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Diversity
Special Issues
Biodiversity and Global Change
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Biodiversity and Global Change

A special issue of Diversity (ISSN 1424-2818).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2015) | Viewed by 15041

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Tom Oliver

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Maclean Building, Benson Lane, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, Oxfordshire OX10 8BB, UK
Interests: climate change ecology; climate-land use interactions; biodiversity impacts; functional connectivity; resilience; population dynamics; butterfly ecology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Across the globe, conservation efforts have not managed to resolve the biodiversity crisis and many species populations continue to suffer declines. Biodiversity is impacted by a range of drivers, including habitat loss and degradation, climate change, invasive species, and pollution. Many drivers also interact to impact biodiversity. In the face of rapid changes in these drivers, there is an urgent need to understand the impacts on biodiversity and formulate appropriate responses. This Special Issue will include analyses concerning the historical impacts of drivers on biodiversity as well as projected future impacts. Biodiversity impacts may include community changes, distribution change, population dynamics, phenological shifts, as well as other aspects of biodiversity response. We also very much welcome analyses investigating the effectiveness of various conservation and mitigation responses to global change drivers.

Dr. Tom Oliver
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • biodiversity change
  • environmental drivers
  • climate change
  • habitat loss
  • community changes
  • distribution changes
  • scenarios

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

695 KiB  
Article
Predicting Future European Breeding Distributions of British Seabird Species under Climate Change and Unlimited/No Dispersal Scenarios
by Deborah J.F. Russell, Sarah Wanless, Yvonne C. Collingham, Brian Huntley and Keith C. Hamer
Diversity 2015, 7(4), 342-359; https://doi.org/10.3390/d7040342 - 2 Nov 2015
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 8451
Abstract
Understanding which traits make species vulnerable to climatic change and predicting future distributions permits conservation efforts to be focused on the most vulnerable species and the most appropriate sites. Here, we combine climate envelope models with predicted bioclimatic data from two emission scenarios [...] Read more.
Understanding which traits make species vulnerable to climatic change and predicting future distributions permits conservation efforts to be focused on the most vulnerable species and the most appropriate sites. Here, we combine climate envelope models with predicted bioclimatic data from two emission scenarios leading up to 2100, to predict European breeding distributions of 23 seabird species that currently breed in the British Isles. Assuming unlimited dispersal, some species would be “winners” (increase the size of their range), but over 65% would lose range, some by up to 80%. These “losers” have a high vulnerability to low prey availability, and a northerly distribution meaning they would lack space to move into. Under the worst-case scenario of no dispersal, species are predicted to lose between 25% and 100% of their range, so dispersal ability is a key constraint on future range sizes. More globally, the results indicate, based on foraging ecology, which seabird species are likely to be most affected by climatic change. Neither of the emissions scenarios used in this study is extreme, yet they generate very different predictions for some species, illustrating that even small decreases in emissions could yield large benefits for conservation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biodiversity and Global Change)
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408 KiB  
Article
The Importance of Scaling for Detecting Community Patterns: Success and Failure in Assemblages of Introduced Species
by Craig R. Allen, David G. Angeler, Michael P. Moulton and Crawford S. Holling
Diversity 2015, 7(3), 229-241; https://doi.org/10.3390/d7030229 - 26 Jun 2015
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 6002
Abstract
Community saturation can help to explain why biological invasions fail. However, previous research has documented inconsistent relationships between failed invasions (i.e., an invasive species colonizes but goes extinct) and the number of species present in the invaded community. We use data [...] Read more.
Community saturation can help to explain why biological invasions fail. However, previous research has documented inconsistent relationships between failed invasions (i.e., an invasive species colonizes but goes extinct) and the number of species present in the invaded community. We use data from bird communities of the Hawaiian island of Oahu, which supports a community of 38 successfully established introduced birds and where 37 species were introduced but went extinct (failed invasions). We develop a modified approach to evaluate the effects of community saturation on invasion failure. Our method accounts (1) for the number of species present (NSP) when the species goes extinct rather than during its introduction; and (2) scaling patterns in bird body mass distributions that accounts for the hierarchical organization of ecosystems and the fact that interaction strength amongst species varies with scale. We found that when using NSP at the time of extinction, NSP was higher for failed introductions as compared to successful introductions, supporting the idea that increasing species richness and putative community saturation mediate invasion resistance. Accounting for scale-specific patterns in body size distributions further improved the relationship between NSP and introduction failure. Results show that a better understanding of invasion outcomes can be obtained when scale-specific community structure is accounted for in the analysis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biodiversity and Global Change)
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