Use of extensive habitat inventories in biodiversity studies

Large monitoring programs exist in many countries and are necessary to assess present and past biodiversity status and to evaluate the consequences of habitat degradation or destruction. Using such an extensive data set of the floristic richness in the Paris Ile-de-France region (France), we compared different sampling efforts and protocols in different habitat units to highlight the best methods for assessing the actual plant biodiversity. Our results indicate that existing data can be used for a general understanding of site differences, but analysts should be aware of the limitations of the data due to non-random selection of sites, inconsistent observer knowledge, and inconsistent sampling period. The average species diversity recorded in a specific habitat does not necessarily reflect its actual diversity, unless the monitoring effort was very strong. Overall, increasing the sampling effort in a given region allows improvement of the (1) number of habitats visited, (2) the total sampled area for a given habitat type, (3) the number of seasons investigated. Our results indicate that the sampling effort should be planned with respect to these functional, spatial and temporal heterogeneities, and to the question examined. While the effort should be applied to as many habitats as possible for the purpose of capturing a large proportion of regional diversity, or comparing different regions, inventories should be conducted in different seasons for the purpose of comparing species richness in different habitats.     

Ramping up biodiversity discovery via online quantum contributions

The pace of species discovery and documentation remains too slow on a human-altered planet in the midst of a massive extinction event. Increasing this pace requires altering conventional workflows. In this review, we propose that systematics needs to shift to a model of quantum contributions whereby species hypotheses are published as they are formulated and data as they are collected in web-based repositories and content-management systems. If our recommendation is followed, many species will make their first appearance on the Internet as candidate new species before documentation is complete. Acknowledging the changes that we describe may be controversial, we discuss problems that may be encountered along with possible solutions.     

Towards the global monitoring of biodiversity change

Governments have set the ambitious target of reducing biodiversity loss by the year 2010. The scientific community now faces the challenge of assessing the progress made towards this target and beyond. Here, we review current monitoring efforts and propose a global biodiversity monitoring network to complement and enhance these efforts. The network would develop a global sampling programme for indicator taxa (we suggest birds and vascular plants) and would integrate regional sampling programmes for taxa that are locally relevant to the monitoring of biodiversity change. The network would also promote the development of comparable maps of global land cover at regular time intervals. The extent and condition of specific habitat types, such as wetlands and coral reefs, would be monitored based on regional programmes. The data would then be integrated with other environmental and socioeconomic indicators to design responses to reduce biodiversity loss.     

Mapping from heterogeneous biodiversity monitoring data sources

Field monitoring can vary from simple volunteer opportunistic observations to professional standardised monitoring surveys, leading to a trade-off between data quality and data collection costs. Such variability in data quality may result in biased predictions obtained from species distribution models (SDMs). We aimed to identify the limitations of different monitoring data sources for developing species distribution maps and to evaluate their potential for spatial data integration in a conservation context. Using Maxent, SDMs were generated from three different bird data sources in Catalonia, which differ in the degree of standardisation and available sample size. In addition, an alternative approach for modelling species distributions was applied, which combined the three data sources at a large spatial scale, but then downscaling to the required resolution. Finally, SDM predictions were used to identify species richness and high quality areas (hotspots) from different treatments. Models were evaluated by using high quality Atlas information. We show that both sample size and survey methodology used to collect the data are important in delivering robust information on species distributions. Models based on standardized monitoring provided higher accuracy with a lower sample size, especially when modelling common species. Accuracy of models from opportunistic observations substantially increased when modelling uncommon species, giving similar accuracy to a more standardized survey. Although downscaling data through a SDM approach appears to be a useful tool in cases of data shortage or low data quality and heterogeneity, it will tend to overestimate species distributions. In order to identify distributions of species, data with different quality may be appropriate. However, to identify biodiversity hotspots high quality information is needed.     

监测是评估生物多样性保护进展的有效途径

生物多样性保护受到国际社会的广泛关注,继2010年国际生物多样性年之后,联合国又于2010年12月21日宣布2011-2020年为国际生物多样性十年,并号召各国政府和社会各界积极行动起来,为实施<生物多样性公约>第十次缔约方大会通过的2011-2020年生物多样性保护战略规划作出贡献.该战略规划提出了未来十年的全球生物多样性保护目标,包括5个战略目标和20个具体目标(http://www.cbd.int/deci-sion/cop/).     

A comparison of proxy performance in coral biodiversity monitoring

The productivity and health of coral reef habitat is diminishing worldwide; however, the effect that habitat declines have on coral reef biodiversity is not known. Logistical and financial constraints mean that surveys of hard coral communities rarely collect data at the species level; hence it is important to know if there are proxy metrics that can reliably predict biodiversity. Here, the performances of six proxy metrics are compared using regression analyses on survey data from a location in the northern Great Barrier Reef. Results suggest generic richness is a strong explanatory variable for spatial patterns in species richness (explaining 82 % of the variation when measured on a belt transect). The most commonly used metric of reef health, percentage live coral cover, is not positively or linearly related to hard coral species richness. This result raises doubt as to whether management actions based on such reefscape information will be effective for the conservation of coral biodiversity.     

Integrating ongoing biodiversity monitoring: potential benefits and methods

Halting the loss of biodiversity comes along with the need to quantify biodiversity composition and dynamics at large spatial and temporal scales. Highly standardized, international monitoring networks would be ideal, but they do not exist yet. If we are to assess changes in biodiversity now, combining output available from ongoing monitoring initiatives is the only option. However, integration of biodiversity information across schemes is still very poorly developed. In this paper, we outline practical issues to be considered when planning to combine existing monitoring information. First, we provide an overview of avenues for integration along the four dimensions that characterize a monitoring design: sample size, biological coverage, spatial coverage and temporal coverage. We also emphasize that complementarity in monitoring targets across schemes enables to describe complex processes of biodiversity dynamics, e.g. through relating species traits to the impacts of environmental changes. Second, we review some methods to overcome differences in designs among monitoring schemes, such as site selection, post-stratification and measurement error. Finally, we point out some commonly used statistical methods that are at hand for combining data or parameter estimates. We especially emphasize the possible levels of data integration (raw data, parameter estimates, or effect size estimates), and the largely under-exploited potential of meta-analysis methods and weighted analyses. This contribution aims to bolster the practice and use of integration of ongoing monitoring initiatives for biodiversity assessment.     

传粉昆虫物种多样性监测、评估和保护概述

欧洲和北美等国相继建立起传粉昆虫物种多样性监测和评估体系。基于传粉昆虫的监测资料,能够对欧美部分区域和某些传粉昆虫类群的现状、下降程度以及影响因素进行研究。欧洲和北美等地已开展部分传粉昆虫保护措施和项目,如欧洲部分国家实施的＂农田环境计划＂项目（Agri-Environmental Schemes）能够保护农田生态系统中传粉昆虫的栖境,恢复和提高传粉昆虫物种多样性。我国传粉昆虫物种多样性十分丰富,但目前还没有一个以监测和评估传粉昆虫物种多样性为主的平台,也未对某区域或某类群传粉昆虫多样性的变化进行评估,传粉昆虫多样性的保护也未引起足够重视。为了解我国传粉昆虫物种多样性现状及变化情况,作者建议在我国建立传粉昆虫物种多样性监测和评估体系,以提高我们在该领域的认识水平,并为开展相应的保护工作提供理论基础。     

Optimized monitoring sites for detection of biodiversity trends in China

Properly designed monitoring networks can generate data to understand status and trends of biodiversity, and to assess progress towards conservation targets. However, biodiversity monitoring is often affected by poor sampling design. We proposed an approach to choosing optimized monitoring sites among large areas. Based on comprehensive distribution data of 34,284 vertebrates and vascular plants from 2376 counties in China, we selected 564 optimized monitoring sites (counties) through complementarity analysis and pre-existing knowledge of nature reserves. The optimized monitoring sites are complementary to each other and reasonably distributed, to ensure that maximum species are covered while the total number of sites and monitoring costs are minimized. Incongruence of optimized monitoring sites among different taxa indicates that taxa with different ecological features should be selected for large-scale monitoring programmes. The results of this study have been applied in the design and operation of China Biodiversity Observation Network.     

Species–area curves indicate the importance of habitats’ contributions to regional biodiversity

We examined species–area curves, species composition and similarity (Jaccard's coefficients), and species richness in 17 vegetation types to develop a composite index of a vegetation type's contribution to regional species richness. We collected data from 1 to 1000 m² scales in 147 nested plots in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA to compare three species–area curve models’ abilities to estimate the number of species observed in each vegetation type. The log(species)–log(area) curve had the largest adjusted coefficients of determination (r² values) in 12 of the 17 types, followed by the species–log(area) curve with five of the highest values. When the slopes of the curves were corrected for species overlap among plots with Jaccard's coefficients, the species–log(area) curves estimated values closest to those observed. We combined information from species–area curves and measures of heterogeneity with information on the area covered by each vegetation type and found that the types making the greatest contributions to regional biodiversity covered the smallest areas. This approach may provide an accurate and relatively rapid way to rank hotspots of plant diversity within regions of interest.     

Bayesian occupancy monitoring for Annamite endemic biodiversity in central Vietnam

Given the crisis facing South-east Asian biodiversity evidence led conservation, including assessing the impact of innovative protected area management models, is urgently needed. Bayesian statistics provide an intuitive way to interpret biodiversity monitoring data but are largely unused, or poorly understood, by field biologists and protected area managers. We built Bayesian occupancy models for two threatened endemics of the Annamite mountains: northern yellow-cheeked gibbon Nomascus (gabriellae) annamensis and crested argus Rheinardia ocellata ocellata based on auditory surveys in three protected areas in central Vietnam. Occupancy of 2 × 2-km grid cells across the landscape was 0.76 ± SE 0.03 for northern yellow-cheeked gibbon and 0.68 ± SE 0.05 for crested argus. Models predicted higher probability of gibbon occurrence at lower elevations and higher probability of crested argus presence with increasing dense forest cover. Bayesian modeling is a useful tool for assessing the effectiveness of conservation interventions and for measuring progress against conservation goals. The wider application of Bayesian statistics in conservation monitoring should allow more intuitive and user-friendly representation of sampling uncertainty, including visual representation of probability distributions and more rigorous testing for changes in the status of conservation targets.     

Building a 2010 biodiversity conservation data baseline: contributions of the Group on Earth Observations

Characterizing, modeling, and monitoring the distribution and condition of the Earth’s biodiversity and ecosystems has a long history of being aided by Earth Observation data and the models and derivative products that they support. At the global scale, there need to be more coordinated efforts to acquire, process, analyze, and make available these observation data across all disciplines, particularly since many applications use the same primary and derived data. Towards that end, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is implementing the Global Earth Observing System of Systems. The purpose of this article is to provide information on GEO’s goals and activities relevant to biodiversity and ecosystems. The article also describes the data that would best serve as a year 2010 baseline in order to support the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as well as many other international agreements, programs, and activities. Indeed, an assessment of existing biodiversity observations with a concomitant recognition of the remaining gaps will promote the establishment of an integrated framework for biodiversity observations in support of the CBD’s efforts.     

The contributions of interlocking loops and extensive nonlinearity to the properties of circadian clock models

Background

Sensitivity and robustness are essential properties of circadian clock systems, enabling them to respond to the environment but resist noisy variations. These properties should be recapitulated in computational models of the circadian clock. Highly nonlinear kinetics and multiple loops are often incorporated into models to match experimental time-series data, but these also impact on model properties for clock models.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Here, we study the consequences of complicated structure and nonlinearity using simple Goodwin-type oscillators and the complex Arabidopsis circadian clock models. Sensitivity analysis of the simple oscillators implies that an interlocked multi-loop structure reinforces sensitivity/robustness properties, enhancing the response to external and internal variations. Furthermore, we found that reducing the degree of nonlinearity could sometimes enhance the robustness of models, implying that ad hoc incorporation of nonlinearity could be detrimental to a model''s perceived credibility.

Conclusion

The correct multi-loop structure and degree of nonlinearity are therefore critical in contributing to the desired properties of a model as well as its capacity to match experimental data.     

Dialectical relations between professionals and volunteers in a biodiversity monitoring organisation

The paper presents a case study of the changes in organisational culture of volunteer biodiversity monitoring organisations and is based on ethnographic research of Bird Watching and Bird Study Association of Slovenia (DOPPS). In the authors’ opinion, the dynamics of organisation’s culture is influenced by the emerging opposition between professionalism on one side and voluntarism on the other. It is explained that professionalism, though being a necessary developmental stage, may have a negative impact on voluntarism and may result in the reduction of the initial altruistic sentiments among members and hence decrease their willingness to participate. On the other hand, if an organisation depends entirely on volunteers, it may not survive and flourish in a changing socio-political environment. The paper is intended to provide a feasible solution for successful development of similar organisations facing constantly changing settings by erasing boundaries between categories of volunteers and professionals, which mitigates the dialectic processes.

Design and applicability of DNA arrays and DNA barcodes in biodiversity monitoring

Background  

The rapid and accurate identification of species is a critical component of large-scale biodiversity monitoring programs. DNA arrays (micro and macro) and DNA barcodes are two molecular approaches that have recently garnered much attention. Here, we compare these two platforms for identification of an important group, the mammals.