Spillovers and legacies of land management on temperate woodland biodiversity.

Species distributions are a product of both current spatial configuration of habitats and legacies of historical land use. Here we explore current and historical drivers of species distributions, considering combined effects of spatial spillovers and temporal legacies, both within and between habitat types. We fit Bayesian hierarchical occupancy models to data on 373 species from four taxa (ground beetles, birds, vascular plants and small terrestrial mammals) from a chronosequence of 134 woodlands (10 to >250 years old) in temperate agricultural landscapes in the UK.

Achieving international biodiversity targets: Learning from local norms, values and actions regarding migratory waterfowl management in Kazakhstan.

Migratory species are protected under international legislation; their seasonal movements across international borders may therefore present opportunities for understanding how global conservation policies translate to local-level actions across different socio-ecological contexts. Moreover, local-level management of migratory species can reveal how culture and governance affects progress towards achieving global targets. Here, we investigate potential misalignment in the two-way relationship between global-level conservation policies (i.

Long-term collapse in fruit availability threatens Central African forest megafauna.

Afrotropical forests host much of the world's remaining megafauna, although these animals are confined to areas where direct human influences are low. We used a rare long-term dataset of tree reproduction and a photographic database of forest elephants to assess food availability and body condition of an emblematic megafauna species at Lopé National Park, Gabon. Our analysis reveals an 81% decline in fruiting over a 32-year period (1986-2018) and an 11% decline in body condition of fruit-dependent forest elephants from 2008 to 2018.

Ecological time lags and the journey towards conservation success.

Global conservation targets to reverse biodiversity declines and halt species extinctions are not being met despite decades of conservation action. However, a lack of measurable change in biodiversity indicators towards these targets is not necessarily a sign that conservation has failed; instead, temporal lags in species' responses to conservation action could be masking our ability to observe progress towards conservation success. Here we present our perspective on the influence of ecological time lags on the assessment of conservation success and review the principles of time lags and their ecological drivers.

Context-dependent colonization of terrestrial habitat 'islands' by a long-distance migrant bird.

Landscape context can affect how individuals perceive patch quality during colonization. However, although context-dependent colonization has been observed in aquatic environments, it has rarely been studied in terrestrial environments or at large spatial scales. In this paper, we assessed how landscape context influenced colonization rates in a large-scale ( 7000 km) terrestrial system where colonizers (Willow Warbler ) are capable of rapid, long-distance movements.

Tritrophic phenological match-mismatch in space and time.

Increasing temperatures associated with climate change may generate phenological mismatches that disrupt previously synchronous trophic interactions. Most work on mismatch has focused on temporal trends, whereas spatial variation in the degree of trophic synchrony has largely been neglected, even though the degree to which mismatch varies in space has implications for meso-scale population dynamics and evolution. Here we quantify latitudinal trends in phenological mismatch, using phenological data on an oak-caterpillar-bird system from across the UK.

Bird-community responses to habitat creation in a long-term, large-scale natural experiment.

Ecosystem function and resilience are compromised when habitats become fragmented due to land-use change. This has led to national and international conservation strategies aimed at restoring habitat extent and improving functional connectivity (i.e.