleijn et al. (2015) argue that common species (particularly bees) handle most pollination tasks, making the loss of rare species less economically significant. Still, some rare species may have unique roles or indirect contributions within their ecosystems, and geographically restricted but locally abundant rare species can still provide valuable services (Dee et al., 2019). ...
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Different stakeholders and actors frequently describe environmental challenges as ‘crises’. These crises are often wicked problems that are difficult to resolve due to the complex and contradictory nature of the evidence and knowledge systems surrounding them. Here, we examine a crisis narrative surrounding the IUCN-declared Asian Songbird Crisis (ASC), with its epicentre in Indonesia, where an extensive birdkeeping culture persists. We investigate how bird extinction is perceived by different actors, particularly conservation law enforcement and practitioners working in this space. We unravel local perspectives on the complex relationship between bird trade and extinction through one-to-one interviews and focus groups. Our examination reveals a diversity of attitudes to the ASC, with many law enforcement actors not recognising the crisis label. Market mechanisms result in complex shifts in harvesting pressure onto one or more closely related similar species. The findings challenge the prevailing notion that species extinction significantly affects wildlife trades, emphasising the plastic nature of trade and the coming and going of species fashions. By revealing the divergent views of actors on extinction and the ASC, we highlight the need for shared language, particularly the implications of the ‘crisis’ label, around species extinction.
... Espécies abundantes podem ser determinantes de processos ecológicos [47] mas nem sempre são consideradas prioritárias para a conservação [48]. Por outro lado, espécies raras têm maior probabilidade de serem ameaçadas e frequentemente desempenham papel desproporcional no ecossistema [49] [50]. Por exemplo, grandes carnívoros ocorrem naturalmente em baixas densidades, mas podem afetar toda a cadeia trófica e até mesmo a estrutura física de ecossistemas por meio de efeitos cascata [51] [52]. ...
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The current biodiversity crisis has generated a growing demand for information on the status and trends of biodiversity, especially in mega diverse regions such as the tropics, where comprehensive data is lacking. In view of this, the Brazilian government developed the Brazilian in situ monitoring program of Federal Protected Areas – Programa Monitora, a long-term program aimed at monitoring the state of biodiversity and ecosystem services in federal protected areas (PAs). In this study, we used a nine-year monitoring time series (2014-2022) from 22 PAs in the Amazon to assess trends in 167 populations of medium- to large-sized terrestrial birds and mammals, as well as aggregate biodiversity trends, using the geometric mean of the relative abundances as a biodiversity index. We found stability, decline and increase for 92%, 6.5 and 0.6% of the analyzed populations, respectively. We did not find differences between the population growth rates of birds and mammals, or between populations located in strictly protected and sustainable use PAs. The geometric mean of relative abundances remained stable over the sampled period. The results suggest that, in general, the monitored PAs have been effective for the conservation of the program’s target populations, although some populations have suffered significant declines, which raises an alert. In the near future, the time series will become longer and longer and more and more PAs and populations will become eligible for analysis. Therefore, the continuity of the program is essential to ensure more robust results
... The possibility of a general relationship between rare trait combinations and globally widespread species may have important implications for ecosystem function (Baker et al. 2019;Dee et al. 2019;Le Bagousse-Pinguet et al. 2021). At local scales, abundant species are known to play important ecological roles (Antão, Magurran, and Dornelas 2021;Chapman, Tunnicliffe, and Bates 2018;Winfree et al. 2015), such as ecosystem engineers or long-distance pollinators (Cooke, Eigenbrod, and Bates 2020). ...
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The relationship between global trait distinctiveness and geographic range size is an emerging pattern of interest in macroecology. Early observations suggested that the relationship was positive, implying that globally widespread species hold the rarest combinations of traits. Here, we formally describe and test the relationship in the world's birds and consider its implications for global functional diversity and redundancy. We demonstrate that the relationship is best described as triangular with a positive upper boundary, with its linear model significance lost when including phylogenetic effects. The triangular relationship is formed by groups of phylogenetically related widespread species with moderate and high trait distinctiveness. Decomposing the relationship further using quantile regression highlights the unique traits of these widespread birds. Overall, the triangular relationship emphasises that while not all widespread species have rare trait combinations, those that do should not be overlooked in conservation efforts, regardless of their current threat status.
... Changes in the ecosystem occur through abundant microorganisms and rare microorganisms [9]. It was undeniable that abundant microorganisms could dominate the function of ecosystems [10], but rare microorganisms played an important role in ecosystems as a potential driving force for the function of microbial communities [11][12][13][14][15]. Therefore, people paid more attention to rare microorganisms. ...
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Drought can seriously affect the yield and quality of tea. The interaction between rhizosphere microorganisms and tea plants could enhance the drought resistance of tea plants. However, there are few studies on the effects of abundant and rare microorganisms on tea plants. In this study, the contributions of abundant and rare bacteria in the rhizosphere microorganisms of ‘FudingDabaicha’ and ‘Baiye No.1’ to the resistance of tea plants to drought stress were studied using 16SrRNA sequencing, co-occurrence network analysis, and PLS-PM modeling analysis. The results showed that the activity of antioxidant enzymes and the content of osmotic substances increased significantly after drought stress. In the co-occurrence network of the two varieties, the average degree, clustering coefficient, and modularity index of the rare bacteria were greater than those of the abundant bacteria, and the path coefficient of the rare bacteria to drought was greater than that of the abundant bacteria. The contribution of rare microorganisms in ‘FudingDabaicha’ to drought stress was greater than that in ‘Baiye No.1’. The rare bacteria of the two varieties were positively correlated with amino acids and negatively correlated with lipids. The results of this study will provide new insights for the use of rhizosphere microorganisms in improving the drought resistance of tea plants.
... Conservation planning often considers rarity and endemism as criteria for target identification, but this approach overlooks important aspects of plant life in mountains. Accurate assessments of ecosystems must also include the distribution of common species since the functioning of many ecosystems and the associated ecosystem services are only directly influenced by rare species when they are locally abundant or their ecological role is unique (Dee et al. 2019). A focus on common plant species is thus necessary if we want to understand how plant species and their niches are distributed within mountain regions and how these species affect the ecological functioning on a larger scale. ...
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Mountainous regions typically harbour high plant diversity but are also characterised by low sampling intensity. Coarse-scale species distribution models can provide insights into the distribution of poorly sampled species, but the required bioclimatic data are often limited in these landscapes. In comparison, several environmental factors that vary over relatively fine scales in mountain environments (e.g. measures of topography) can be quantified from remotely-sensed data, and can potentially provide direct and indirect measures of biologically-relevant habitat characteristics in mountains. Therefore, in this study, we combine field-sampled floristic data with environmental predictors derived from remotely-sensed data, to model the ecological niches of 19 montane plant species in the Maloti-Drakensberg mountains, South Africa. The resulting models varied considerably in their performance, and species showed generally inconsistent responses to environmental predictors, with altitude and distance to watershed being most frequently included in models. These results highlight the species-specificity of the forb species’ environmental tolerances and requirements, suggesting that environmental change may result in re-shuffling of community composition, instead of intact communities shifting along gradients. Furthermore, while the relatively high importance of altitude (a proxy for temperature) and topographic wetness index (a proxy for soil moisture) suggest that the flora of this region will be sensitive to shifts in temperature and rainfall patterns, several non-climatic environmental variables were also influential. Our findings indicate that local response to climate change in mountains might be especially constrained by soil type and topographic variables, supporting the important influence of non-climatic factors in microclimatic refugia dynamics.
... Although how threatened species relate to NCPs has previously mainly been assessed indirectly by overlapping maps of conservation priorities and ecosystem services (Naidoo et al., 2008;Nelson et al., 2009;Polasky et al., 2012) and by examining the trade-offs between conservation planning and economic development (Lavorel et al., 2020;Leroux et al., 2009;Ramel et al., 2020), it is necessary to note that contributions of rare or threatened species to NCPs remain poorly understood. As mentioned by Dee et al. (2019), they can have direct and indirect contributions to NCPs through species interactions. An expectation highlighted by recent work shows the importance of food webs and ecological networks when assessing the relationship between species and NCPs (Antunes et al., 2024;Bianco et al., 2024;Keyes et al., 2021). ...
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Over the last half-century, nature conservation has shifted through several steps from 'nature for itself' to 'nature and people', corresponding to a new perspective that all species count to ensure ecosystem functioning, and with them that nature's contributions to people (NCPs) are effective and maintained. Yet, despite these conceptual shifts in the academic literature, conservation practices have remained largely focused on threatened species and protected areas. The last Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) of the Convention on Biological Diversity insisted on the need to use biodiversity sustainably and ensure nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services for the benefit of present and future generations by 2050. Here, using recently developed tables relating a large number of species observed in the Western Swiss Alps (vascular plants and vertebrates; n = 2066) to 17 key NCPs, we show that focusing on protecting threatened species only does not ensure the maintenance of key NCPs. Our results suggest that all species (threatened or not) need to be considered, in addition to strict conservation of threatened species, to support NCP provision. Similarly, considering all species better supports existing conservation programs. Developing such direct species-NCP relationships more broadly will be needed to support spatial prioritizations and help reach the 2050 GBF goals.
... A general consensus is that dominant and more abundant species interact more than less abundant and rare species (Dee et al., 2019;Luna et al., 2020), and our AGM datasets support this consensus in a pre-experiment data analysis (in which there is a statistically significant positive correlation between network node degrees and node abundances). The dominant and abundant species are assumed to play more important roles in maintaining ecosystem functions than rare species and their interactions (Luna et al., 2020). ...
... Our results show that rare species have enhanced competitive abilities and synergistic non-additive responses in genetically intermediate relationships as well as in interactions with common plant species. These findings demonstrate the high potential for leveraging specific plant-plant interactions to increase the productivity and performance of rare plant species and allow for the maintenance of functionally unique ecosystems [27]. ...
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Rare species are often considered inferior competitors due to occupancy of small ranges, specific habitats, and small local populations. However, the phylogenetic relatedness and rarity level (level 1–7 and common) of interacting species in plant-plant interactions are not often considered when predicting the response of rare plants in a biotic context. We used a common garden of 25 species of Tasmanian Eucalyptus, to differentiate non-additive patterns in the biomass of rare versus common species when grown in mixtures varying in phylogenetic relatedness and rarity. We demonstrate that rare species maintain progressively positive non-additive responses in biomass when interacting with phylogenetically intermediate, less rare and common species. This trend is not reflected in common species that out-performed in monocultures compared to mixtures. These results offer predictability as to how rare species’ productivity will respond within various plant-plant interactions. However, species-specific interactions, such as those involving E. globulus, yielded a 97% increase in biomass compared to other species-specific interaction outcomes. These results are important because they suggest that plant rarity may also be shaped by biotic interactions, in addition to the known environmental and population factors normally used to describe rarity. Rare species may utilize potentially facilitative interactions with phylogenetically intermediate and common species to escape the effects of limiting similarity. Biotically mediated increases in rare plant biomass may have subsequent effects on the competitive ability and geographic occurrence of rare species, allowing rare species to persist at low abundance across plant communities. Through the consideration of species rarity and evolutionary history, we can more accurately predict plant-plant interaction dynamics to preserve unique ecosystem functions and fundamentally challenge what it means to be “rare”.
... In addition to the strong contribution of dominant species, there is growing evidence that rare species may significantly and disproportionately contribute to ecosystem functioning (Dee et al. 2019) and functional stability (Xiong et al. 2020). New theoretical advances have clarified the role of species abundances in shaping the diversity-stability relationships in response to perturbations (Chapter 7). ...
Chapter
Au cours des 25 dernières années, l’idée que les changements de biodiversité peuvent influencer le fonctionnement des écosystèmes a évolué d’une notion controversée à un concept pleinement accepté par les communautés scientifique et politique. Alors que ce domaine scientifique atteint sa maturité, il est temps d’évaluer les avancées réalisées, d’explorer les liens entre ce nouveau domaine de recherche et les concepts écologiques fondamentaux, et d’envisager la mise en oeuvre de ces connaissances.Cet ouvrage présente une vue d’ensemble actualisée des recherches dans ce domaine. Il se veut un véritable manuel pour tous ceux qui s’intéressent à la relation entre la biodiversité et le fonctionnement, la stabilité et les services des écosystèmes.Les conséquences écologiques et sociétales de la perte de biodiversité s’adresse à un large public, depuis des étudiants de deuxième et troisième cycle jusqu’aux universitaires et chercheurs confirmés.
... pollinator-plant networks (Straub and Snyder, 2006;Winfree et al., 2015;Mei et al., 2024). Yet, as all species are treated functionally equivalent, identity effects solely relate to host breadth or degree while discounting rare species contributions (Leitão et al., 2016) and the role of functional redundancy or complementarity (Dee et al., 2019;Snyder, 2019). As such, broader implications for ecosystem service delivery are hard to predict. ...
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Biodiversity loss, as driven by anthropogenic global change, imperils biosphere intactness and integrity. Ecosystem services such as top-down regulation (or biological control; BC) are susceptible to loss of extinction-prone taxa at upper trophic levels and secondary ‘support’ species e.g., herbivores. Here, drawing upon curated open-access interaction data, we structurally analyze trophic networks centered on the fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) and assess their robustness to species loss. Tri-partite networks link 80 BC organisms (invertebrate or microbial), 512 lepidopteran hosts and 1194 plants (including 147 cultivated crops) in the Neotropics. These comprise threatened herbaceous or woody plants and conservation flagships such as saturniid moths. Treating all interaction partners functionally equivalent, random herbivore loss exerts a respective 26 % or 108 % higher impact on top-down regulation in crop and non-crop settings than that of BC organisms (at 50 % loss). Equally, random loss of BC organisms affects herbivore regulation to a greater extent (13.8 % at 50 % loss) than herbivore loss mediates their preservation (11.4 %). Yet, under moderate biodiversity loss, (non-pest) herbivores prove highly susceptible to loss of BC organisms. Our topological approach spotlights how agriculturally-subsidized BC agents benefit vegetation restoration, while non-pest herbivores uphold biological control in on- and off-farm settings alike. Our work underlines how the on-farm usage of endemic biological control organisms can advance conservation, restoration, and agricultural sustainability imperatives. We discuss how integrative approaches and close interdisciplinary cooperation can spawn desirable outcomes for science, policy and practice.
... The loss of biodiversity seriously threatens global ecosystem productivity and services and affects human well-being Xu et al. 2017). Rare and endangered species are an important part of biodiversity, but they typically have a narrow geographical distribution, a high risk of extinction, and high vulnerability to environmental changes (Dee et al. 2019;Vincent et al. 2020). Protecting endangered species has become a prerequisite for protecting biodiversity. ...
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Rare and endangered species have narrow geographical distributions and are vulnerable to environmental changes. Studying the impact of future climate change on their distributions and identifying areas of high conservation priority are key to halting biodiversity loss. In this study, we combined a species distribution model with systematic conservation planning to simulate the suitable distributions of rare and endangered vascular plants and vertebrates in Inner Mongolia in the current and future (the 2050s), analyzed the vulnerability of species, and identified areas with high conservation priority. Currently, species richness (SR) of vascular plant was high in the Greater Khingan Mountains, and SR of vertebrates was high on the Hulunbuir Plateau, which are two species-rich areas. By 2050, 41.8% to 54.6% of vascular plants will have a reduced suitable distribution area, versus 46.8% to 51.1% for vertebrates. Vascular plant SR increased significantly in the Mu Us Desert, which became a new species-rich area. Vertebrate SR increased in western Inner Mongolia, but species-rich areas changed little. Species-rich areas are also potentially affected by future land use change, particularly in grassland, forest, and cropland areas with high SR. The current priority biodiversity conservation area covers 12.27 × 10⁴ km², of which 80.6% is located outside existing protected areas. By 2050, this percentage may increase to 83.4%. Our study revealed the potential pressure of existing protected areas in protecting biodiversity under future climate change, which helps decision-makers develop the most appropriate development strategies in advance to promote China's sustainable development. Graphical Abstract
... These species with locally low abundance can provide unique functions in the ecosystem [90] and are more susceptible to local extinction because of its small population size [91]. The focus in maintaining species diversity and protecting rare species becomes relevant for the conservation of coral reefs ecosystem function [92]. Yet, our knowledge of coral reef biodiversity is lacking with the majority of the species in the coral reef still undescribed [1]. ...
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An essential component of the coral reef animal diversity is the species hidden in crevices within the reef matrix, referred to as the cryptobiome. These organisms play an important role in nutrient cycling and provide an abundant food source for higher trophic levels, yet they have been largely overlooked. Here, we analyzed the distribution patterns of the mobile cryptobiome (>2000 μm) along the latitudinal gradient of the Saudi Arabian coast of the Red Sea. Analysis was conducted based on 54 Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures. We retrieved a total of 5273 organisms, from which 2583 DNA sequences from the mitochondrially encoded cytochrome c oxidase I were generated through sanger sequencing. We found that the cryptobiome community is variable over short geographical distances within the basin. Regression tree models identified sea surface temperature (SST), percentage cover of hard coral and turf algae as determinant for the number of operational taxonomic units present per Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS). Our results also show that the community structure of the cryptobiome is associated with the energy available (measured as photosynthetic active radiation), sea surface temperature, and nearby reef habitat characteristics (namely hard corals, turf and macroalgae). Given that temperature and reef benthic characteristics affect the cryptobiome, current scenarios of intensive climate change are likely to modify this fundamental biological component of coral reef functioning. However, the trajectory of change is unknow and can be site specific, as for example, diversity is expected to increase above SST of 28.5°C, and with decreasing hard coral and turf cover. This study provides a baseline of the cryptobenthic community prior to major coastal developments in the Red Sea to be used for future biodiversity studies and monitoring projects. It can also contribute to better understand patterns of reef biodiversity in a period where Marine Protected Areas are being discussed in the region.
... Hence, as scale of observation increases and more species are encountered, there is an increased chance that the species disproportionately important for the ecosystem functions that underlie an ecosystem service will be present ( Fig. 1 Box B Arrow 1). Empirical examples of the importance of specific species at single scales include pollination services (i.e., existence of particularly effective pollinators) (Albor et al. 2019), and recreational services (i.e., existence of iconic and/or rare species) (Dee et al. 2019;Lavorel et al. 2020). Across spatial scales, one example involves disease regulation (i.e., existence or loss of important host species (Ostfeld and LoGiudice 2003). ...
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Context Biodiversity loss is predicted to have significant impacts on ecosystem services based on previous ecological work at small spatial and temporal scales. However, scaling up understanding of biodiversity-ecosystem service (BES) relationships to broader scales is difficult since ecosystem services emerge from complex interactions between ecosystems, people, and technology. Objectives In order to inform and direct future BES research, identify and categorise the ecological and social-ecological drivers operating at different spatial scales that could strengthen or weaken BES relationships. Methods We developed a conceptual framework to understand the potential drivers across spatial scales that could affect BES relationships and then categorized these drivers to synthesize the current state of knowledge. Results Our conceptual framework identifies ecological/supply-side and social-ecological/demand-side drivers, and cross-scale interactions that influence BES relationships at different scales. Different combinations of these drivers in different contexts will lead to a variety of strengths, shape, and directionality in BES relationships across spatial scales. Conclusions We put forward four predictions about the spatial scales that the effects of biodiversity, ecosystem service management, ecosystem co-production, and abiotic linkages or effects will be most evident on BES relationships and use these to propose future directions to best advance BES research across scales.
... The literature on endangered mammalian species emphasizes the urgent need for comprehensive studies that combine taxonomic considerations with conservation assessments (Albouy, C et al. 2017). Previous research has highlighted the 1 vulnerability of certain taxa and emphasized the importance of considering taxonomic diversity in conservation planning (Dee, L. E. et al.,2019). Taxonomic Patterns in Mammalian Diversity. ...
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This research explores the complex taxonomic patterns and conservation statuses that exist among endangered mammal species on a global scale. The investigation aims to analyze the connection between taxonomy and conservation status to provide valuable knowledge to the wider field of conservation biology. By conducting a comprehensive review of existing literature, gathering data from reputable databases, and employing a rigorous methodology encompassing the examination of taxonomic and conservation status, the research reveals significant discoveries. The findings, which are demonstrated through illustrative figures, exhibit the distribution of imperiled marine mammal species across continents, nations, realms, and IUCN-protected areas. Prominent patterns become apparent, emphasizing the pressing necessity for tailored conservation strategies in diverse ecoregions. The Arctic region emerges as a critical area of concern, necessitating international collaboration to confront distinct challenges posed by climate change. The discourse interprets the results, accentuating the global significance of marine mammal preservation. The varying levels of threat across ecoregions and nations underscore the need for conservation initiatives specific to each region. The investigation offers a comprehensive comprehension of taxonomic and conservation landscapes, providing valuable insights to guide conservation endeavors. In conclusion, the study emphasizes the importance of coordinated international endeavors, tailored conservation policies, and ongoing population monitoring for the long-term survival and ecological resilience of threatened mammal species.
... The influence of environmental factors on species distribution, particularly climatic factors, has emerged as a serious research topic in the context of global warming. Endangered plants are a key component of biodiversity, and their presence is indicative of healthy ecosystem services [77,78]. D. involucrata holds significant value for conservation and the economy as an endangered and unique tertiary relict plant in China. ...
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Davidia involucrata Baill. 1871 (D. involucrata), as a tertiary relict plant unique to China, is a national Class I protected plant with high economic value. Oil extracted from its seeds and peels can be used for both consumption and industrial purposes. It has become a popular income-earning export tree in China because of its graceful posture and beautiful white bracts. Climate change affects the distribution of the species’ potential habitat areas. Thus, studying its natural distribution pattern and future potential habitat distribution changes has great significance for the sustainable resource utilization and biodiversity conservation of D. involucrata. Here, we employed the MaxEnt model and ArcGIS software to predict the current and future (the 2050s and 2070s) potential habitats of D. involucrata via 130 species distribution records and 37 environmental variables. Meanwhile, we used the jackknife method to assess the importance of environmental factors. Our results showed the following: (1) When the RM = 4 and FC = LQHPT, the MaxEnt model exhibited the lowest complexity and overfitting degree while achieving high model prediction accuracy. The area under the curve (AUC) value of the simulated training was 0.958, indicating an excellent forecast. (2) Under the current climate scenario, D. involucrata was mainly concentrated in eastern Sichuan, western Hubei, northern Guizhou, and northwestern Hunan, with an area of 98.02 × 104 km2. (3) The precipitation in the warmest quarter (Bio18, 30%), mean temperature in the driest quarter (Bio9, 24.4%), annual mean radiation (Bio20, 14.6%), and elevation (ele, 12.7%) were the main environmental factors affecting its habitat distribution; the t contribution was 82.1%. (4) Under different future climate scenarios, the potential habitat area of D. involucrata decreased overall. Compared with the current climate scenario, the areas of potential habitats gradually decreased in both the 2050s and 2070s under the ssp126 and ssp585 climate scenarios but decreased in the 2050s and then increased in the 2070s under the ssp370 climate scenario. Therefore, it is of great significance to track and monitor the existing population or community on the basis of the possible changes in its distribution area. Moreover, the artificial breeding of its seedlings should be considered in the future to improve the quality of its germplasm resources. In summary, our findings can provide a scientific understanding of D. involucrata distribution in China and are conducive to conservation and utilization.
... g., Uhler et al., 2021) or rarity (e.g., Jeliazkov et al., 2022). Numerically rare species can also provide key ecosystem functions (Dee et al., 2019), so missing even some low-abundance species could bias estimates of functional diversity and skew conclusions about how compositional changes may scale up to shifts in ecosystem functioning. Studies concerned with better detecting low-abundance insects may therefore require further methodological improvements, such as running more than two size fractions and multiple subsamples (e. ...
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1. Tracking insect biodiversity trends and predicting future trajectories is limited by a lack of monitoring data across large spatiotemporal scales. DNA metabarcoding is a time- and cost-efficient method to obtain these data, but has several potential limitations in comparison to traditional morphological approaches. For example, metabarcoding may miss low-abundance or smaller bodied individuals and is limited to presence/absence information, which may bias estimates of biodiversity and community composition. However, few comparisons of metabarcoding and morphology-based identification have been made using insects, the by far most diverse animal taxonomic group. 2. Here, we compared terrestrial insect communities identified via morphology versus metabarcoding across four different habitats and three seasons (late spring, mid-summer and early autumn) during 2019. We compared identified species and community richness, composition and body size, with a focus on key taxonomic groups of bees, true bugs, butterflies and hoverflies. 3. We identified 252 total species, with 54.8% identified by both methods, whereas 21.4% and 19.8% were solely detected with metabarcoding or morphology, respectively. Overall, total community richness, taxonomic composition and community body size were similar between methods. Metabarcoding detection successes declined in low-abundance and smaller taxa, particularly bees, hoverflies and true bugs; however, species richness of hoverflies and butterflies tended to be higher compared with morphological identification. 4. Our results show that metabarcoding can provide an accurate overview of insect community differences that are comparable to those determined via morphological identification. We recommend that insect monitoring programmes consider incorporating metabarcoding, although future research is needed to overcome some remaining limitations.
... Functional and phylogenetic distinctiveness of rare species can support important ecological roles and contribute disproportionately to ecosystem functions (Dee et al., 2019;Violle et al., 2017). Extinction of these species will possibly cause an abrupt loss of functions and services delivered by the ecosystem (Colares et al., 2022). ...
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Aim Rare species make substantial contributions to coastal ecosystem functions. Functional rarity (FR) and phylogenetic rarity (PR) are important features for biodiversity conservation. This work aimed to discuss the necessity and reasonableness of conserving fish FR and PR in coastal seas. Location China. Methods By compiling historical fish investigation data, joint species distribution modelling (JSDM) was applied to model fish communities in coastal China Seas. Biogeographic patterns of FR and PR were explored, and the effectiveness of current MPA networks in terms of match/mismatch with the hotspots of rarity was assessed. Results A total of 44 functionally rare species and 22 phylogenetically rare species were identified. Six of these species were both functionally and phylogenetically rare, and only one was listed as endangered on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Functional rarity hotspots covered 10.27% of the coastal areas, which geographically converged in the southern and eastern coast of Taiwan, the Yangtze River Estuary and the Yellow River Estuary. Phylogenetic rarity hotspots only covered 3.06% of the coastal areas, which were sporadically distributed in the coastal East China Sea, the Bohai Sea and the northern Yellow Sea. Current marine‐protected areas (MPAs) only represented 16.16% of the FR hotspots and 20.48% of the PR hotspots, indicating substantial mismatched areas between the MPAs and the hotspots of FR and PR. Main Conclusions Only considering threatened species in conservation practices will omit functionally and phylogenetically rare species because FR and PR are not necessarily correlated with species threat status on the IUCN Red List. Functional rarity hotspots do not necessarily overlap with PR hotspots, and current MPAs mismatch the majority of these areas. We therefore advocate that conservation prioritization and expansion of MPA networks should account for FR and PR both at the species and site levels.
... Furthermore, they potentially have an essential role in stabilizing food webs (Säterberg et al. 2019) and can even strengthen a community's resistance to invasions (Lyons and Schwartz 2001). Consequently, their role in maintaining ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services can be significant despite their small number in the community (Dee et al. 2019). However, rare species are considered more vulnerable to climate change, habitat loss, disturbance, or biological invasions; thus, their loss can contribute disproportionally to the current extinction crisis (Pimm et al. 1988;Enquist et al. 2019). ...
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We aimed to investigate the reproduction-related traits of Vicia biennis L., an endangered and poorly known wetland species in its western marginal populations (in Hungary), and discuss the conservational and ecological implications. We measured the mass, viability, and physical dormancy of half-year-old seeds in five in-situ collected seed lots, while potential seed longevity (i.e., seed bank type) was estimated from repeatedly germinating subsamples from four ex-situ collected seed lots for 3-8 years. Plant survival, flowering, and seed production were studied in different light-, irrigation-, and competition conditions in a botanical garden experiment. We found that 1) half-year-old seeds have a high germination capacity (78-100%), 2) and high level of physical dormancy (72-100%) in all examined Hungarian populations, and 3) the seeds can preserve their germination capacity for more than five years, although their viability sharply decreases, probably falling below 10% within ten years, when they are stored at room temperature. The results of the botanical garden experiment suggested that 1) the species is annual , not biennial; 2) it shows strong sensitivity to precipitation and low competitiveness for water; and 3) it can produce hundreds of seeds even in suboptimal (dry or shady) conditions. Although the species was found to be well-adapted to a temporally heterogeneous environment, its future vulnerability can increase depending on the duration of dry seasons. Further investigation of genetic diversity and soil seed bank is needed to estimate the actual vulnerability of the species while strengthening the populations through seed sowing, and additional vegetation control in the habitats is suggested.
... Rare and endangered plants (REPs) are key components of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Dee et al., 2019;Yang et al., 2021). However, REPs are facing challenges from climate change and human activities. ...
... Its sensitivity was assessed in terrestrial invertebrates (Dopheide et al., 2020). Moreover, rare species can disproportionately contribute to ecosystem functioning (Dee et al., 2019;Leitão et al., 2016;Lyons et al., 2005). Rarity, in terms of distribution, occurrence, and density, has been identified as a very important measure for the conservation of Neotropical mammals (Arita et al., 1990), frogs (Mendoza and Arita, 2014;Toledo et al., 2014) and plants (Knapp, 2002). ...
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Land-use change is a primary driver of biodiversity loss. Tropical ecosystems face rapid conversion rates due to the encroachment of agricultural lands and supply needs for goods and services from an increasing population and changing market demands. Measuring the effect of land conversion on species diversity is challenging due to incomplete and uneven knowledge of different taxonomical groups. Here, we contrast different metrics for measuring biodiversity loss across three land-use typologies: secondary forest, agroforestry, and monoculture for five taxonomic groups: birds, frogs, fish, dung beetles, and macroinvertebrates in the Andean piedmont forests of the western equatorial Andes. Albeit our limited and uneven sample in space and time, we found that rarity, Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling, and Multinomial Classification Model (i.e., classifications of habitat specialists and generalists) constitute a more sensitive set of indicators to assess land-use change impacts on tropical mountain biodiversity compared to classical metrics. Likewise, our results showed that land-use intensification influenced community assemblages in the five taxonomic groups. These non-classical biodiversity metrics can provide better insight into the effect of land conversion on these highly biodiverse ecosystems composed of many rare species.
... Previous research has stated that the dominant species determine ecosystem processes and functioning (Egidi et al. 2019;Pedrós-Alió 2012). Although abundant microbial taxa are responsible for the majority of ecological functions, rare microbial taxa play an important role in the process of microbial community construction and biogeochemical cycle, and are a potential driving force of microbial community function (Dee et al. 2019;Jousset et al. 2017;Pedrós-Alió 2012;Zhang et al. 2019). Rare biosphere represents the majority of Earth's biodiversity and performs vital ecological functions (Ji et al. 2020). ...
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Soil microorganisms including many rare taxa and few abundant taxa, have different contributions to the ecosystem functions and services. High throughput sequencing technology was used to analyze the species composition of soil samples by DNA sequencing. Soil microorganisms were divided into abundant taxa and rare taxa to reveal their composition. Correlation analysis and random forest method were used to further analyze the influence of environmental factors on the community. Finally, the beta nearest taxon index (βNTI) based on the null model was used to reveal the mechanism of soil microbial community assembly. The findings indicate that in desert soils, the community assembly of rare bacteria is almost entirely dominated by a homogeneous selection of deterministic processes. For comparison, stochastic processes had more pronounced effects on the abundant bacteria. However, both abundant and rare fungi exhibited similar patterns of community assembly, that is, deterministic and stochastic processes almost jointly determined the assembly processes of fungal communities. We observed that community assembly shifted from stochastic to deterministic processes with increasing mean annual precipitation (MAP) and mean annual temperature (MAT) for abundant bacteria. Conversely, for rare fungi, there was an inclination towards a shift from deterministic to stochastic processes with rising MAT. In conclusion, our findings provide compelling evidence that MAT and MAP regulate the community assembly process of abundant and rare microbial Downloaded from https A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t 3 communities in desert soil. These findings establish a theoretical foundation for future investigations into the community structure and ecological functions of soil microorganisms.
... Low abundance and high number of rare species in highly diverse shallow shelf communities makes them potentially prone to modifications of the ecosystem functioning and local species extinctions. Less abundant but larger organisms like echinoderms may play important role in stability and resilience of such ecosystem (Dee et al., 2019). Shallow shelf sites are the most diverse and constitute potential species repository (in case of many eurybathic species also for slope communities) and should be urgently included in conservation actions, also taking into account the importance of benthic communities in a wide range of ecosystems services. ...
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All earlier studies of the West African echinoderm fauna have focused on taxonomy, and general knowledge about benthic community responses to various human related threats are poorly diagnosed and not monitored along the whole African coast. Our analysis of diversity and distribution patterns of Ghanaian echinoderms yielded 36 species. Material was collected at nine transects distributed along the coast of Ghana (25-1000 m depth range, total of over 270 samples). Gradual decreases in species richness, diversity, evenness and abundance were observed along the depth gradient, with the most diverse fauna being recorded on the shelf (25-50 m). The most abundant species were Ophiactis luetkeni and Ophiothrix congensis, although both had very patchy distributions. Cluster analysis separated shelf communities (25-100 m) from slope communities (500-1000 m), although on a low level of similarity. Our analysis allowed to select most vulnerable benthic habitats that should be amongst priorities of the future monitoring. Local influence of arsenic was observed at some shelf sites, while slope fauna was affected by elevated levels of hydrocarbons and barium. Changes in salinity and fluorescence also influenced echinoderm assemblages. The most general trend showed patchily distributed, diverse shallow water fauna being influenced by increased microhabitat diversity and food availability, while depauperate slope fauna was affected by local disturbances associated with oil extraction. Tropical echinoderm communities have a great potential as indicators of even minor and local pollution, although high patchiness and low abundance creates difficulties in the multivariate analysis. High sampling effort and high number of replicates allowed to minimise those problems and demonstrated small scale microhabitat diversity.
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Recovery of microbial genomes from metagenomic datasets has provided genomic representation for hundreds of thousands of species from diverse biomes. However, low abundance microorganisms are often missed due to insufficient genomic coverage. Here we present Bin Chicken, an algorithm which substantially improves genome recovery through automated, targeted selection of metagenomes for coassembly based on shared marker gene sequences derived from raw reads. Marker gene sequences that are divergent from known reference genomes can be further prioritised, providing an efficient means of recovering highly novel genomes. Applying Bin Chicken to public metagenomes and coassembling 800 sample-groups recovered 77,562 microbial genomes, including the first genomic representatives of 6 phyla, 41 classes, and 24,028 species. These genomes expand the genomic tree of life and uncover a wealth of novel microbial lineages for further research.
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The United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity set forth the 30 × 30 target, an agenda for countries to protect at least 30% of their terrestrial, inland water, and coastal and marine areas by 2030. With <6 years to reach that goal, riverine conservation professionals are faced with the difficult decision of prioritizing which rivers or river segments should be conserved (protected and/or restored). While incorporating resilience into conservation planning is essential for enhancing, restoring, and maintaining the vital riverine ecosystem services (ES) most threatened by climate change and other environmental and human stresses, this paradigm is at odds with traditional conservation approaches that are either opportunistic or reactionary, where only unique and highly visible ecosystems have been prioritized. Barriers to implementing resilience‐based riverine conservation planning include: (1) difficulties in conceptualizing and quantifying resilience; (2) insufficient consideration of the social components of riverine systems; (3) the inapplicability of terrestrial‐only conservation models to aquatic systems; and (4) the traditional ad hoc and opportunistic approach to conservation. To overcome these barriers, we propose a resilience‐based riverine conservation framework that includes: (1) assessing riverine resilience using indicator frameworks; (2) considering rivers as dynamically coupled social–ecological systems; (3) explicitly incorporating terrestrial–aquatic network connectivity into conservation decision‐making; and (4) strategic systems planning using a novel resilience–conservation matrix as a tool. This framework has the potential to transform conservation practices around the globe to more effectively protect river systems and enhance their resilience to climate change and human development. This article is categorized under: Water and Life > Conservation, Management, and Awareness Science of Water > Water and Environmental Change Human Water > Water Governance
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Ecological and anthropogenic factors shift the abundances of dominant and rare tree species within local forest communities, thus affecting species composition and ecosystem functioning. To inform forest and conservation management it is important to understand the drivers of dominance and rarity in local tree communities. We answer the following research questions: (1) What are the patterns of dominance and rarity in tree communities? (2) Which ecological and anthropogenic factors predict these patterns? And (3) what is the extinction risk of locally dominant and rare tree species?
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Aim: Ecological and anthropogenic factors shift the abundances of dominant and rare tree species within local forest communities, thus affecting species composition and ecosystem functioning. To inform forest and conservation management it is important to understand the drivers of dominance and rarity in local tree communities. We answer the following research questions: (1) What are the patterns of dominance and rarity in tree communities? (2) Which ecological and anthropogenic factors predict these patterns? And (3) what is the extinction risk of locally dominant and rare tree species? Location: Global. Time period: 1990–2017. Major taxa studied: Trees. Methods: We used 1.2 million forest plots and quantified local tree dominance as the relative plot basal area of the single most dominant species and local rarity as the percentage of species that contribute together to the least 10% of plot basal area. We mapped global community dominance and rarity using machine learning models and evaluated the ecological and anthropogenic predictors with linear models. Extinction risk, for example threatened status, of geographically widespread dominant and rare species was evaluated. Results: Community dominance and rarity show contrasting latitudinal trends, with boreal forests having high levels of dominance and tropical forests having high levels of rarity. Increasing annual precipitation reduces community dominance, probably because precipitation is related to an increase in tree density and richness. Additionally, stand age is positively related to community dominance, due to stem diameter increase of the most dominant species. Surprisingly, we find that locally dominant and rare species, which are geographically widespread in our data, have an equally high rate of elevated extinction due to declining populations through large-scale land degradation. Main conclusions: By linking patterns and predictors of community dominance and rarity to extinction risk, our results suggest that also widespread species should be considered in large-scale management and conservation practices.
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We present the counterpart to Chap. 4 in Chap. 5, where we focus on the role of “permanent” exceptions and their importance in scientific knowledge and biology. These exceptions can be analyzed at any scale and are often not appreciated beyond anecdotal mentions. They can be aberrant or teratological groups, taxonomic groups unique for some features of their biology, “intermediate exceptions” with minorities of species or clades with certain characteristics compared to the majority, or organisms with exceptional distributions in space or time. In this chapter, we reviewed groups that have been difficult to classify because of their rarity, rarities that can be used for human benefit, exceptional groups that make us rethink phylogenetic relationships, rare and incredible biological phenomena, and evolutionary and ecological aspects of rare species. Our goal is to vindicate rarities and minorities, to highlight their importance for the understanding of evolution, and to begin to make these cases visible and treasured in the teaching of biology.
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This study, spanning 37 years, assessed the diversity of grasshopper communities across much of the Pampas region. Ninety-five sampling sites were established in Buenos Aires and La Pampa provinces. Five zones were defined: Northeast (NE), Northwest (NW), Southeast (SE), Southwest (SW), and West (W). Each site was categorized according to the dominant vegetation. A total of fifty grasshopper species from three families were collected. Acrididae was the most diverse (41 species). Rarefaction analysis indicated that the SE was the zone with the lowest species richness (Q0). The NE, SW, and W showed higher diversity (Q1), while NE was less diverse according to Q2. The PCA revealed varying abundances of species across zones, with some species more abundant in specific areas (e.g., Dichroplus maculipennis and Borellia bruneri in SE). The highest species count (50) was in grassland with grass dominance. The CA showed significant associations between grasshopper species and different grasslands (e.g., Covasacris pallidinota, Dichroplus maculipennis, and Parorphula graminae in Halophilous grassland). Beta diversity highlighted species turnover as key component in the SW, W, and NE, while in the SE it was nestedness. In the NW, turnover and species loss components affected beta diversity. Communities were dominated by a few species, with three or four species representing over 50% of the community. Some abundant species declined or disappeared over time, while others appeared later. These results provide the first quantitative analysis of the grasshopper fauna across much of one of South America's most heavily modified ecosystems, the grasslands of the Argentine Pampas region.
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Interspecific information flow is known to affect individual fitness, population dynamics and community assembly, but there has been less study of how species diversity affects information flow and thereby ecosystem functioning and services. We address this question by first examining differences among species in the sensitivity, accuracy, transmissibility, detectability and value of the cues and signals they produce, and in how they receive, store and use information derived from heterospecifics. We then review how interspecific information flow occurs in communities, involving a diversity of species and sensory modes, and how this flow can affect ecosystem-level functions, such as decomposition, seed dispersal or algae removal on coral reefs. We highlight evidence that some keystone species are particularly critical as a source of information used by eavesdroppers, and so have a disproportionate effect on information flow. Such keystone species include community informants producing signals, particularly about predation risk, that influence other species’ landscapes of fear, and aggregation initiators creating cues or signals about resources. We suggest that the presence of keystone species means that there will likely be a positive relationship in many communities between species diversity and information through a ‘sampling effect’, in which larger pools of species are more likely to include the keystone species by chance. We then consider whether the number and relative abundance of species, irrespective of the presence of keystone species, matter to interspecific information flow; on this issue, the theory is less developed, and the evidence scant and indirect. Higher diversity could increase the quantity or quality of information that is used by eavesdroppers because redundancy increases the reliability of information or because the species provide complementary information. Alternatively, there could be a lack of a relationship between species diversity and information if there is widespread information parasitism where users are not sources, or if information sourced from heterospecifics is of lower value than that gained personally or sourced from conspecifics. Recent research suggests that species diversity does have information-modulated community and ecosystem consequences, especially in birds, such as the diversity of species at feeders increasing resource exploitation, or the number of imitated species increasing responses to vocal mimics. A first step for future research includes comprehensive observations of information flow among different taxa and habitats. Then studies should investigate whether species diversity influences the cumulative quality or quantity of information at the community level, and consequently ecosystem-level processes. An applied objective is to conserve species in part for their value as sources of information for other species, including for humans.
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Flagship species’ conservation strategies hold significant prominence in biodiversity preservation. The giant panda, a globally recognized species, has drawn attention to its benefits and constraints as a flagship species. This study aimed to assess the potential benefits of a dual flagship strategy using both the giant panda and snow leopard, compared to an approach solely using the giant panda. We identified the number of potential beneficiary species based on their habitat overlap with the giant panda and snow leopard in Sichuan and Gansu, China. Subsequently, we examined public preferences for these two flagships and their influencing factors through questionnaire surveys within and outside China. The dual flagship strategy covered the habitats of more species and amplified existing protection for those species already benefiting from giant panda conservation efforts. The giant panda was commonly perceived as “Adorable”, “Innocent”, and “Rare”, while perceptions of the snow leopard leaned towards “Mighty”, “Mysterious”, and “Rare”. Though the giant panda is widely favored, the survey indicates a notable preference for snow leopards among a proportion of respondents. The dual flagship strategy offers expanded wildlife habitat coverage and benefits a broader range of species. Moreover, the combined appeal of the snow leopard and giant panda, each possessing unique charm and symbolism, holds the potential to garner broader societal interest and support. This study may serve as a reference for policy decisions in the Giant Panda National Park and other similar protected areas, optimizing conservation management and outreach initiatives for flagship species strategies. It may also benefit conservation strategies centered on other flagship species.
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Data on individual tree crowns from remote sensing have the potential to advance forest ecology by providing information about forest composition and structure with a continuous spatial coverage over large spatial extents. Classifying individual trees to their taxonomic species over large regions from remote sensing data is challenging. Methods to classify individual species are often accurate for common species, but perform poorly for less common species and when applied to new sites. We ran a data science competition to help identify effective methods for the task of classification of individual crowns to species identity. The competition included data from three sites to assess each methods’ ability to generalize patterns across two sites simultaneously and apply methods to an untrained site. Three different metrics were used to assess and compare model performance. Six teams participated, representing four countries and nine individuals. The highest performing method from a previous competition in 2017 was applied and used as a baseline to understand advancements and changes in successful methods. The best species classification method was based on a two-stage fully connected neural network that significantly outperformed the baseline random forest and gradient boosting ensemble methods. All methods generalized well by showing relatively strong performance on the trained sites (accuracy = 0.46–0.55, macro F1 = 0.09–0.32, cross entropy loss = 2.4–9.2), but generally failed to transfer effectively to the untrained site (accuracy = 0.07–0.32, macro F1 = 0.02–0.18, cross entropy loss = 2.8–16.3). Classification performance was influenced by the number of samples with species labels available for training, with most methods predicting common species at the training sites well (maximum F1 score of 0.86) relative to the uncommon species where none were predicted. Classification errors were most common between species in the same genus and different species that occur in the same habitat. Most methods performed better than the baseline in detecting if a species was not in the training data by predicting an untrained mixed-species class, especially in the untrained site. This work has highlighted that data science competitions can encourage advancement of methods, particularly by bringing in new people from outside the focal discipline, and by providing an open dataset and evaluation criteria from which participants can learn.
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Microorganisms play important roles in soil biogeochemical processes, but the relative contributions of different microbial members in soil nutrient cycling and community maintenance are unclear especially in wetland soils with water‐level fluctuation. Here, soil samples, collected from severe inundation zone (SIZ), wet–dry cycling zone (WIZ), and arid zone (NIZ) of the lakeshore wetland of plateau lake Caohai, were used to investigate the relative contributions of core and rare taxa in maintaining nutrient cycling and their associations with microbial network. Results showed that WIZ exhibited higher extracellular enzyme activities including β‐1,4‐N‐acetylglucosaminidase, L‐leucine aminopeptidase, and acid phosphatase, the level of multi‐nutrient cycling and core microbial diversity compared with the NIZ and SIZ. The values of topological features (i.e., links, average degree, clustering coefficient, and graph density) were also higher in the WIZ compared with the NIZ and SIZ. Moreover, the core taxa, specifically their community structures, were the most important driver for multi‐nutrient cycles of wetland soil. Among these taxa, Sphingomonas , Bradyrhizobium , Mortierella , and Fusarium as the most abundant taxa in lakeshore wetlands were significantly positively correlated with most extracellular enzymes. By contrast, rare taxa showed higher degree and its subnetwork complexity than those of core taxa, which potentially serve as the species pool of core taxa to maintaining the microbial community stability. In conclusion, our study suggested that core taxa play dominant roles in soil nutrient cycles, while rare microbiota could greatly influence microbial interaction under hydrological changes.
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Society increasingly focuses on managing nature for the services it provides people rather than for the existence of particular species. How much biodiversity protection would result from this modified focus? Although biodiversity contributes to ecosystem services, the details of which species are critical, and whether they will go functionally extinct in the future, are fraught with uncertainty. Explicitly considering this uncertainty, we develop an analytical framework to determine how much biodiversity protection would arise solely from optimising net value from an ecosystem service. Using stochastic dynamic programming, we find that protecting a threshold number of species is optimal, and uncertainty surrounding how biodiversity produces services makes it optimal to protect more species than are presumed critical. We define conditions under which the economically optimal protection strategy is to protect all species, no species, and cases in between. We show how the optimal number of species to protect depends upon different relationships between species and services, including considering multiple services. Our analysis provides simple criteria to evaluate when managing for particular ecosystem services could warrant protecting all species, given uncertainty. Evaluating this criterion with empirical estimates from different ecosystems suggests that optimising some services will be more likely to protect most species than others.
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Many systems and processes in ecology cannot be experimentally controlled, either because the temporal and spatial scales are too broad, or because it would be unethical. Examples include large wildfires, alternative conservation strategies, removal of top predators, or the introduction of invasive species. Unfortunately, many of these phenomena also do not occur randomly in time or space, and this can lead to different biases (selection bias, unobserved variable bias) in statistical analyses. Economics has evolved largely without experiments, and developed statistical approaches to study "quasi-experiments", i.e., situations were changes in time or space reveal relationships even in the absence of a controlled experiment. The goal of our paper was to compare and evaluate four quasi-experimental statistical approaches commonly used in economics, (1) matching, (2) regression discontinuity design, (3) difference-in-differences models, and (4) instrumental variables, in terms of their relevance for ecological research. We contrast the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and provide a detailed tutorial to demonstrate these approaches. We suggest that quasi-experimental methods offer great potential for investigating many phenomena and processes in ecological and coupled human-natural systems. Furthermore, quasi-experimental methods are common in environmental policy research and policy recommendations by ecologists may be more valuable when based on these methods.
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Rare species are increasingly recognized as crucial, yet vulnerable components of Earth's ecosystems. This is also true for microbial communities, which are typically composed of a high number of relatively rare species. Recent studies have demonstrated that rare species can have an over-proportional role in biogeochemical cycles and may be a hidden driver of microbiome function. In this review, we provide an ecological overview of the rare microbial biosphere, including causes of rarity and the impacts of rare species on ecosystem functioning. We discuss how rare species can have a preponderant role for local biodiversity and species turnover with rarity potentially bound to phylogenetically conserved features. Rare microbes may therefore be overlooked keystone species regulating the functioning of host-associated, terrestrial and aquatic environments. We conclude this review with recommendations to guide scientists interested in investigating this rapidly emerging research area.The ISME Journal advance online publication, 10 January 2017; doi:10.1038/ismej.2016.174.
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Anthropocene defaunation, the global extinction of faunal species and populations and the decline in abundance of individuals within populations, has been predominantly documented in terrestrial ecosystems, but indicators suggest defaunation has been more severe in freshwater ecosystems. Marine defaunation is in a more incipient stage, yet pronounced effects are already apparent and its rapid acceleration seems likely. Defaunation now impacts the planet’s wildlife with profound cascading consequences, ranging from local to global coextinctions of interacting species to the loss of ecological services critical for humanity. Slowing defaunation will require aggressively reducing animal overexploitation and habitat destruction; mitigating climate disruption; and stabilizing the impacts of human population growth and uneven resource consumption. Given its omnipresence, defaunation should receive status of major global environmental change and should be addressed with the same urgency as deforestation, pollution, and climatic change. Global action is needed to prevent defaunation’s current trajectory from catalyzing the planet’s sixth major extinction. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics Volume 47 is November 01, 2016. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
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Many studies suggest that biodiversity may be particularly important for ecosystem multifunctionality, because different species with different traits can contribute to different functions. Support, however, comes mostly from experimental studies conducted at small spatial scales in low-diversity systems. Here, we test whether different species contribute to different ecosystem functions that are important for carbon cycling in a high-diversity human-modified tropical forest landscape in Southern Mexico. We quantified aboveground standing biomass, primary productivity, litter production, and wood decomposition at the landscape level, and evaluated the extent to which tree species contribute to these ecosystem functions. We used simulations to tease apart the effects of species richness, species dominance and species functional traits on ecosystem functions. We found that dominance was more important than species traits in determining a species’ contribution to ecosystem functions. As a consequence of the high dominance in human-modified landscapes, the same small subset of species mattered across different functions. In human-modified landscapes in the tropics, biodiversity may play a limited role for ecosystem multifunctionality due to the potentially large effect of species dominance on biogeochemical functions. However, given the spatial and temporal turnover in species dominance, biodiversity may be critically important for the maintenance and resilience of ecosystem functions.<br/
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Biodiversity is declining world‐wide with detrimental effects on ecosystems. However, we lack a quantitative understanding of the shape of the relationship between microbial biodiversity and ecosystem function ( BEF ). This limits our understanding of how microbial diversity depletion can impact key functions for human well‐being, including pollutant detoxification. Three independent microcosm experiments were conducted to evaluate the direction (i.e. positive, negative or null) and the shape of the relationships between bacterial diversity and both broad (i.e. microbial respiration) and specialized (i.e. toxin degradation) functions in five Australian and two UK freshwater ecosystems using next‐generation sequencing platforms. Reduced bacterial diversity, even after accounting for biomass, caused a decrease in broad (i.e. cumulative microbial respiration) and specialized (biodegradation of two important toxins) functions in all cases. Unlike the positive but decelerating BEF relationship observed most frequently in plants and animals, most evaluated functional measurements were related to bacterial diversity in a non‐redundant fashion (e.g. exponentially and/or linearly). Synthesis . Our results suggest that there is a lack of functional redundancy in the relationship between bacterial diversity and ecosystem functioning; thus, the consequences of declining microbial diversity on ecosystem functioning and human welfare have likely been considerably underestimated.
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There is broad consensus that the diversity of functional traits within species assemblages drives several ecological processes. It is also widely recognized that rare species are the first to become extinct following human-induced disturbances. Surprisingly, however, the functional importance of rare species is still poorly understood, particularly in tropical species-rich assemblages where the majority of species are rare, and the rate of species extinction can be high. Here, we investigated the consequences of local and regional extinctions on the functional structure of species assemblages. We used three extensive datasets (stream fish from the Brazilian Amazon, rainforest trees from French Guiana, and birds from the Australian Wet Tropics) and built an integrative measure of species rarity versus commonness, combining local abundance, geographical range, and habitat breadth. Using different scenarios of species loss, we found a disproportionate impact of rare species extinction for the three groups, with significant reductions in levels of functional richness, specialization, and originality of assemblages, which may severely undermine the integrity of ecological processes. The whole breadth of functional abilities within species assemblages, which is disproportionately supported by rare species, is certainly critical in maintaining ecosystems particularly under the ongoing rapid environmental transitions.
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A cornerstone of environmental policy is the debate over protecting nature for humans’ sake (instrumental values) or for nature’s (intrinsic values) (1). We propose that focusing only on instrumental or intrinsic values may fail to resonate with views on personal and collective well-being, or “what is right,” with regard to nature and the environment. Without complementary attention to other ways that value is expressed and realized by people, such a focus may inadvertently promote worldviews at odds with fair and desirable futures. It is time to engage seriously with a third class of values, one with diverse roots and current expressions: relational values. By doing so, we reframe the discussion about environmental protection, and open the door to new, potentially more productive policy approaches.
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Significance Global environmental change is challenging the adaptive capacity of entire ecological communities. Community rescue occurs when populations within a community evolve in response to an environmental stress that was initially lethal to all the constituent organisms. We studied how communities of soil microbes can extend the area they occupy to include conditions that were initially lethal, and how these communities can persist despite the degradation of environmental conditions. Our results suggest that entire communities have the potential to adapt to severe environmental stress. Community rescue is promoted by the initial diversity in the community, is more frequent among communities that have previously experienced intermediate sublethal levels of stress, and is facilitated by the dispersal of organisms across the landscape.
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There is compelling evidence that more diverse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for biodiversity conservation. However, it is unclear how much biodiversity is needed to deliver ecosystem services in a cost-effective way. Here we show that, while the contribution of wild bees to crop production is significant, service delivery is restricted to a limited subset of all known bee species. Across crops, years and biogeographical regions, crop-visiting wild bee communities are dominated by a small number of common species, and threatened species are rarely observed on crops. Dominant crop pollinators persist under agricultural expansion and many are easily enhanced by simple conservation measures, suggesting that cost-effective management strategies to promote crop pollination should target a different set of species than management strategies to promote threatened bees. Conserving the biological diversity of bees therefore requires more than just ecosystem-service-based arguments.
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While Amazonian forests are extraordinarily diverse, the abundance of trees is skewed strongly towards relatively few 'hyperdominant' species. In addition to their diversity, Amazonian trees are a key component of the global carbon cycle, assimilating and storing more carbon than any other ecosystem on Earth. Here we ask, using a unique data set of 530 forest plots, if the functions of storing and producing woody carbon are concentrated in a small number of tree species, whether the most abundant species also dominate carbon cycling, and whether dominant species are characterized by specific functional traits. We find that dominance of forest function is even more concentrated in a few species than is dominance of tree abundance, with only E1% of Amazon tree species responsible for 50% of carbon storage and productivity. Although those species that contribute most to biomass and productivity are often abundant, species maximum size is also influential, while the identity and ranking of dominant species varies by function and by region.
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Ecosystem services are often described as occurring together in bundles, or tending not to occur together, representing tradeoffs. We investigated patterns and potential linkages in the provision of six wetland services in three experimental wetlands by measuring: flow attenuation, as peak flow reduction; stormwater retention, as outflow volume reduction; net primary productivity (NPP), as plant biomass; diversity support, as plant species richness; erosion resistance, as stability of surface soils in a flow path; and water quality improvement, as nutrient and sediment removal. Levels of ecosystem services differed in our system because of differences in hydrologic regime brought on by natural variation in clay-rich subsoils. The fastest-draining wetland (with thin clay layer) provided five of six services at their highest level, but had lowest NPP. In contrast, a ponded wetland (with thick clay layer) that was dominated by cattail (Typha spp.) provided the highest level of NPP, but lowest levels of all other services. Hence, in our site, drainage supported several bundled services, whereas ponding supported such high levels of NPP that other services appeared to be limited (suggesting tradeoffs). These outcomes show that high NPP has the potential to be a misleading indicator of overall ecosystem services. Rather than focusing on NPP, we suggest identifying and establishing hydrologic regimes that can support the services targeted for restoration in future projects. Further direct assessments of multiple services are needed to identify bundles and tradeoffs and provide guidance at the scale of local restoration projects.
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Changes in the perception and goals of nature conservation require a solid scientific basis
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Predicting ecosystem responses to global change is a major challenge in ecology. A critical step in that challenge is to understand how changing environmental conditions influence processes across levels of ecological organization. While direct scaling from individual to ecosystem dynamics can lead to robust and mechanistic predictions, new approaches are needed to appropriately translate questions through the community level. Species invasion, loss, and turnover all necessitate this scaling through community processes, but predicting how such changes may influence ecosystem function is notoriously difficult. We suggest that community-level dynamics can be incorporated into scaling predictions using a trait-based response–effect framework that differentiates the community response to environmental change (predicted by response traits) and the effect of that change on ecosystem processes (predicted by effect traits). We develop a response-and-effect functional framework, concentrating on how the relationships among species' response, effect, and abundance can lead to general predictions concerning the magnitude and direction of the influence of environmental change on function. We then detail several key research directions needed to better scale the effects of environmental change through the community level. These include (1) effect and response trait characterization, (2) linkages between response-and-effect traits, (3) the importance of species interactions on trait expression, and (4) incorporation of feedbacks across multiple temporal scales. Increasing rates of extinction and invasion that are modifying communities worldwide make such a research agenda imperative.
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We live amid a global wave of anthropogenically driven biodiversity loss: species and population extirpations and, critically, declines in local species abundance. Particularly, human impacts on animal biodiversity are an under-recognized form of global environmental change. Among terrestrial vertebrates, 322 species have become extinct since 1500, and populations of the remaining species show 25% average decline in abundance. Invertebrate patterns are equally dire: 67% of monitored populations show 45% mean abundance decline. Such animal declines will cascade onto ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Much remains unknown about this “Anthropocene defaunation”; these knowledge gaps hinder our capacity to predict and limit defaunation impacts. Clearly, however, defaunation is both a pervasive component of the planet’s sixth mass extinction and also a major driver of global ecological change.
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Background A principal function of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is to “perform regular and timely assessments of knowledge on biodiversity.” In December 2013, its second plenary session approved a program to begin a global assessment in 2015. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and five other biodiversity-related conventions have adopted IPBES as their science-policy interface, so these assessments will be important in evaluating progress toward the CBD’s Aichi Targets of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020. As a contribution toward such assessment, we review the biodiversity of eukaryote species and their extinction rates, distributions, and protection. We document what we know, how it likely differs from what we do not, and how these differences affect biodiversity statistics. Interestingly, several targets explicitly mention “known species”—a strong, if implicit, statement of incomplete knowledge. We start by asking how many species are known and how many remain undescribed. We then consider by how much human actions inflate extinction rates. Much depends on where species are, because different biomes contain different numbers of species of different susceptibilities. Biomes also suffer different levels of damage and have unequal levels of protection. How extinction rates will change depends on how and where threats expand and whether greater protection counters them. Advances Recent studies have clarified where the most vulnerable species live, where and how humanity changes the planet, and how this drives extinctions. These data are increasingly accessible, bringing greater transparency to science and governance. Taxonomic catalogs of plants, terrestrial vertebrates, freshwater fish, and some marine taxa are sufficient to assess their status and the limitations of our knowledge. Most species are undescribed, however. The species we know best have large geographical ranges and are often common within them. Most known species have small ranges, however, and such species are typically newer discoveries. The numbers of known species with very small ranges are increasing quickly, even in well-known taxa. They are geographically concentrated and are disproportionately likely to be threatened or already extinct. We expect unknown species to share these characteristics. Current rates of extinction are about 1000 times the background rate of extinction. These are higher than previously estimated and likely still underestimated. Future rates will depend on many factors and are poised to increase. Finally, although there has been rapid progress in developing protected areas, such efforts are not ecologically representative, nor do they optimally protect biodiversity. Outlook Progress on assessing biodiversity will emerge from continued expansion of the many recently created online databases, combining them with new global data sources on changing land and ocean use and with increasingly crowdsourced data on species’ distributions. Examples of practical conservation that follow from using combined data in Colombia and Brazil can be found at www.savingspecies.org and www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3zjeJW2NVk .
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The N ature C onservancy ( TNC ) was founded by ecologists as a U nited S tates land trust to purchase parcels of habitat for the purpose of scientific study. It has evolved into a global organization working in 35 countries ‘to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends’. TNC is now the world's largest conservation non‐governmental organization ( NGO ), an early adopter of advances in ecological theory and a producer of new science as a result of practising conservation. The N ature C onservancy's initial scientific innovation was the use of distributional data for rare species and ecological communities to systematically target lands for conservation. This innovation later evolved into a more rigorous approach known as ‘ C onservation by D esign’ that contained elements of systematic conservation planning, strategic planning and monitoring and evaluation. The next scientific transition at TNC was a move to landscape‐scale projects, motivated by ideas from landscape ecology. Because the scale at which land could be set aside in areas untouched by humans fell far short of the spatial scale demanded by conservation, TNC became involved with best management practices for forestry, grazing, agriculture, hydropower and other land uses. A third scientific innovation at TNC came with the pursuit of multiobjective planning that accounts for economic and resource needs in the same plans that seek to protect biodiversity. The M illennium E cosystem A ssessment prompted TNC to become increasingly concerned with ecosystem services and the material risk to people posed by ecosystem deterioration. Finally, because conservation depends heavily upon negotiation, TNC has recently recruited social scientists, economists and communication experts. One aspect still missing, however, is a solid scientific understanding of thresholds that should be averted. Synthesis and applications . Over its 60‐plus year history, scientific advances have informed T he N ature C onservancy ( TNC )'s actions and strategies, and in turn the evolving practice of conservation has altered the type of science sought by TNC in order to maximize its conservation effectiveness.
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We combine data collected from the past 40 years to estimate the indirect effects of sea otters (Enhydra lutris) on ecosystem carbon (C) production and storage across their North American range, from Vancouver Island to the western edge of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. We find that sea otters, by suppressing sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus spp) populations, allow kelp (Order Laminariales) ecosystems to develop with a net primary productivity (NPP) of 313-900 grams C per square meter per year (g C m⁻² 2 yr⁻¹) and biomass density of 101-180 grams C per square meter (g C m⁻²). In the absence of sea otters, these areas would have an NPP of 25-70 g C m⁻² yr⁻¹ and biomass density of 8-14 g C m⁻². Over an ecosystem area of approximately 5.1 × 10¹⁰ m², the effect of sea otter predation on living kelp biomass alone represents a 4.4- to 8.7-teragram increase in C storage. At 2012 prices (US47pertonofC),thisstoredCwouldbevaluedatUS47 per ton of C), this stored C would be valued at US205 million-$408 million on the European Carbon Exchange. Although questions remain concerning the pathways and compartments of kelp C flux and storage, sea otters undoubtedly have a strong influence on these elements of the C cycle. Predator-induced trophic cascades likely influence the rates of C flux and storage in many other species and ecosystems.
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Salt marsh habitat loss to vegetation die-offs has accelerated throughout the western Atlantic in the last four decades. Recent studies have suggested that eutrophication, pollution and/or disease may contribute to the loss of marsh habitat. In light of recent evidence that predators are important determinants of marsh health in New England, we performed a total predator exclusion experiment. Here, we provide the first experimental evidence that predator depletion can cause salt marsh die-off by releasing the herbivorous crab Sesarma reticulatum from predator control. Excluding predators from a marsh ecosystem for a single growing season resulted in a >100% increase in herbivory and a >150% increase in unvegetated bare space compared to plots with predators. Our results confirm that marshes in this region face multiple, potentially synergistic threats.
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