Most of arthropod biodiversity is unknown to science. Consequently, it has been unclear whether insect communities around the world are dominated by the same or different taxa. This question can be answered through standardized sampling of biodiversity followed by estimation of species diversity and community composition with DNA barcodes. Here this approach is applied to flying insects sampled by 39 Malaise traps placed in five biogeographic regions, eight countries and numerous habitats (>225,000 specimens belonging to >25,000 species in 458 families). We find that 20 insect families (10 belonging to Diptera) account for >50% of local species diversity regardless of clade age, continent, climatic region and habitat type. Consistent differences in family-level dominance explain two-thirds of variation in community composition despite massive levels of species turnover, with most species (>97%) in the top 20 families encountered at a single site only. Alarmingly, the same families that dominate insect diversity are 'dark taxa' in that they suffer from extreme taxonomic neglect, with little signs of increasing activities in recent years. Taxonomic neglect tends to increase with diversity and decrease with body size. Identifying and tackling the diversity of 'dark taxa' with scalable techniques emerge as urgent priorities in biodiversity science.
A global survey of coral reefs reveals that overfishing is driving resident shark species toward extinction, causing diversity deficits in reef elasmobranch (shark and ray) assemblages. Our species-level analysis revealed global declines of 60 to 73% for five common resident reef shark species and that individual shark species were not detected at 34 to 47% of surveyed reefs. As reefs become more shark-depleted, rays begin to dominate assemblages. Shark-dominated assemblages persist in wealthy nations with strong governance and in highly protected areas, whereas poverty, weak governance, and a lack of shark management are associated with depauperate assemblages mainly composed of rays. Without action to address these diversity deficits, loss of ecological function and ecosystem services will increasingly affect human communities.
Emerging infectious diseases continue to pose a significant burden on global public health, and there is a critical need to better understand transmission dynamics arising at the interface of human activity and wildlife habitats. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), more typically applied to questions of biodiversity and conservation, provides an opportunity to collect and analyse audio data in relative real time and at low cost. Acoustic methods are increasingly accessible, with the expansion of cloud-based computing, low-cost hardware, and machine learning approaches. Paired with purposeful experimental design, acoustic data can complement existing surveillance methods and provide a novel toolkit to investigate the key biological parameters and ecological interactions that underpin infectious disease epidemiology.
Protected Areas (PAs) are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation. Here, we collated distributional data for >14,000 (~70% of) species of amphibians and reptiles (herpetofauna) to perform a global assessment of the conservation effectiveness of PAs using species distribution models. Our analyses reveal that >91% of herpetofauna species are currently distributed in PAs, and that this proportion will remain unaltered under future climate change. Indeed, loss of species' distributional ranges will be lower inside PAs than outside them. Therefore, the proportion of effectively protected species is predicted to increase. However, over 7.8% of species currently occur outside PAs, and large spatial conservation gaps remain, mainly across tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, and across non-high-income countries. We also predict that more than 300 amphibian and 500 reptile species may go extinct under climate change over the course of the ongoing century. Our study highlights the importance of PAs in providing herpetofauna with refuge from climate change, and suggests ways to optimize PAs to better conserve biodiversity worldwide.
Large-scale deforestation in the tropics, triggered by logging and subsequent agricultural monoculture has a significant adverse impact on biodiversity due to habitat degradation. Here, we measured the diversity of butterfly species in three agricultural landscapes, agroforestry orchards, oil palm, and rubber tree plantations. Butterfly species were counted at 127 sampling points over the course of a year using the point count method. We found that agroforestry orchards supported a greater number of butterfly species (74 species) compared to rubber tree (61 species) and oil palm plantations (54 species) which were dominated by generalist (73%) followed by forest specialists (27%). We found no significant difference of butterfly species composition between agroforestry orchards and rubber tree plantation, with both habitats associated with more butterfly species compared to oil palm plantations. This indicates butterflies were able to persist better in certain agricultural landscapes. GLMMs suggested that tree height, undergrowth coverage and height, and elevation determined butterfly diversity. Butterfly species richness was also influenced by season and landscape-level variables such as proximity to forest, mean NDVI, and habitat. Understanding the factors that contributed to butterfly species richness in an agroecosystem, stakeholders should consider management practices to improve biodiversity conservation such as ground vegetation management and retaining adjacent forest areas to enhance butterfly species richness. Furthermore, our findings suggest that agroforestry system should be considered to enhance biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.
Cities all over the world are edging further into the ocean. Coastal reclamation is a global conservation issue with implications for ocean life, ecosystems, and human well-being. Using Malaysia as a case study, the coastal reclamation trends over three decades (1991-2021) were mapped using Landsat images and Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) via the Google Earth Engine platform. The changes in drivers and impacts of these coastal expansions throughout the decades were also reviewed. Twelve out of the 14 states in Malaysia had planned, active, or completed reclamations on their shorelines. Between 1991 and 2021, an absolute area of 82.64 km2 has been or will be reclaimed should all the projects be completed. The most reported driver for coastal expansion in Malaysia is for development and modernization (41 %), followed by rise in human population (20 %), monetary gains from the development of prime land (15 %), and agriculture and aquaculture activities (9 %). Drivers such as reduction of construction costs, financial advantage of prime land, oil and gas, advancement of technology, and tourism (Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H)) had only started occurring within the last decade, while others have been documented since the 1990's. Pollution is the most reported impact (24 %) followed by disruption of livelihoods, sources of income and human well-being (21 %), destruction of natural habitats (17 %), decrease in biodiversity (11 %), changes in landscapes (10 %), erosion / accretion (8 %), threat to tourism industry (6 %), and exposure to wave surges (3 %). Of these, changes in landscape, shoreline alignment, seabed contour, and coastal groundwater, as well as wave surges had only started to surface as impacts in the last two decades. Efforts to protect existing natural coastal and marine ecosystems, restore degraded ones, and fund endeavours that emphasize nature is needed to support sustainable development goals for the benefit of future generations.
Multiple ecological contaminants in gaseous, liquid, and solid forms are vented into ecosystems due to the huge growth of industrialization, which is today at the forefront of worldwide attention. High-efficiency removal of these environmental pollutants is a must because of the potential harm to public health and biodiversity. The alarming concern has led to the synthesis of improved nanomaterials for removing pollutants. A path to innovative methods for identifying and preventing several obnoxious, hazardous contaminants from entering the environment is grabbing attention. Various applications in diverse industries are seen as a potential directions for researchers. MXene is a new, excellent, and advanced material that has received greater importance related to the environmental application. Due to its unique physicochemical and mechanical properties, high specific surface area, physiological compatibility, strong electrodynamics, and raised specific surface area wettability, its applications are growing. This review paper examines the most recent methods and trends for environmental pollutant removal using advanced 2D Mxene materials. In addition, the history and the development of MXene synthesis were elaborated. Furthermore, an extreme summary of various environmental pollutants removal has been discussed, and the future challenges along with their future perspectives have been illustrated.
Above 1000 invasive species have been growing and developing ubiquitously on Earth. With extremely vigorous adaptability, strong reproduction, and spreading powers, invasive species have posed an alarming threat to indigenous plants, water quality, soil, as well as biodiversity. It was estimated that an economic loss of billions of dollars or equivalent to 1 % of gross domestic product as a consequence of lost crops, control efforts, and damage costs caused by invasive plants in the United States. While eradicating invasive plants from the ecosystems is practically infeasible, taking advantage of invasive plants as a sustainable, locally available, and zero-cost source to provide valuable phytochemicals for bionanoparticles fabrication is worth considering. Here, we review the harms, benefits, and role of invasive species as important botanical sources to extract natural compounds such as piceatannol, resveratrol, and quadrangularin-A, flavonoids, and triterpenoids, which are linked tightly to the formation and application of bionanoparticles. As expected, the invasive plant-mediated bionanoparticles have exhibited outstanding antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer, and antioxidant activities. The mechanism of biomedical activities of the invasive plant-mediated bionanoparticles was insightfully addressed and discussed. We also expect that this review not only contributes to efforts to combat invasive plant species but also opens new frontiers of bionanoparticles in the biomedical applications, therapeutic treatment, and smart agriculture.
Current policy is driving renewed impetus to restore forests to return ecological function, protect species, sequester carbon and secure livelihoods. Here we assess the contribution of tree planting to ecosystem restoration in tropical and sub-tropical Asia; we synthesize evidence on mortality and growth of planted trees at 176 sites and assess structural and biodiversity recovery of co-located actively restored and naturally regenerating forest plots. Mean mortality of planted trees was 18% 1 year after planting, increasing to 44% after 5 years. Mortality varied strongly by site and was typically ca 20% higher in open areas than degraded forest, with height at planting positively affecting survival. Size-standardized growth rates were negatively related to species-level wood density in degraded forest and plantations enrichment settings. Based on community-level data from 11 landscapes, active restoration resulted in faster accumulation of tree basal area and structural properties were closer to old-growth reference sites, relative to natural regeneration, but tree species richness did not differ. High variability in outcomes across sites indicates that planting for restoration is potentially rewarding but risky and context-dependent. Restoration projects must prepare for and manage commonly occurring challenges and align with efforts to protect and reconnect remaining forest areas. The abstract of this article is available in Bahasa Indonesia in the electronic supplementary material. This article is part of the theme issue 'Understanding forest landscape restoration: reinforcing scientific foundations for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration'.
The numerous explanations for why Earth's biodiversity is concentrated at low latitudes fail to explain variation in the strength and even direction of the gradient through deep time. Consequently, we do not know if today's gradient is representative of what might be expected on other planets or is merely an idiosyncrasy of Earth's history. We propose a hierarchy of factors driving the latitudinal distribution of diversity: (i) over geologically long time spans, diversity is largely predicted by climate; (ii) when climatic gradients are shallow, diversity tracks habitat area; and (iii) historical contingencies linked to niche conservatism have geologically short-term, transient influence at most. Thus, latitudinal diversity gradients, although variable in strength and direction, are largely predictable on our planet and possibly others.
Although increased attempts to preserve biodiversity ecosystems have been widely publicized, bibliometric research of biodiversity loss remains limited. Using VOSviewer, we hope to provide a bibliometric assessment of global research trends on biodiversity loss from 1990 to 2021. Document type, language, publication trend, countries, institutions, Author Keywords, and Keywords Plus were all examined. This study recorded a total of 6599 publications from the Web of Science Core Collection database. According to the findings, biodiversity loss research is expected to rise dramatically in the near future. However, the role of social sciences and economics in biodiversity loss studies has received little attention. The USA made the most significant contribution in this field. Biological Conservation was the most productive journal, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America was the most influential journal in biodiversity loss literature. Eisenhauer, N was the most prolific author, and Collen, B was the most referenced. Biodiversity, biodiversity loss mechanisms, biodiversity loss drivers, conservation, and climate change have been the topic of previous research. Possible future research hotspots may include species diversity and many elements of biodiversity. Lastly, the outcomes of this study suggest that existing socio-economic concerns can be integrated into decision-making processes to improve biodiversity conservation.
Literature records of sucking lice (Phthiraptera: Anoplura) from Malaysia were checked and reviewed, resulting in a list of 34 established species belonging to 11 genera (Ancistroplax, Atopophthirus, Enderleinellus, Haematopinus, Hamophthirius, Hoplopleura, Linognathus, Neohaematopinus, Pedicinus, Polyplax and Sathrax). Furthermore, three local and six cosmopolitan louse species are regarded as dubious in Malaysia, due to misidentifications or lack of locality records. Also, pathogens known to be associated with the sucking lice are listed. The alarming conservation status of some Malaysian mammalian host species and their sucking lice warrant more research and imminent action to preserve the biodiversity of the country. This paper presents the first complete checklist of anopluran lice from both Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo, including localities, literature references and a host-louse list.
Old-growth tropical forests are widely recognized as being immensely important for their biodiversity and high biomass1. Conversely, logged tropical forests are usually characterized as degraded ecosystems2. However, whether logging results in a degradation in ecosystem functions is less clear: shifts in the strength and resilience of key ecosystem processes in large suites of species have rarely been assessed in an ecologically integrated and quantitative framework. Here we adopt an ecosystem energetics lens to gain new insight into the impacts of tropical forest disturbance on a key integrative aspect of ecological function: food pathways and community structure of birds and mammals. We focus on a gradient spanning old-growth and logged forests and oil palm plantations in Borneo. In logged forest there is a 2.5-fold increase in total resource consumption by both birds and mammals compared to that in old-growth forests, probably driven by greater resource accessibility and vegetation palatability. Most principal energetic pathways maintain high species diversity and redundancy, implying maintained resilience. Conversion of logged forest into oil palm plantation results in the collapse of most energetic pathways. Far from being degraded ecosystems, even heavily logged forests can be vibrant and diverse ecosystems with enhanced levels of ecological function.
Aichi Target 11 committed governments to protect ≥17% of their terrestrial environments by 2020, yet it was rarely achieved, raising questions about the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework goal to protect 30% by 2030. Asia is a challenging continent for such targets, combining high biodiversity with dense human populations. Here, we evaluated achievements in Asia against Aichi Target 11. We found that Asia was the most underperforming continent globally, with just 13.2% of terrestrial protected area (PA) coverage, averaging 14.1 ± SE 1.8% per country in 2020. 73.1% of terrestrial ecoregions had <17% representation and only 7% of PAs even had an assessment of management effectiveness. We found that a higher agricultural land in 2015 was associated with lower PA coverage today. Asian countries also showed a remarkably slow average annual pace of 0.4 ± SE 0.1% increase of PA extent. These combined lines of evidence suggest that the ambitious 2030 targets are unlikely to be achieved in Asia unless the PA coverage to increase 2.4-5.9 times faster. We provided three recommendations to support Asian countries to meet their post-2020 biodiversity targets: complete reporting and the wider adoption "other effective area-based conservation measures"; restoring disturbed landscapes; and bolstering transboundary PAs.
As the number of observations submitted to the citizen science platform iNaturalist continues to grow, it is increasingly important that these observations can be identified to the finest taxonomic level, maximizing their value for biodiversity research. Here, we explore the benefits of acting as an identifier on iNaturalist.
South and Southeast Asia is by far the most populous region in Asia, with the greatest number of threatened species. Changes in habitat are a major contributor to biodiversity loss and are more common as a result of land-use changes. As a result, the goal of this study is to use negative binomial regression models to investigate habitat change as one of the important drivers of biodiversity loss in South and Southeast Asian countries from 2013 to 2018. According to the negative binomial estimates, the findings for the habitat change measures are quantitatively similar for the impacts of agricultural land and arable land on biodiversity threats. Agricultural and arable land both have a positive impact on biodiversity loss. We found that, contrary to our expectations, the forest area appears to have an unexpected direct influence on the number of threatened species. A higher number of threatened species is associated with rising per capita income, human population and a low level of corruption control. Finally, the empirical findings are consistent across taxonomic groups, habitat change measures and Poisson-based specifications. Some policy implications that could mitigate biodiversity loss include educating and promoting good governance among the population and increase the conservation effort to sustain green area and national forest parks in each country.
The present study investigates the impact of climate change on biodiversity loss using global data consisting of 115 countries. In this study, we measure biodiversity loss using data on the total number of threatened species of amphibians, birds, fishes, mammals, mollusks, plants, and reptiles. The data were compiled from the Red List published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). For climate change variables, we have included temperature, precipitation, and the number of natural disaster occurrences. As for the control variable, we have considered governance indicator and the level of economic development. By employing ordinary least square with robust standard error and robust regression (M-estimation), our results suggest that all three climate change variables - temperature, precipitation, and the number of natural disasters occurrences - increase biodiversity loss. Higher economic development also impacted biodiversity loss positively. On the other hand, good governance such as the control of corruption, regulatory quality, and rule of law reduces biodiversity loss. Thus, practicing good governance, promoting conservation of the environment, and the control of greenhouse gasses would able to mitigate biodiversity loss.
Recordings of bat echolocation and social calls are used for many research purposes from ecological studies to taxonomy. Effective use of these relies on identification of species from the recordings, but comparative recordings or detailed call descriptions to support identification are often lacking for areas with high biodiversity. The ChiroVox website (https://www.chirovox.org) was created to facilitate the sharing of bat sound recordings together with their metadata, including biodiversity data and recording circumstances. To date, more than 30 researchers have contributed over 3,900 recordings of nearly 200 species, making ChiroVox the largest open-access bat call library currently available. Each recording has a unique identifier that can be cited in publications; hence the acoustic analyses are repeatable. Most of the recordings available through the website are from bats whose species identities are confirmed, so they can be used to determine species in recordings where the bats were not captured or could not be identified. We hope that with the help of the bat researcher community, the website will grow rapidly and will serve as a solid source for bat acoustic research and monitoring.