A fresh approach to evidence synthesis.

For most conservation interventions, insufficient evidence exists for investigators to be able to conduct a meta-analysis for each species or genus. However, by being apprised of studies that examine how a particular intervention has worked for an order — for birds in general, say — practitioners can better weigh up the chances of success for their intended programme

Ecology and conservation of bat species in the Western Ghats of India

The Western Ghats of India are a globally important biodiversity hotspot, but around 90 % of the land has been converted to agriculture. Little is known about how bats respond to the conversion of native rainforest to different plantation types in the Western Ghats. This thesis examines the response of bats to coffee and tea plantations, and to riparian habitats, in the southern Western Ghats. Most bat assemblages in the tropics have been studied by catching bats, but many studies have shown that catching alone can give biased and incomplete results. In order to use acoustic data as well as catching data in this landscape I made a library of the echolocation calls of fifteen echolocating species in the landscape. Comparisons of the data from each method showed that combining catching and acoustic data gave the most complete picture of the assemblage, but that acoustic data alone detected more species than catching data alone. Acoustic and catching data were used to build habitat suitability models for ten species. Scales of 100 m – 500 m were the most important for predicting bat presence. Several species showed a positive response to habitats containing native trees and habitat richness, and a negative response to tea plantations and distance to water. Coffee plantations did not differ significantly from forest fragments in terms of bat species or abundance, but did differ in species composition. Bat assemblages in coffee plantations were functionally very similar to those in forest fragments. Tea plantations had the lowest bat species richness of all habitats and differed in species composition from all other habitats. Bat assemblages in tea plantations had lower functional richness and specialisation than other habitats, and the bats remaining were open-adapted species. Rivers with riparian corridors did not have significantly greater bat species richness than rivers without corridors, but differed functionally in several ways. Rivers without riparian corridors had reduced functional specialisation and functional divergence. Rivers with riparian corridors supported more forest adapted species than rivers without riparian corridors

Scientists must act on our own warnings to humanity

We face interconnected planetary emergencies threatening our climate and ecosystems. Charlie J. Gardner and Claire F. R. Wordley argue that scientists should join civil disobedience movements to fight these unprecedented crises

Bats in the Ghats: Agricultural intensification reduces functional diversity and increases trait filtering in a biodiversity hotspot in India

The responses of bats to land-use change have been extensively studied in temperate zones and the neotropics, but little is known from the palaeotropics. Effective conservation in heavily-populated palaeotropical hotspots requires a better understanding of which bats can and cannot survive in human-modified landscapes. We used catching and acoustic transects to examine bat assemblages in the Western Ghats of India, and identify the species most sensitive to agricultural change. We quantified functional diversity and trait filtering of assemblages in forest fragments, tea and coffee plantations, and along rivers in tea plantations with and without forested corridors, compared to protected forests. Functional diversity in forest fragments and shade-grown coffee was similar to that in protected forests, but was far lower in tea plantations. Trait filtering was also strongest in tea plantations. Forested river corridors in tea plantations mitigated much of the loss of functional diversity and the trait filtering seen on rivers in tea plantations without forested corridors. The bats most vulnerable to intensive agriculture were frugivorous, large, had short broad wings, or made constant frequency echolocation calls. The last three features are characteristic of forest animal-eating species that typically take large prey, often by gleaning. Ongoing conservation work to restore forest fragments and retain native trees in coffee plantations should be highly beneficial for bats in this landscape. The maintenance of a mosaic landscape with sufficient patches of forest, shade-grown coffee and riparian corridors will help to maintain landscape wide functional diversity in an area dominated by tea plantations

A pivotal year for Bolivian conservation policy

Non peer reviewe

Worldwide insect declines: An important message, but interpret with caution.

A recent paper claiming evidence of global insect declines achieved huge media attention, including claims of "insectaggedon" and a "collapse of nature." Here, we argue that while many insects are declining in many places around the world, the study has important limitations that should be highlighted. We emphasise the robust evidence of large and rapid insect declines present in the literature, while also highlighting the limitations of the original study

Ten-year assessment of the 100 priority questions for global biodiversity conservation

In 2008, a group of conservation scientists compiled a list of 100 priority questions for the conservation of the world's biodiversity ?Sutherland et al. (2009) Conservation Biology, 23, 557?567?. However, now almost a decade later, no one has yet published a study gauging how much progress has been made in addressing these 100 high?priority questions in the peer?reviewed literature. Here we take a first step toward re?examining the 100 questions and identify key knowledge gaps that still remain. Through a combination of a questionnaire and a literature review, we evaluated each of the 100 questions on the basis of two criteria: relevance and effort. We defined highly?relevant questions as those which ? if answered ? would have the greatest impact on global biodiversity conservation, while effort was quantified based on the number of review publications addressing a particular question, which we used as a proxy for research effort. Using this approach we identified a set of questions that, despite being perceived as highly relevant, have been the focus of relatively few review publications over the past ten years. These questions covered a broad range of topics but predominantly tackled three major themes: the conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems, the role of societal structures in shaping interactions between people and the environment, and the impacts of conservation interventions. We see these questions as important knowledge gaps that have so far received insufficient attention and may need to be prioritised in future research

Beyond describing threats: Rigorous analysis of conservation interventions

Conservation science as a discipline spends a lot of effort describing threats. While this is important, relatively little attention is paid to rigorously testing conservation interventions. Conservation Evidence is one project working to collate the evidence for how well conservation interventions actually work. This is an ongoing project which attempts to keep evidence synthesis ‘live’ and updated, and to facilitate use by a diverse community of people. However we run into problems in collating, interpreting, and encouraging people to use the science due to i) a scarcity of studies for many interventions, ii) poor methodological design hampering interpretation, iii) a poor understanding of how generalizable conservation interventions are, partly due to i and ii, and iv) a reluctance or lack of confidence in using evidence from some quarters. I will describe our theory of change for improving evidence availability and increasing use. I will describe some of the work we are doing as a group to map evidence gaps, to assess the benefits and drawbacks of different study designs for testing interventions, to assist conservation practitioners in properly evaluating the impact of their actions, and to encourage evidence use among NGOs, ecological consultants and governments.peerReviewe

Heard but not seen: Comparing bat assemblages and study methods in a mosaic landscape in the Western Ghats of India.

We used capture (mist-netting) and acoustic methods to compare the species richness, abundance, and composition of a bat assemblage in different habitats in the Western Ghats of India. In the tropics, catching bats has been more commonly used as a survey method than acoustic recordings. In our study, acoustic methods based on recording echolocation calls detected greater bat activity and more species than mist-netting. However, some species were detected more frequently or exclusively by capture. Ideally, the two methods should be used together to compensate for the biases in each. Using combined capture and acoustic data, we found that protected forests, forest fragments, and shade coffee plantations hosted similar and diverse species assemblages, although some species were recorded more frequently in protected forests. Tea plantations contained very few species from the overall bat assemblage. In riparian habitats, a strip of forested habitat on the river bank improved the habitat for bats compared to rivers with tea planted up to each bank. Our results show that shade coffee plantations are better bat habitat than tea plantations in biodiversity hotspots. However, if tea is to be the dominant land use, forest fragments and riparian corridors can improve the landscape considerably for bats. We encourage coffee growers to retain traditional plantations with mature native trees, rather than reverting to sun grown coffee or coffee shaded by a few species of timber trees