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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...

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Autores principales: O’Sullivan, Jacob D., Terry, J. Christopher D., Wilson, Ramesh, Rossberg, Axel G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
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.
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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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