Nature: poorest may see it as their economic rival.
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Animals↗
Biomedical subjects
Peter Kareiva
Publications and source records attributed to Peter Kareiva.
Shaping global environmental decisions using socio-ecological models.
One of the most ambitious ecological studies of the past few decades was the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), which examined the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being. The MA developed global ecological scenarios as a process to inform policy options, despite enormous uncertainties. These scenarios were based on an interlocking suite of models that forecast the future. Following the recent completion and publication of the MA, there is now movement towards making the value of ecosystem services an integral part of key policy decisions. Here, we review the MA approach and suggest areas where immediate progress can be made to increase the likelihood that decision-makers will embrace the vision of assessments such as the MA.
Agriculture↗
Conservation biology: beyond marine protected areas.
Socioeconomic and ecological analyses of eleven coral reef conservation efforts make clear that marine protected areas are not the answer, and that in fact support of local communities is far more important than some government mandated 'fishing closure'. Apparently there are marine 'paper parks' just as there are terrestrial 'paper parks'.
Animals↗
Land market feedbacks can undermine biodiversity conservation.
The full or partial purchase of land has become a cornerstone of efforts to conserve biodiversity in countries with strong private property rights. Methods used to target areas for acquisition typically ignore land market dynamics. We show how conservation purchases affect land prices and generate feedbacks that can undermine conservation goals, either by displacing development toward biologically valuable areas or by accelerating its pace. The impact of these market feedbacks on the effectiveness of conservation depends on the ecological value of land outside nature reserves. Traditional, noneconomic approaches to site prioritization should perform adequately in places where land outside reserves supports little biodiversity. However, these approaches will perform poorly in locations where the countryside surrounding reserves is important for species' persistence. Conservation investments can sometimes even be counterproductive, condemning more species than they save. Conservation is most likely to be compromised in the absence of accurate information on species distributions, which provides a strong argument for improving inventories of biodiversity. Accounting for land market dynamics in conservation planning is crucial for making smart investment decisions.
Conservation of Natural Resources↗
Fitness consequences of choosy oviposition for a time-limited butterfly.
For the majority of insects, a female's choice of oviposition site(s) greatly influences both the success of individual offspring and her own total fitness. Theory predicts that females most strongly limited by egg number will employ greater oviposition site discrimination than those predominately subject to time limitation. The reproductive success of the butterfly Pieris virginiensis at our Connecticut, USA, field site is strongly time constrained on two fronts. First, during their three-week flight season, only 60% of days and 28% of daytime hours were suitable for flight. Second, larval survival is impacted by the rapid senescence of their spring ephemeral host plant Dentaria diphylla, with eggs laid during the first half of the flight season having approximately three times the survival chance of those laid later. Yet, on average, females choose to oviposit on only half the plants they closely inspect and fly over most ramets without any inspection. Our experiments demonstrate that the preferred host ramets confer an approximate two-fold survival advantage. Females are not choosing plants that senesce later, despite the advantage that such plants would confer. We use empirical data on female behavior and larval performance to parameterize a simulation model. Model results suggest that, despite the notable time limitation in this system, the observed level of female oviposition site preference not only increases individual larval survival, but also total female fitness. Low egg loads in this species may contribute to selection for strong host plant discrimination.
Animals↗
Ecosystem services.
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Conservation of Natural Resources↗
Ecology: compensating for extinction.
Food web interactions allow communities to compensate for the loss of species. Compensation of this kind may reshuffle communities so that today's resilient species are tomorrow's vulnerable species, creating a false impression of ecosystem stability following the first wave of extinction.
Biodiversity↗
Habitat destruction, fragmentation, and disturbance promote invasion by habitat generalists in a multispecies metapopulation.
Species invasions are extremely common and are vastly outpacing the ability of resource agencies to address each invasion, one species at a time. Management actions that target the whole landscape or ecosystem may provide more cost-effective protection against the establishment of invasive species than a species-by-species approach. To explore what ecosystem-level actions might effectively reduce invasions, we developed a multispecies, multihabitat metapopulation model. We assume that species that successfully establish themselves outside their native range tend to be habitat generalists and that a tradeoff exists between competitive ability and habitat breadth, such that habitat specialists are competitively superior to habitat generalists. In this model, habitat destruction, fragmentation, and short-term disturbances all favor invasion by habitat generalists, despite the inferior competitive abilities of generalist species. Our model results illustrate that providing relatively undisturbed habitat and preventing further habitat degradation and fragmentation can provide a highly cost-effective defense against invasive species.
Competitive Behavior↗
Slow-moving journals hinder conservation efforts.
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Behavior↗