In 2005, the European Union imposed a ban in trade of wild exotic species as part of a package to control the sprea d of avian flu into the Continent. In a paper published in Science Advances we demonstrate that the ban reduced fluxes of trade in about 90%, from 1.3 million to 130 thousand birds traded. This mighty achievement had non predicted consequences: the market adjusted and new . . . [ Read More ]
Species on the move will change everything
Climate change is causing geographical redistribution of plant and animal species globally. These distributional shifts are leading to new ecosystems and ecological communities, changes that will affect human society. In a recent article published in Science, we review current and future impacts and assess their implications for sustainable development goals. Access to the original article can . . . [ Read More ]
Miguel Araújo awarded the King James I Prize
Miguel Araújo was selected by a panel including 23 Nobel Prizes to receive the 2016 King James I Prize in the category of environmental protection. Miguel won this award for his research on the effects of climate change on biodiversity and for his science dissemination and outreach activities. The King James I Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in Spain. It is awarded every year to . . . [ Read More ]
sdm R – New platform for species distributions modelling
Ecography has just published a new software not article by Babak Naimi and Miguel Araújo featuring the new sdm R platform for species distributions modelling. Sdm R is an object-oriented, reproducible and extensible, platform for running models of species distribtions. It uses individual species and community-based approaches, enabling ensembles of models to be fitted and evaluated, to project . . . [ Read More ]
How complex should models be?
Photo by Stef Lewandowski and licensed under creative commons There is a longstanding discussion about the degree of model complexity that species distributions models have to have in order to maximise the usefulness of the predictions. A discussion that started with observations that more complex models were fitting species distributions data better than simpler models. See for example, Segurado . . . [ Read More ]
Are biotic interactions predictable?
UK grassland trophic web. Artwork from food webs.org Even if serious gaps in knowledge of biodiversity remain, much progress has been made in determining how many different types of organisms exist, what evolutionary relationships connect different lineages to a common ancestor, and where different species are distributed. Much less is known about the types of interactions that exist among . . . [ Read More ]
Multiple dimensions of climate change reveal unappreciated impacts on biodiversity
Shrinking ice sheets and melting ice caps are well known consequences of climate change. But a new study reveals that impacts on biodiversity will be just as severe in other regions of the world. When multiple dimensions of climate change are analyzed, different regions emerge as threatened by different aspects of climate change. The tropics, for example, will be highly affected by local changes . . . [ Read More ]
Species are unlikely to physiologically adapt to increased temperatures
Climate change is altering phenology and distributions of many species and further changes are projected for the 21st century. Can species physiologically adapt to projected climate warming? In a recent "review and synthesis" in Ecology Letters we analysed thermal tolerances of a large number of terrestrial ectotherm (n= 697), endotherm (n=227) and plant (n=1816) species worldwide, and showed that . . . [ Read More ]
Climate change threatens the Iberian Lynx despite conservation efforts
Conservation efforts to protect the world’s most threatened cat from extinction could be jeopardised if the effects of climate change are not considered in reintroduction strategies, concludes a new study in Nature Climate Change. This research provides the most comprehensive analysis of the effects of climate change yet for a threatened vertebrate. The Iberian lynx is the world’s most . . . [ Read More ]