Guiding action on invasive alien species towards meeting the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2030

\ua9 Randall R. Jim\ue9nez et al. This is an open access article distributed under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (Attribution 4.0 International – CC BY 4.0). Invasive alien species (IAS) are a major threat to global biodiversity. The total cost of biological invasions across all European Union member states has been estimated at 129.9 billion US dollars between 1960 and 2020. It is, therefore, crucial to implement effective measures for IAS management. In Europe, the overarching mechanism for this is established through the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy 2030, which aims to halve the number of Red List species threatened by IAS by 2030, namely by stepping up the implementation of the EU IAS Regulation. To support the implementation of the strategy, we use the Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) methodology to identify and quantify opportunities to reduce species extinction risk in the EU by managing invasive alien species (IAS), focusing specifically on its threat abatement component (STAR-t). Using data from the European Red List on extinction risk, threats and distribution for terrestrial and freshwater species groups (both animals and plants) threatened by IAS, we identified key geographic areas and species for intervention. The countries and territories providing the largest opportunities to contribute towards reducing EU species extinction risk through managing IAS are the Canary Islands [Spain] (20.8% of total EU STAR-t attributed to IAS), Madeira [Portugal] (14.2%), mainland Spain (11.9%), Italy (9.3%), Azores [Portugal] (5.4%) and Greece (5.3%). For specific IAS, the greatest opportunities to reduce regional species extinction risk by mitigating threats from IAS come from managing feral goats (12.4%), mouflons (8.1%), rabbits (5.3%) and rats (4.6%). This work showcases the first application of STAR at a regional scale to measure opportunities for threat abatement caused by IAS and provides practical application in guiding the management actions with the highest conservation gains towards the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030

The positive impact of conservation action

Governments recently adopted new global targets to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity. It is therefore crucial to understand the outcomes of conservation actions. We conducted a global meta-analysis of 186 studies (including 665 trials) that measured biodiversity over time and compared outcomes under conservation action with a suitable counterfactual of no action. We find that in two-thirds of cases, conservation either improved the state of biodiversity or at least slowed declines. Specifically, we find that interventions targeted at species and ecosystems, such as invasive species control, habitat loss reduction and restoration, protected areas, and sustainable management, are highly effective and have large effect sizes. This provides the strongest evidence to date that conservation actions are successful but require transformational scaling up to meet global targets

The cognitive neuroscience of prehension: recent developments

Prehension, the capacity to reach and grasp, is the key behavior that allows humans to change their environment. It continues to serve as a remarkable experimental test case for probing the cognitive architecture of goal-oriented action. This review focuses on recent experimental evidence that enhances or modifies how we might conceptualize the neural substrates of prehension. Emphasis is placed on studies that consider how precision grasps are selected and transformed into motor commands. Then, the mechanisms that extract action relevant information from vision and touch are considered. These include consideration of how parallel perceptual networks within parietal cortex, along with the ventral stream, are connected and share information to achieve common motor goals. On-line control of grasping action is discussed within a state estimation framework. The review ends with a consideration about how prehension fits within larger action repertoires that solve more complex goals and the possible cortical architectures needed to organize these actions

Holding-on: co-evolution between infant carrying and grasping behaviour in strepsirrhines

The origin and evolution of manual grasping remain poorly understood. The ability to cling requires important grasping abilities and is essential to survive in species where the young are carried in the fur. A previous study has suggested that this behaviour could be a pre-adaptation for the evolution of fine manipulative skills. In this study we tested the co-evolution between infant carrying in the fur and manual grasping abilities in the context of food manipulation. As strepsirrhines vary in the way infants are carried (mouth vs. fur), they are an excellent model to test this hypothesis. Data on food manipulation behaviour were collected for 21 species of strepsirrhines. Our results show that furcarrying species exhibited significantly more frequent manual grasping of food items. This study clearly illustrates the potential novel insights that a behaviour (infant carrying) that has previously been largely ignored in the discussion of the evolution of primate manipulation can bring.peerReviewe

A metric for spatially explicit contributions to science-based species targets

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework will probably include a goal to stabilize and restore the status of species. Its delivery would be facilitated by making the actions required to halt and reverse species loss spatially explicit. Here, we develop a species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric that is scalable across species, threats and geographies. STAR quantifies the contributions that abating threats and restoring habitats in specific places offer towards reducing extinction risk. While every nation can contribute towards halting biodiversity loss, Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, Madagascar and Brazil combined have stewardship over 31% of total STAR values for terrestrial amphibians, birds and mammals. Among actions, sustainable crop production and forestry dominate, contributing 41% of total STAR values for these taxonomic groups. Key Biodiversity Areas cover 9% of the terrestrial surface but capture 47% of STAR values. STAR could support governmental and non-state actors in quantifying their contributions to meeting science-based species targets within the framework