We are thrilled to introduce our newest lab member and PhD fellow, Dario Nania!
His project – “Identification of KBA using uncommonly used taxa and genetic data as indicators” – aims to identify new Key Biodiversity Areas in Italy. To achieve that, he will use taxa not commonly used for this process, such as reptiles, and genetic data.
GMA lab has organised a Science happy hour about biodiversity conservation under global change. Three discussion groups, with researchers from all over Europe, will talk about extinction risk, protected arteas, and climate change.
Organisers: Carlo Rondinini, Michela Pacifici, Moreno Di Marco
Speakers: Tom Brooks (International Union for Conservation of Nature, Switzerland), Paul Donald (BirdLife International, UK), Jorg Freyhoff (Museum für Naturkunde, Germany), Ole Mertz (Copenhagen University, Denmark), Mike Hoffmann (Zoological Society London, UK), Ana Rodrigues (CENRS, France), Maria Stoumboudi (Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece)
Report of the Plenary of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services on the work of its seventh session
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has released its first global assessment of biodiversity, its contributions to humanity and scenarios for its conservation. This report has left us with big headlines in the media and has put biodiversity in the center of the public agenda. However, far from the big headlines of the moment, the science community have been rising the alarms since long time ago. The report covers the decline in biodiversity and ecosystem services, the drivers of this change, the failure to meet many conservation goals and the transformative change needed to rise to the challenge. IPBES report has generated a lot of headlines but, what else is on it?
The most shocking headline that IPBES report has left is that 1 million species are at risk of extinction. This number comes from the knowledge of experts that have calculated that 25% of the species evaluated in the IUCN Red List are at risk of extinction. However is also important to continue the sentence, the report also said that this risk is imminent, many of these species face extinction in the next 10 years, if we don’t do something about it. Moreover, without action, the rates of biodiversity loss will incense 10 to 100 times the background levels.
Another conclusion that is clear from this report is that the causes of the decline on biodiversity are human activities. Changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasion of alien species, are the main drivers that are threatening biodiversity. At the same time, these threads are also threatening humans well being. Biodiversity and healthy ecosystem are vital contributions for human existent. This contribution takes a lot of forms form ecosystem goods and services to naturals gifts.
The most encouraging part of the report is that we still have time to reverse these dramatic trends, but we have to start working right now, it is an urgent matter. We have to put biodiversity at the top of the global agenda. This will require changes in western economic and social systems and changes in our patterns of production and consumption. It will require the sustainable production of food and other resources, alongside a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Society needs to shift from an economic growth perspective to a nature-based one. The report also confirms that nature managed by indigenous people and local communities are in better health than other managements systems. Therefore, to conserve natural ecosytems, governments need to learn from these communities, implementing their knowledge of nature into future policies.
This report is based on 15,000 scientific articles and government reports, integrating information from natural and social sciences, indigenous peoples and traditional agricultural communities. From the Global Mammal Assessment, we contribute to scientific biodiversity knowledge. As members of the IUCN Red List Partnership we are dedicated to the assessment of mammal extinction risk. Moreover we work in the development of species distribution models, the forecast of scenarios of future native and introduced species, risk of extinction due to climate change, and SDGs. Carlo Rondinini, coordinator of the Global Mammal Assessment, was one of the experts invited to write the IPBES report.
On 13th of May, the Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy(TNC), Prof. Hugh Possingham gave a talk on “Novel Conservation science and economics that drives outcomes for The Nature Conservancy” at the Department of Biology and Biotechnologies in Sapienza University of Rome. Prof. Possingham kicked off the session by introducing TNC. He then highlighted the role of mathematics, economics and decision science in conservation. The students also got to know about the famous decision science software Marxan from the inventor himself. The talk then progressed towards some of the projects implemented by TNC. “Debt for nature swaps” was one of the fascinating projects implemented by TNC where a country’s debt was paid by TNC in exchange for commitments to protect nature. In another project called “Reverse Auction”, the farmers were actually given money to leave water in their farms during the winter for the birds. He also talked about the projects which harnessed the potential of geospatial and decision science tools for protecting nature. Development of conservation plan in Mongolia using Marxan, action maps for pollution were some of the examples of such projects. The talk was followed by a short and lively question/answer session.
by Michela Pacifici, Andrea Cristiano, Andrew A. Burbidge, John C.Z. Woinarski, Moreno Di Marco, Carlo Rondinini
Read the full article here (open access!)
Here we provide geographic distribution ranges for 205 species of terrestrial non‐volant mammals in the 1970s. We selected terrestrial non‐volant mammals because they are among the most studied groups, have greater availability of historical distribution data for the 1970s decade, and also show the largest range contractions compared to other taxonomic groups (Di Minin et al. 2013; Ripple et al., 2014). Species belong to 52 families and 16 orders. Range maps were extracted from scientific literature including published papers, books, and action plans. For Australian species, due to the absence of published maps, we collated occurrence data from individual data sets (maintained by museums and government agencies) and converted these into polygonal range maps. Taxonomic and geographic biases towards more studied (charismatic) species are inevitably present. Among the most abundant orders, the highest percentage representation is for Carnivora (55 species, corresponding to 21% of species in the order), Cetartiodactyla (24 species, 10% of the order) and Perissodactyla (6 species, 38% of the order). In contrast, the percentage representation is low for Rodentia (66 species, 3% of species in the order), Primates (19 species, 4%) and Eulipotyphla (6 species, 1%). The proportional representation of less speciose orders is highly variable. The dataset offers the opportunity to measure the recent (1970‐present) change in the distribution of terrestrial mammal species, and test ecological and biogeographical hypotheses about such change. It also allows to identify areas where changes in species distribution were largest.
In the Greek island of Rhodes, the oldest inhabited medieval town in Europe, and a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, we put ourselves into work. Our objective was to experience a real life scenario in the selection of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA). We went trough theoretical and practical exercises to identify sites in Greece contributing significantly to the global persistence of biodiversity. With the input from external scientists specialized in different taxonomic groups and KBA experts, we followed the Global Standard for the identification of Key Biodiversity Areas. This document highlights a resulting effort of more than 30 years in identifying important sites for different taxonomic, ecological and thematic subsets of biodiversity.
The process started with a scoping analysis to compile a list of species in Greece that could trigger the species-based criteria for potential KBAs. Quality data of the species and region of interest are necessary to verify that the proposed species comply with the relevant thresholds. KBA identification and delineation is done by overlaying spatial data of the species with existing conservation sites (e.g. Protected areas) or management units.
After official submission of a proposed area, the KBA secretariat coordinates the process to confirm species’ presence at the site, refine delineation to yield manageable boundaries, and if the threshold is met, finally confirm the site as a new KBA.
Carlo Rondinini gave a public talk (in Italian) on SDG 15 “Life on Land” at Teatro Grande in Brescia, near Milan, on January 21. The talk was introduced by Prof. Roberta Pedrazzani and is part of a series of talks organized by the University of Brescia.
Today GMA Lab joined the Global Strike for Climate, by organising an open-air seminar on the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. The event took place in the courtyard of the Zoology Institute at Sapienza University, featuring presentations from Carlo Rondinini, Moreno Di Marco, Michela Pacifici (Michela was on video during maternity leave!), and Dino Biancolini.
The session started with a presentation on IPCC 1.5°C report, and continued with an overview of the predicted impact of global climate change on the extinction risk of mammals and plants, and the risk of spread of alien species. Many students and academics joined the event and engaged in discussions with the speakers, before heading off to the Students Ride for Climate event and other activities organised by Sapienza University.
Conservation organisations and governments often use charismatic megafauna as surrogates to represent broader biodiversity. While these species are primarily selected as “flagships” for marketing campaigns, it is important to evaluate their surrogacy potential, i.e., the extent to which their protection benefits other biodiversity elements. Four charismatic megafauna species are used as surrogates in the megadiverse island of Sumatra: the Sumatran tiger Panthera tigris sumatrae, Sumatran elephant Elephas maximus sumatranus, Sumatran orangutan Pongo abelii and Sumatran rhinoceros Dicerorhinus sumatrensis. We examined how well each of these species performed in representing the distribution of all co‐occurring terrestrial mammal species on the island, and the priority areas for the conservation of three facets of mammalian biodiversity (taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional).
We used habitat suitability models to represent the distribution of 184 terrestrial mammal species, 160 phylogenetic groups and 74 functional trait groups. We then identified priority conservation areas using the spatial prioritisation software Zonation.
We found that the habitat overlaps between each of the four charismatic species and the other mammal species varied, ranging from a mean of 52% (SD = 27%) for the tiger to 2% (SD = 2%) for the rhino. Combining the four species together only improved the representation levels marginally compared to only using the tiger. Among the four charismatic megafauna species, the extent of suitable habitat of Sumatran tiger covered the highest proportion of priority conservation areas. The Sumatran tiger also outperformed most of other mammal species with similar range sizes.
We found that some of the top‐ranked conservation areas for taxonomic (28%), phylogenetic (8%) and functional diversity (19%) did not overlap with any of the charismatic species’ suitable habitat.
Synthesis and applications. Wide‐ranging charismatic species can represent broader mammalian biodiversity, but they may miss some key areas with high biodiversity importance. We suggest that a combination of systematic spatial prioritisation and surrogacy analyses are important in order to determine the allocation of conservation resources in biodiversity‐rich areas such as Sumatra, where an expansion of the protected area network is required.
Moreno Di Marco won a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship with the project PROTECTNICHE. The project, presented by the researcher of the Department of Biology and Biotechnology at Sapienza Università di Roma in collaboration with Dr Carlo Rondinini, aims at disentangling the impacts of humans, climate change, and life history on the climatic niches of terrestrial mammals. The goal is to inform a conservation strategy for preventing future species declines. The extinction of species is the most alarming consequence of global biodiversity decline, with potential dramatic effects on our economy and well-being. The current rate of climate change is predicted to further increase extinction risk, hence there is urgent need to anticipate species decline rather than reacting to it. The breadth of a species’ niche – the set of environmental conditions in which the species can persist – is the key ecological trait that allows adaptation to environmental change, but is often ignored in conservation planning applications. This is a research area of primary interest in Europe, given the European Commission has recognised that business opportunities from investing in biodiversity conservation could be worth US$ 2-6 trillion by 2050 (source Sapienza)
