Species richness and composition differ in response to landscape and biogeography

ContextUnderstanding how landscape patterns affect species diversity is of great importance in the fields of biogeography, landscape ecology and conservation planning, but despite the rapid advance in biodiversity analysis, investigations of spatial effects on biodiversity are still largely focused on species richness.ObjectivesWe wanted to know if and how species richness and species composition are differentially driven by the spatial measures dominating studies in landscape ecology and biogeography. As both measures require the same limited presence/absence information, it is important to choose an appropriate diversity measure, as differing results could have important consequences for interpreting ecological processes.MethodsWe recorded plant occurrences on 112 islands in the Baltic archipelago. Species richness and composition were calculated for each island, and the explanatory power of island area and habitat heterogeneity, distance to mainland and structural connectivity at three different landscape sizes were examined.ResultsA total of 354 different plant species were recorded. The influence of landscape variables differed depending on which diversity measure was used. Island area and structural connectivity determined plant species richness, while species composition revealed a more complex pattern, being influenced by island area, habitat heterogeneity and structural connectivity.ConclusionsAlthough both measures require the same basic input data, species composition can reveal more about the ecological processes affecting plant communities in fragmented landscapes than species richness alone. Therefore, we recommend that species community composition should be used as an additional standard measure of diversity for biogeography, landscape ecology and conservation planning

Anthropogenic climate and land-use change drive short- and long-term biodiversity shifts across taxa

Climate change and habitat loss present serious threats to nature. Yet, due to a lack of historical land-use data, the potential for land-use change and baseline land-use conditions to interact with a changing climate to affect biodiversity remains largely unknown. Here, we use historical land use, climate data and species observation data to investigate the patterns and causes of biodiversity change in Great Britain. We show that anthropogenic climate change and land conversion have broadly led to increased richness, biotic homogenization and warmer-adapted communities of British birds, butterflies and plants over the long term (50+ years) and short term (20 years). Biodiversity change was found to be largely determined by baseline environmental conditions of land use and climate, especially over shorter timescales, suggesting that biodiversity change in recent periods could reflect an inertia derived from past environmental changes. Climate–land-use interactions were mostly related to long-term change in species richness and beta diversity across taxa. Semi-natural grasslands (in a broad sense, including meadows, pastures, lowland and upland heathlands and open wetlands) were associated with lower rates of biodiversity change, while their contribution to national-level biodiversity doubled over the long term. Our findings highlight the need to protect and restore natural and semi-natural habitats, alongside a fuller consideration of individual species’ requirements beyond simple measures of species richness in biodiversity management and policy

HistMapR: rapid digitization of historical land-use maps in R

1. Habitat destruction and degradation represent serious threats to biodiversity, and quantification of land-use change over time is important for understanding the consequences of these changes to organisms and ecosystem service provision. 2. Comparing land use between maps from different time periods allows estimation of the magnitude of habitat change in an area. However, digitizing historical maps manually is time-consuming and analyses of change are usually carried out at small spatial extents or at low resolutions. 3. HistMapR contains a number of functions that can be used to semi-automatically digitize historical land use according to a map's colours, as defined by the RGB bands of the raster image. We test the method on different historical land-use map series and compare results to manual digitizations. 4. Digitization is fast, and agreement with manually digitized maps of around 80–90% meets common targets for image classification. We hope that the ability to quickly classify large areas of historical land use will promote the inclusion of land-use change into analyses of biodiversity, species distributions and ecosystem services

GalliForm, a database of Galliformes occurrence records from the Indo-Malay and Palaearctic, 1800–2008

Historical as well as current species distribution data are needed to track changes in biodiversity. Species distribution data are found in a variety of sources, each of which has its own distinct bias toward certain taxa, time periods or places. We present GalliForm, a database that comprises 186687 galliform occurrence records linked to 118907 localities in Europe and Asia. Records were derived from museums, peer-reviewed and grey literature, unpublished field notes, diaries and correspondence, banding records, atlas records and online birding trip reports. We describe data collection processes, georeferencing methods and quality-control procedures. This database has underpinned several peer-reviewed studies, investigating spatial and temporal bias in biodiversity data, species’ geographic range changes and local extirpation patterns. In our rapidly changing world, an understanding of long-term change in species’ distributions is key to predicting future impacts of threatening processes such as land use change, over-exploitation of species and climate change. This database, its historical aspect in particular, provides a valuable source of information for further studies in macroecology and biodiversity conservation.Additional co-authors: Roald Potapov, Judith Schleicher, Sarah Stebbing, Terry Townshend & Philip J. K. McGowa

GalliForm, a database of Galliformes occurrence records from the Indo-Malay and Palaearctic, 1800-2008.

Historical as well as current species distribution data are needed to track changes in biodiversity. Species distribution data are found in a variety of sources, each of which has its own distinct bias toward certain taxa, time periods or places. We present GalliForm, a database that comprises 186687 galliform occurrence records linked to 118907 localities in Europe and Asia. Records were derived from museums, peer-reviewed and grey literature, unpublished field notes, diaries and correspondence, banding records, atlas records and online birding trip reports. We describe data collection processes, georeferencing methods and quality-control procedures. This database has underpinned several peer-reviewed studies, investigating spatial and temporal bias in biodiversity data, species' geographic range changes and local extirpation patterns. In our rapidly changing world, an understanding of long-term change in species' distributions is key to predicting future impacts of threatening processes such as land use change, over-exploitation of species and climate change. This database, its historical aspect in particular, provides a valuable source of information for further studies in macroecology and biodiversity conservation

Seed mobility and connectivity in changing rural landscapes

The success or failure of many organisms to respond to the challenges of habitat destruction and a warming climate lies in the ability of plant species to disperse between isolated habitats or to migrate to new ranges. European semi-natural grasslands represent one of the world's most species-rich habitats at small scales, but agricultural intensification during the 20th century has meant that many plant species are left only on small fragments of former habitat. It is important that these plants can disperse, both for the maintenance of existing populations, and for the colonisation of target species to restored grasslands. This thesis investigates the ecological, geographical and historical influences on seed dispersal and connectivity in semi-natural grasslands, and the mobility of plants through time and space. Seed dispersal by human activity has played a large role in the build-up of plant communities in rural landscapes, but patterns have shifted. Livestock are the most traditional, and probably the most capable seed dispersal vector in the landscape, but other dispersal methods may also be effective. Motor vehicles disperse seeds with similar traits to those dispersed by livestock, while 39% of valuable grasslands in southern Sweden are connected by the road network. Humans are found to disperse around one-third of available grassland species, including several protected and red-listed species, indicating that humans may have been valuable seed dispersers in the past when rural populations were larger. Past activities can also affect seed mobility in time through the seed bank, as seeds of grassland plant species are shown to remain in the soil even after the grassland had been abandoned. Today however, low seed rain in intensively grazed semi-natural grasslands indicates that seed production may be a limiting factor in allowing seeds to be dispersed in space through the landscape.At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Accepted. Paper 4: In press. Paper 5: Manuscript.</p

Conference posters

These are the posters that I have presented at various ecology conferences over the years.<br><br>1. Crap vs. Cars - Frontiers in Historical Ecology, Zurich 2011. <br> Now published here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2013.00185.x/abstract<br><br>2. Putting seed dispersal on the map - Intecol, London 2013<br> Now published here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ddi.12251/abstract<br><br>3. Can wild herbivores provide functional connectivity between isolated grassland habitats? - Oikos, Stockholm 2014<br> Now published here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-014-2897-7<br><br>4. Plant community turnover after a century of change - Oikos, Umeå 2015<br> Now published here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.12716/abstract<br><br>5. Twentieth century changes in floral diversity and<br>distributions: classifying historical land use in R - BES, Liverpool 2016<br> Now published here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.12788/abstract<br

Journal abbreviations from Web of Science

This is a list of all the journal abbreviations from Web of Science. It is not a perfect list, not least because of the numerous errors in the Web of Science list. However, it was quite a fast way of getting most of the nearly 90 000 journal titles and abbreviations into jabref, and could be useful for other bibliographic systems and/or doing it manually. <br><br>This was created using R (the only "programming language" i know), extracting the abbreviations from the web of science lists (https://images.webofknowledge.com/WOKRS520B4.1/help/WOS/A_abrvjt.html).  <br><br>Feel free to help with improvements!<br><br>Files:<br><br><b>wos_abbrev_table.csv</b> - Table with full names and abbreviations, with and without dots in abbreviations.<br><br><b>jabref_wos_abbrev.txt</b> - Abbreviation table in Jabref format<br><b><br>jabref_wos_abbrev_dots.txt</b> - Abbreviation table in Jabref format, with dots.<br><br><b>wos_abbrev_code.R</b> -  R code used to create the list. Thanks to Daniel Graeber ([email protected]) for inspiration and guidance regarding the addition of dots to abbreviated journal names. <br><br><br><br><br