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Community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value
Conserving biodiversity often requires deciding which sites to prioritise for protection. Predicting the impact of habitat loss is a major challenge, however, since impacts can be distant from the perturbation in both space and time. Here we study the long-term impacts of habitat loss in a mechanist...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9946215/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36716317 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010804 |
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author | O’Sullivan, Jacob D. Terry, J. Christopher D. Wilson, Ramesh Rossberg, Axel G. |
author_facet | O’Sullivan, Jacob D. Terry, J. Christopher D. Wilson, Ramesh Rossberg, Axel G. |
author_sort | O’Sullivan, Jacob D. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Conserving biodiversity often requires deciding which sites to prioritise for protection. Predicting the impact of habitat loss is a major challenge, however, since impacts can be distant from the perturbation in both space and time. Here we study the long-term impacts of habitat loss in a mechanistic metacommunity model. We find that site area is a poor predictor of long-term, regional-scale extinctions following localised perturbation. Knowledge of the compositional distinctness (average between-site Bray-Curtis dissimilarity) of the removed community can markedly improve the prediction of impacts on regional assemblages, even when biotic responses play out at substantial spatial or temporal distance from the initial perturbation. Fitting the model to two empirical datasets, we show that this conclusions holds in the empirically relevant parameter range. Our results robustly demonstrate that site area alone is not sufficient to gauge conservation priorities; analysis of compositional distinctness permits improved prioritisation at low cost. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9946215 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-99462152023-02-23 Community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value O’Sullivan, Jacob D. Terry, J. Christopher D. Wilson, Ramesh Rossberg, Axel G. PLoS Comput Biol Research Article Conserving biodiversity often requires deciding which sites to prioritise for protection. Predicting the impact of habitat loss is a major challenge, however, since impacts can be distant from the perturbation in both space and time. Here we study the long-term impacts of habitat loss in a mechanistic metacommunity model. We find that site area is a poor predictor of long-term, regional-scale extinctions following localised perturbation. Knowledge of the compositional distinctness (average between-site Bray-Curtis dissimilarity) of the removed community can markedly improve the prediction of impacts on regional assemblages, even when biotic responses play out at substantial spatial or temporal distance from the initial perturbation. Fitting the model to two empirical datasets, we show that this conclusions holds in the empirically relevant parameter range. Our results robustly demonstrate that site area alone is not sufficient to gauge conservation priorities; analysis of compositional distinctness permits improved prioritisation at low cost. Public Library of Science 2023-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC9946215/ /pubmed/36716317 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010804 Text en © 2023 O’Sullivan et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article O’Sullivan, Jacob D. Terry, J. Christopher D. Wilson, Ramesh Rossberg, Axel G. Community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value |
title | Community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value |
title_full | Community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value |
title_fullStr | Community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value |
title_full_unstemmed | Community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value |
title_short | Community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value |
title_sort | community composition exceeds area as a predictor of long-term conservation value |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9946215/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36716317 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010804 |
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