Biodiversity: climate change or habitat loss - which will kill more species?

Habitat loss and climate change both kill off species. New studies show that the latter is a potent threat. Worse, its victims will likely be mostly those not presently threatened by habitat loss.     

The heterospecific habitat copying hypothesis: can competitors indicate habitat quality?

According to the "habitat copying" hypothesis, animals use thereproductive performance of conspecifics to assess habitat suitabilityand choose their future breeding site. This is because conspecificsshare ecological needs and thus indicate habitat suitability.Here, we propose the "heterospecific habitat copying" hypothesis,which states that animals should use public information (i.e.,information derived from the performance of others) from con-and heterospecifics sharing ecological needs. In a correlationalapproach we test some assumptions and predictions of this hypothesiswith a data set from two sympatric bird populations, rollers(Coracias garrulus) and kestrels (Falco tinnunculus), usingthe same nest-boxes and exploiting similar food resources. Sincekestrels are residents and breed earlier, we assumed that theyare dominant over rollers for nest-box acquisition. The environmentappears to be patchy for both species and temporally predictablefor kestrels only. Two results suggest that the use of heterospecificpublic information in breeding habitat selection may be at work:(1) an increase in the reoccupancy probability by kestrels ofprevious roller nests with increasing nest success, and (2)an increase in roller breeding population with increasing localkestrel success. Most of the other observed patterns could beexplained by alternative mechanisms such as natal philopatry,breeding fidelity, conspecific attraction, intraspecific habitatcopying, and the effect of interspecific competition.     

Variation in habitat choice and delayed reproduction: adaptive queuing strategies or individual quality differences?

In most species, some individuals delay reproduction or occupy inferior breeding positions. The queue hypothesis tries to explain both patterns by proposing that individuals strategically delay breeding (queue) to acquire better breeding or social positions. In 1995, Ens, Weissing, and Drent addressed evolutionarily stable queuing strategies in situations with habitat heterogeneity. However, their model did not consider the non-mutually exclusive individual quality hypothesis, which suggests that some individuals delay breeding or occupy inferior breeding positions because they are poor competitors. Here we extend their model with individual differences in competitive abilities, which are probably plentiful in nature. We show that including even the smallest competitive asymmetries will result in individuals using queuing strategies completely different from those in models that assume equal competitors. Subsequently, we investigate how well our models can explain settlement patterns in the wild, using a long-term study on oystercatchers. This long-lived shorebird exhibits strong variation in age of first reproduction and territory quality. We show that only models that include competitive asymmetries can explain why oystercatchers' settlement patterns depend on natal origin. We conclude that predictions from queuing models are very sensitive to assumptions about competitive asymmetries, while detecting such differences in the wild is often problematic.     

Cursorial spiders and succession: age or habitat structure?

Summary The structure of cursorial spider assemblages was examined along a gradient of four temperature successional communities. Species diversity (H), richness (S), and evenness (J) exhibited a dichotomy between herbaceous and woody communities rather than a progressive change with community age: all three parameters were higher in the two younger fields than in the two older woodlands, which is contrary to conventional successional theory. Species importance curves were steeper in the two woody communities. The breadth of the distribution of adult body lengths was greater in the two herbaceous communities. Indices of community similarity revealed neither a successional trend nor the vegetative dichotomy. We suggest the hypothesis that habitat structure is a more important determinant of cursorial spider diversity than successional age per se, and that the switch in dominance from herbaceous to woody vegetation is the critical change. We further suggest that competition for prey is more important to cursorial spiders in early successional (herbaceous) communities, because of a switch in the limiting resource from prey in these communities to the amount of accumulating litter (a spatial resource) in older woody stands. This may explain the greater variation in adult body size of these generalist predators in the two younger communities.     

Correlation and studies of habitat selection: problem,red herring or opportunity?

With the advent of new technologies, animal locations are being collected at ever finer spatio-temporal scales. We review analytical methods for dealing with correlated data in the context of resource selection, including post hoc variance inflation techniques, ‘two-stage’ approaches based on models fit to each individual, generalized estimating equations and hierarchical mixed-effects models. These methods are applicable to a wide range of correlated data problems, but can be difficult to apply and remain especially challenging for use–availability sampling designs because the correlation structure for combinations of used and available points are not likely to follow common parametric forms. We also review emerging approaches to studying habitat selection that use fine-scale temporal data to arrive at biologically based definitions of available habitat, while naturally accounting for autocorrelation by modelling animal movement between telemetry locations. Sophisticated analyses that explicitly model correlation rather than consider it a nuisance, like mixed effects and state-space models, offer potentially novel insights into the process of resource selection, but additional work is needed to make them more generally applicable to large datasets based on the use–availability designs. Until then, variance inflation techniques and two-stage approaches should offer pragmatic and flexible approaches to modelling correlated data.     

Geroscience and climate science: Oppositional or complementary?

Two of this century's most significant public health challenges are climate change and healthy aging. The future of humanity will be both warmer and older than it is today. Is it socially responsible, in a warming planet of a population exceeding 8 billion people, for science to aspire to develop gerotherapeutic drugs that aim to reduce the burden of aging-related diseases that may also increase lifespan? This question is the “elephant in the room” for geroscience advocacy. Science communication concerning what constitutes empirically valid and morally defensible ways of navigating the dual public health predicaments of climate change and healthy aging must be sensitive to both the interdependence of the environment (including planetary health) and the mechanisms of aging, as well as the common (mis)perceptions about the potential conflict between the goals of climate science and geroscience. Geroscience advocacy can transcend narratives of intergenerational conflict by highlighting the shared aspirations of climate science and geroscience, such as the goals of promoting health across the lifespan, redressing health disparities, and improving the economic prospects of current and future generations.     

What is an edge species? The implications of sensitivity to habitat edges

For decades, researchers have categorized species as “edge‐loving” or “edge‐avoiding”, but recent studies that show inconsistencies in responses have called these labels into question and led to a sense that edge effects are idiosyncratic and difficult to understand. We suggest that species would be better categorized according to their sensitivity to edges, not the direction of observed responses because no species should be expected to show the same response to all edge types. Measures of edge sensitivity will apply widely across taxa and landscapes and allow metrics that are broadly comparable, making generalities easier to discern. Finally, while the direction of observed edge responses remains a critical (but largely understood) dynamic, most reported edge responses are neutral, so discovering when species are least likely to respond to edges will increase our understanding of edge ecology and associated fragmentation effects. We offer a case study that measures edge sensitivity of 15 butterfly species at 12 edge types. We found that sensitivity is weakly related to vulnerability to predation, but more importantly we show how our results generate new predictions about edge sensitivity that can be explored in future studies.     

Clustered or scattered? The impact of habitat quality clustering on establishment and early spread

The match between the environmental conditions of an introduction area and the preferences of an introduced species is the first prerequisite for establishment. Yet, introduction areas are usually landscapes, i.e. heterogeneous sets of habitats that are more or less favourable to the introduced species. Because individuals are able to disperse after their introduction, the quality of the habitat surrounding the introduction site is as critical to the persistence of introduced populations as the quality of the introduction site itself. Moreover, demographic mechanisms such as Allee effects or dispersal mortality can hamper dispersal and affect spread across the landscape, in interaction with the spatial distribution of favourable habitat patches. In this study, we investigate the impact of the spatial distribution of heterogeneous quality habitats on establishment and early spread. First, we simulated introductions in one‐dimensional landscapes for different dispersal rates and either dispersal mortality or Allee effects. The landscapes differed by the distribution of favourable and less favourable habitats, which were either clustered into few large aggregates of the same quality or scattered into multiple smaller ones. Second, we tested the predictions of simulations by performing experimental introductions of hymenopteran parasitoids (Trichogramma chilonis) in ‘clustered’ and ‘scattered’ microcosm landscapes. Results highlighted two impacts of the clustering of favourable habitat: by decreasing the risks of dispersal from the introduction site to unfavourable habitat early during the invasion, it increased establishment success. However, by increasing the distance between favourable habitat patches, it also hindered the subsequent spread of introduced species over larger areas.     

Do species’ traits predict recent shifts at expanding range edges?

Although some organisms have moved to higher elevations and latitudes in response to recent climate change, there is little consensus regarding the capacity of different species to track rapid climate change via range shifts. Understanding species' abilities to shift ranges has important implications for assessing extinction risk and predicting future community structure. At an expanding front, colonization rates are determined jointly by rates of reproduction and dispersal. In addition, establishment of viable populations requires that individuals find suitable resources in novel habitats. Thus, species with greater dispersal ability, reproductive rate and ecological generalization should be more likely to expand into new regions under climate change. Here, we assess current evidence for the relationship between leading-edge range shifts and species' traits. We found expected relationships for several datasets, including diet breadth in North American Passeriformes and egg-laying habitat in British Odonata. However, models generally had low explanatory power. Thus, even statistically and biologically meaningful relationships are unlikely to be of predictive utility for conservation and management. Trait-based range shift forecasts face several challenges, including quantifying relevant natural history variation across large numbers of species and coupling these data with extrinsic factors such as habitat fragmentation and availability.     

Fish otoliths: do sizes correlate with taxonomic group,habitat and/or luminescence?

Otoliths are dense structures in the ears of fishes that function in hearing and gravity perception. Otolith (sagitta) diameters, as percentages of standard length (% SL), are calculated for 247 marine fish species in 147 families and compared by taxonomic group (usually order), habitat and presence or absence of luminescence. Otolith sizes range from 0.4-31.4 mm and 0.08-11.2% SL. The eel and spiny eel orders Anguilliformes and Notacanthiformes have small to very small otoliths, as do the triggerfish order Tetraodontiformes, pipefish order Gasterosteiformes, billfish suborder Scombroidei and many of the dragonfish order Stomiiformes. The soldierfish order Beryciformes has moderate to very large otoliths. The perch order Perciformes has a wide range of otolith sizes but most have small to moderate otoliths 2-5% SL. Only 16 out of the 247 species have the relatively largest otoliths, over 7% SL. Seven out of these 16 species are also luminous from a variety of habitats. Luminous species have slightly to much larger otoliths than non-luminous species in the same family Both beryciforms and luminous fishes live in low-light environments, where acute colour vision is probably impossible. Most fishes of the epipelagic surface waters have very small otoliths, perhaps due to background noise and/or excessive movement of heavy otoliths in rough seas. Bathypelagic species usually have small otoliths and regressed or absent swimbladders. Other habitats have species with a range of otolith sizes. While the relationship between hearing ability and otolith length is unknown, at least some groups with modified swim-bladders have larger otoliths, which may be associated with more acute hearing.     

Termites as bioindicators of habitat quality in the caatinga, Brazil: is there agreement between structural habitat variables and the sampled assemblages?

The composition of termite assemblages was analyzed in three caatinga sites of the Esta??o Ecológica do Seridó, located in the municipality of Serra Negra do Norte, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. These sites have been subjected to selective logging, and cleared for pasture and farming. A standardized sampling protocol for termite assemblages (30h/person/site) was conducted between September 2007 and February 2009. At each site we measured environmental variables, such as soil pH and organic matter, necromass stock, vegetation height, stem diameter at ankle height (DAH) and the largest and the smallest crown width. Ten species of termites, belonging to eight genera and three families, were found at the three experimental sites. Four feeding groups were sampled: wood-feeders, soil-feeders, wood-soil interface feeders and leaf-feeders. The wood-feeders were dominant in number of species and number of encounters at all sites. In general, the sites were not significantly different in relation to the environmental variables measured. The same pattern was observed for termite assemblages, where no significant differences in species richness, relative abundance and taxonomic and functional composition were observed between the three sites. The agreement between composition of assemblages and environmental variables reinforces the potential of termites as biological indicators of habitat quality.     

Co-benefits of climate mitigation: Counting statistical lives or life-years?

Making up for air pollution related mortality and accounting for the number of deaths has become an important environmental indicator in its own right, but differences across the Atlantic over how to account for these are making it difficult to find common ground in climate policy appraisals, where co-benefits from reducing air pollution of fossil fuels is to be factored in. This article revisits established quantification methodologies for air pollution related mortality applied by government agencies in USA and EU. Demographic lifetables are applied to explore uncertainties over latency periods and the number of affected victims. These lifetable simulations are based on WHO consensus estimates for the mortality risk ratio related to long-term exposures and suggest an average loss of life expectancy of 9–11 years for an annual air pollution exposure increase of 10 ugPM_2.5/m³. With a common OECD base value approach the air pollution costs related to fossil fuels are found to be about 3 times lower with EU versus US methodology.