Category: Publications

Fellow Maria Lumbierres with fellow Prabhat Raj Dahal published a paper entitled Translating habitat class to land cover to map area of habitat of terrestrial vertebrates, co-authored by Moreno di Marco, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Paul F. Donald and Carlo Rondinini.

They developed a data-driven method to translate IUCN Red List Habitat classes to ESA CCI and Copernicus land covers based on point localities of almost 7000 terrestrial vertebrates. The model provided greater standardization, objectivity, repeatability and allowed uncertainty to be quantified when mapping Area of Habitat.

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Fellow Matt Ford and senior scientist Tom Brooks were co-authors in a paper entitled Testing a global standard for quantifying species recovery and assessing conservation impact, let by Molly Grace.

Grace, M.K., Akçakaya; H.R., Bennett, E.L., Brooks, T.M., et al (Ford, M.) (2021) Testing a global standard for quantifying species recovery and assessing conservation impact. Conservation Biology. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13756 → Open Access Repository Continue reading “New paper: Testing a global standard for quantifying species recovery and assessing conservation impact” →

Fellow Marie-Morgane Rouyer co-wrote a paper entitled Tapping into non-English-language science for the conservation of global biodiversity.

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. In this study, the authors show that non-English-language studies provide crucial evidence for informing global biodiversity conservation and represent nearly a quarter of studies assessing the effectiveness of conservation actions. Non-English-language studies are being published at an increasing rate in 6 out of 12 languages and they can expand both the geographical coverage and the taxonomic coverage of English-language studies. Synthesising non-English-language studies is key to overcoming the widespread lack of local, context-dependent evidence and facilitating evidence-based conservation globally.

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Fellow Martin Beal published a paper entitled track2KBA: An R package for identifying important sites for biodiversity from tracking data, co-authored among others by Steffen Oppel, Inês Catry, Paulo Catry and Maria Dias.

They introduce the R package ‘track2KBA’, a tool to identify important sites at the population level using tracking data from individual animals based on three key steps: (a) identifying individual core areas, (b) assessing population-level representativeness of the sample and (c) quantifying spatial overlap among individuals and scaling up to the population. They describe package functionality and exemplify its application using tracking data from three taxa in contrasting environments: a seal, a marine turtle and a migratory land bird. This tool facilitates the delineation of sites of ecological relevance for diverse taxa and provides output useful for assessing their importance to a population or species, as in the Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) Standard. As such, ‘track2KBA’ can contribute directly to conservation planning at global and regional levels.

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Fellow Carmen Soria published a paper entitled COMBINE: a coalesced mammal database of intrinsic and extrinsic traits, co-authored by Michela Pacifici, Moreno Di Marco, Sarah M. Stephen and Carlo Rondinini.

Species’ traits are defined as any measurable characteristic belonging to an individual. Traits influence multiple processes such as the distribution of a species, or how species respond to changes in the environment. In this data paper, the authors collected and unified under the same taxonomy, mammal trait data belonging to multiple data sources. COMBINE is a common repository of a variety of mammal traits, including information on morphology, reproduction, diet, biogeography, life-habit and phenology.

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Once again, Konstantina Spiliopoulou co-wrote a book chapter about Key Biodiversity Areas !

The chapter Implementing and Monitoring Global Biodiversity Targets and Sustainable Development Goals presents how are Key Biodiversity Areas used in Global Biodiversity targets and the Sustainable Development goals, and their future potential. This chapter is published in the book Key Biodiversity Areas, which is the 28th edition of the Nature and Conservation Book Series. In this edition, experts explore different applications or implications of Key Biodiversity Areas in the fight to stop the global loss of biodiversity.

You can have full access to the chapter here.

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Konstantina Spiliopoulou has been involved in a chapter of the new IUCN report entitled Identification and validation of Western African freshwater Key Biodiversity Areas. She contributed to the chapter 9 entitled Key Biodiversity Areas where she worked on KBAs identification.

You can have full access to the book here.

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Inspire4Nature fellow Martin Beal led a new article entitled Global political responsibility for the conservation of albatrosses and large petrels, co-authored among others by Inspire4Nature supervisors: Maria P. Dias and Paulo Catry.

They used the movements of nearly 6000 individual birds from 39 species of albatrosses, and their close relatives the large petrels, to identify the political areas around the world most important to their conservation. They show that these species connect countries around the world, and spend nearly 40% of their time in international waters, highlighting that international collaboration is crucial for ensuring the future of these charismatic creatures.

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Inspire4Nature fellow Konstantina Spiliopoulou led a new article published in the Biodiversity and Conservation journal, which investigated how well The Natura 2000 represents the threatened biodiversity of Greece by assessing the overlap between species ranges and the country’s Natura 2000 network.

Spiliopoulou, K., Dimitrakopoulos, P.G., Brooks, T.M., Kelaidi, G., Paragamian, K., Kati, V., Oikonomou, A., Vavylis, D., Trigas, P., Lymberakis, P., Darwall, W., Stoumboudi, M.Th. & Triantis K.A. (2021) The Natura 2000 network and the ranges of threatened species in Greece. Biodiversity and Conservation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02125-7 → Open Access Repository

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