Nationwide law enforcement impact on the pet bird trade in China.

Conservation enforcement is a direct strategy to combat illegal wildlife trade in open markets. Yet, its large-scale effectiveness has not been widely assessed due to the lack of extensive market data. Between August 2016 and June 2017, a national coordinated enforcement campaign led by the leading Chinese authority to combat illegal migratory bird trade coincided with the largest-ever pet bird market survey across China by voluntary birdwatchers before and after the enforcement, which served as a unique natural experiment. Across 73 markets from 22 Chinese provinces, the dataset contains 140,723 birds of 346 species from 48 families and recorded a drastic decline in bird abundance traded after enforcement. Notably, species protected under China's Wildlife Protection Law declined significantly, while commercially bred species increased, although responses to enforcement were spatially heterogeneous. Our model showed that the national protection level was the best predictor for the trend of traded species, even after accounting for confounding factors such as regional baseline enforcement pressure and wild native bird populations. However, the widely traded native songbirds were not offered adequate national protection. Future policies should consider the pet bird trade patterns, target key areas of trade, and develop a more systematic market survey design to monitor trade.

Insights into the coexistence of birds and humans in cropland through meta-analyses of bird exclosure studies, crop loss mitigation experiments, and social surveys.

Birds share lands with humans at a substantial scale and affect crops. Yet, at a global scale, systematic evaluations of human-bird coexistence in croplands are scarce. Here, we compiled and used meta-analysis approaches to synthesize multiple global datasets of ecological and social dimensions to understand this complex coexistence system. Our result shows that birds usually increase woody, but not herbaceous, crop production, implying that crop loss mitigation efforts are critical for a better coexistence. We reveal that many nonlethal technical measures are more effective in reducing crop loss, e.g., using scaring devices and changing sow practices, than other available methods. Besides, we find that stakeholders from low-income countries are more likely to perceive the crop losses caused by birds and are less positive toward birds than those from high-income ones. Based on our evidence, we identified potential regional clusters, particularly in tropical areas, for implementing win-win coexistence strategies. Overall, we provide an evidence-based knowledge flow and solutions for stakeholders to integrate the conservation and management of birds in croplands.

Implications for biological invasion of non-native plants for sale in the world's largest online market.

Internet trade is increasingly recognized as a dispersal pathway of non-native plant species that is difficult to monitor. We sought to identify non-native flora present in the Chinese online market, the largest e-commerce market globally, and to decipher the effect of existing trade regulations, among other variables, on e-trading patterns and to inform policy. We used a comprehensive list of 811 non-native plant species in China present in 1 of the 3 phases of the invasion continuum (i.e., introduced, naturalized, and invasive). The price, propagule types, and quantities of the species offered for sale were retrieved from 9 online stores, including 2 of the largest platforms. Over 30% of the non-native species were offered for sale in the online marketplaces; invasive non-native species dominated the list (45.53%). No significant price difference was observed across the non-native species of the 3 invasion categories. Among the 5 propagule types, a significantly higher number of non-native species were offered for sale as seeds. The regression models and path analyses consistently revealed a direct positive effect of the number of uses and species' minimum residence time and an indirect effect of biogeography on the pattern of trade in non-native plant species when minimal phylogenetic signal was detected. A review of the existing phytosanitary regulations in China revealed their inadequacy in managing e-trading of non-native plant species. To address the problem, we propose integration of a standardized risk assessment framework that considers perceptions of stakeholders and is adaptable based on continuous surveillance of the trade network. If implemented successfully, the measures could provide a template for other countries to strengthen trading regulations for non-native plant species and take proactive management measures.

La venta de plantas no nativas en el mercado virtual más grande y sus implicaciones para la invasión biológica Resumen El mercado virtual en internet se reconoce cada vez más como una vía de dispersión de especies vegetales no nativas difícil de controlar. Intentamos identificar la flora no nativa presente en el mercado virtual chino, el mayor mercado de comercio electrónico del mundo, para descifrar el efecto de las regulaciones comerciales vigentes, entre otras variables, en los patrones de comercio electrónico e informar a las políticas. Utilizamos una lista integral de 811 especies de plantas no nativas de China presentes en una de las tres fases de invasión (es decir, introducidas, naturalizadas o invasoras). El precio, los tipos de propágulos y las cantidades de las especies puestas a la venta se recuperaron de nueve tiendas en línea, incluidas dos de las mayores plataformas. Más del 30% de las especies no nativas se pusieron a la venta en los mercados en línea; las especies no nativas invasoras dominaron esta lista (45,53%). No se observaron diferencias significativas de precio entre las especies no nativas en las tres categorías de invasión. Entre los cinco tipos de propágulos, se puso a la venta un número significativamente mayor de especies no nativas en forma de semillas. Los modelos de regresión y los análisis de trayectoria revelaron un efecto positivo directo y constante del número de usos y del tiempo mínimo de residencia de las especies y un efecto indirecto de la biogeografía sobre el patrón de comercio de especies vegetales no nativas cuando se detectó una señal filogenética mínima. Una revisión de la normativa fitosanitaria vigente en China reveló su insuficiencia para gestionar el comercio electrónico de las especies vegetales no nativas. Para abordar el problema, proponemos la integración de un marco normalizado de evaluación de riesgos que tenga en cuenta las percepciones de los actores y sea adaptable en función de la vigilancia continua de la red comercial. Si se aplican con éxito, las medidas podrían servir de modelo para que otros países refuercen la normativa sobre comercio de especies vegetales no nativas y adopten medidas proactivas de gestión.

Altitude dependence of alpine grassland ecosystem multifunctionality across the Tibetan Plateau.

While altitude affects climatic characteristics, terrestrial plant habitats, and species composition, few studies considered the effects of altitude on ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF). Here, we teased apart the EMF at different altitude with a linear piecewise quantile regression and explore ecosystem functions and environmental factors with EMF along the altitudinal gradient across the Tibetan Plateau. Then, we estimated the response of ecosystem functions to environmental factors, and explain the impact of environmental factors on EMF through the structural equation model. Our data revealed an EMF changepoint at an altitude of about 3900 m where the EMF could be segregated into low- and high-altitude patterns. Our results indicate that water availability drives the EMF mainly through improving soil nutrients and microbe cycling functions in low-altitude regions; conversely, water-heat and phenological conditions regulate the EMF through the role of plant productivity and soil nutrients in high-altitude regions. As such, our EMF analysis suggests that to maintain the long-term stability of the grassland ecosystem, it becomes critical to fully consider the differences in the altitudinal patterns and mechanisms, particularly under the ongoing climate change.

Motivations for the use and consumption of wildlife products.

The dominant approach to combating the illegal wildlife trade has traditionally been to restrict the supply of wildlife products. Yet conservationists increasingly recognize the importance of implementing demand-side interventions that target the end consumers in the trade chain. Their aim is to curb the consumption of wildlife or shift consumption to more sustainable alternatives. However, there are still considerable knowledge gaps in understanding of the diversity of consumer motivations in the context of illegal wildlife trade, which includes hundreds of thousands of species, different uses, and diverse contexts. Based on consultation with multiple experts from a diversity of backgrounds, nationalities, and focal taxa, we developed a typology of common motivations held by wildlife consumers that can be used to inform conservation interventions. We identified 5 main motivational categories for wildlife use: experiential, social, functional, financial, and spiritual, each containing subcategories. This framework is intended to facilitate the segmentation of consumers based on psychographics and allow the tailoring of interventions-whether behavior change campaigns, enforcement efforts, or incentive programs-to the specific context in which they will be used. Underlining the importance of consumer research and collaborating with local actors is an important step toward promoting a more systematic approach to the design of demand reduction interventions.

Motivaciones para el Uso y Consumo de Productos de Fauna Resumen Tradicionalmente, la estrategia dominante para combatir el mercado ilegal de fauna ha sido restringir la oferta de productos de fauna. Aun así, los conservacionistas cada vez reconocen más la importancia de implementar intervenciones por el lado de la demanda que se enfoquen en los consumidores finales en la cadena de mercado. Su objetivo es reducir el consumo de fauna o redirigir ese consumo hacia alternativas más sustentables. Sin embargo, todavía existen vacíos de conocimiento en el entendimiento de la diversidad de motivos para los consumidores dentro del contexto del mercado ilegal de fauna, el cual incluye cientos de miles de especies, diferentes usos y contextos diversos. Con base en consultas a varios expertos con una diversidad de antecedentes, nacionalidades y taxones de enfoque desarrollamos una tipología de motivos comunes que tienen los consumidores de fauna que pueden usarse para orientar las intervenciones de conservación. Identificamos cinco categorías principales de motivos para el uso de fauna: vivencial, social, funcional, financiero y espiritual, cada uno con subcategorías. Este marco de trabajo tiene la intención de facilitar la segmentación de consumidores con base en psicográficos y permitir la personalización de las intervenciones - sean campañas de cambios en el comportamiento, esfuerzos por hacer cumplir las reglas o programas de incentivos - al contexto específico en el que serán utilizadas. Resaltar la importancia de los estudios de mercado y la colaboración con los actores locales es un paso importante hacia la promoción de una estrategia más sistemática para el diseño de intervenciones para reducir la demanda.

Measuring the impact of the pet trade on Indonesian birds.

The trade in wild animals involves one-third of the world's bird species and thousands of other vertebrate species. Although a few species are imperiled as a result of the wildlife trade, the lack of field studies makes it difficult to gauge how serious a threat it is to biodiversity. We used data on changes in bird abundances across space and time and information from trapper interviews to evaluate the effects of trapping wild birds for the pet trade in Sumatra, Indonesia. To analyze changes in bird abundance over time, we used data gathered over 14 years of repeated bird surveys in a 900-ha forest in southern Sumatra. In northern Sumatra, we surveyed birds along a gradient of trapping accessibility, from the edge of roads to 5 km into the forest interior. We interviewed 49 bird trappers in northern Sumatra to learn which species they targeted and how far they went into the forest to trap. We used prices from Sumatran bird markets as a proxy for demand and, therefore, trapping pressure. Market price was a significant predictor of species declines over time in southern Sumatra (e.g., given a market price increase of approximately $50, the log change in abundance per year decreased by 0.06 on average). This result indicates a link between the market-based pet trade and community-wide species declines. In northern Sumatra, price and change in abundance were not related to remoteness (distance from the nearest road). However, based on our field surveys, high-value species were rare or absent across this region. The median maximum distance trappers went into the forest each day was 5.0 km. This suggests that trapping has depleted bird populations across our remoteness gradient. We found that less than half of Sumatra's remaining forests are >5 km from a major road. Our results suggest that trapping for the pet trade threatens birds in Sumatra. Given the popularity of pet birds across Southeast Asia, additional studies are urgently needed to determine the extent and magnitude of the threat posed by the pet trade.

Primary forests are irreplaceable for sustaining tropical biodiversity.

Human-driven land-use changes increasingly threaten biodiversity, particularly in tropical forests where both species diversity and human pressures on natural environments are high. The rapid conversion of tropical forests for agriculture, timber production and other uses has generated vast, human-dominated landscapes with potentially dire consequences for tropical biodiversity. Today, few truly undisturbed tropical forests exist, whereas those degraded by repeated logging and fires, as well as secondary and plantation forests, are rapidly expanding. Here we provide a global assessment of the impact of disturbance and land conversion on biodiversity in tropical forests using a meta-analysis of 138 studies. We analysed 2,220 pairwise comparisons of biodiversity values in primary forests (with little or no human disturbance) and disturbed forests. We found that biodiversity values were substantially lower in degraded forests, but that this varied considerably by geographic region, taxonomic group, ecological metric and disturbance type. Even after partly accounting for confounding colonization and succession effects due to the composition of surrounding habitats, isolation and time since disturbance, we find that most forms of forest degradation have an overwhelmingly detrimental effect on tropical biodiversity. Our results clearly indicate that when it comes to maintaining tropical biodiversity, there is no substitute for primary forests.

Community-wide changes in intertaxonomic temporal co-occurrence resulting from phenological shifts.

Global climate change is known to affect the assembly of ecological communities by altering species' spatial distribution patterns, but little is known about how climate change may affect community assembly by changing species' temporal co-occurrence patterns, which is highly likely given the widely observed phenological shifts associated with climate change. Here, we analyzed a 29-year phenological data set comprising community-level information on the timing and span of temporal occurrence in 11 seasonally occurring animal taxon groups from 329 local meteorological observatories across China. We show that widespread shifts in phenology have resulted in community-wide changes in the temporal overlap between taxa that are dominated by extensions, and that these changes are largely due to taxa's altered span of temporal occurrence rather than the degree of synchrony in phenological shifts. Importantly, our findings also suggest that climate change may have led to less phenological mismatch than generally presumed, and that the context under which to discuss the ecological consequences of phenological shifts should be expanded beyond asynchronous shifts.

Avian responses to selective logging shaped by species traits and logging practices.

Selective logging is one of the most common forms of forest use in the tropics. Although the effects of selective logging on biodiversity have been widely studied, there is little agreement on the relationship between life-history traits and tolerance to logging. In this study, we assessed how species traits and logging practices combine to determine species responses to selective logging, based on over 4000 observations of the responses of nearly 1000 bird species to selective logging across the tropics. Our analysis shows that species traits, such as feeding group and body mass, and logging practices, such as time since logging and logging intensity, interact to influence a species' response to logging. Frugivores and insectivores were most adversely affected by logging and declined further with increasing logging intensity. Nectarivores and granivores responded positively to selective logging for the first two decades, after which their abundances decrease below pre-logging levels. Larger species of omnivores and granivores responded more positively to selective logging than smaller species from either feeding group, whereas this effect of body size was reversed for carnivores, herbivores, frugivores and insectivores. Most importantly, species most negatively impacted by selective logging had not recovered approximately 40 years after logging cessation. We conclude that selective timber harvest has the potential to cause large and long-lasting changes in avian biodiversity. However, our results suggest that the impacts can be mitigated to a certain extent through specific forest management strategies such as lengthening the rotation cycle and implementing reduced impact logging.

Positive relationships between association strength and phenotypic similarity characterize the assembly of mixed-species bird flocks worldwide.

Competition theory predicts that local communities should consist of species that are more dissimilar than expected by chance. We find a strikingly different pattern in a multicontinent data set (55 presence-absence matrices from 24 locations) on the composition of mixed-species bird flocks, which are important subunits of local bird communities the world over. By using null models and randomization tests followed by meta-analysis, we find the association strengths of species in flocks to be strongly related to similarity in body size and foraging behavior and higher for congeneric compared with noncongeneric species pairs. Given the local spatial scales of our individual analyses, differences in the habitat preferences of species are unlikely to have caused these association patterns; the patterns observed are most likely the outcome of species interactions. Extending group-living and social-information-use theory to a heterospecific context, we discuss potential behavioral mechanisms that lead to positive interactions among similar species in flocks, as well as ways in which competition costs are reduced. Our findings highlight the need to consider positive interactions along with competition when seeking to explain community assembly.

A global assessment of endemism and species richness across island and mainland regions.

Endemism and species richness are highly relevant to the global prioritization of conservation efforts in which oceanic islands have remained relatively neglected. When compared to mainland areas, oceanic islands in general are known for their high percentage of endemic species but only moderate levels of species richness, prompting the question of their relative conservation value. Here we quantify geographic patterns of endemism-scaled richness ("endemism richness") of vascular plants across 90 terrestrial biogeographic regions, including islands, worldwide and evaluate their congruence with terrestrial vertebrates. Endemism richness of plants and vertebrates is strongly related, and values on islands exceed those of mainland regions by a factor of 9.5 and 8.1 for plants and vertebrates, respectively. Comparisons of different measures of past and future human impact and land cover change further reveal marked differences between mainland and island regions. While island and mainland regions suffered equally from past habitat loss, we find the human impact index, a measure of current threat, to be significantly higher on islands. Projected land-cover changes for the year 2100 indicate that land-use-driven changes on islands might strongly increase in the future. Given their conservation risks, smaller land areas, and high levels of endemism richness, islands may offer particularly high returns for species conservation efforts and therefore warrant a high priority in global biodiversity conservation in this century.

Understanding the social impacts of enforcement activities on illegal wildlife trade in China.

Illegal wildlife trade enforcement is a cornerstone conservation strategy worldwide, yet we have a limited understanding on its social impacts. Using Chinese online wildlife seizure news (2003-2018), we evaluated the interactions among enforcement operations, news frequency, and social engagement (i.e., whistle-blowing) frequency. Our results showed that intensive enforcement operations, which commenced after 2012, have social impacts by increasing the frequency of all seizure news significantly by 28% [95% Confidence Interval (CI): 5%, 51%] and those via whistle-blowing by 24% [95% CI: 2%, 45%], when compared to counterfactual models where possible confounding factors were accounted for. Furthermore, we revealed the potential interaction between enforcement seizure news with and without social engagement, and the consequential social feedback process. Of the species identified from 'whistle-blowing' news, up to 28% are considered as high conservation priorities. Overall, we expanded our understanding of the enforcement impacts to social dimensions, which could contribute to improving the cost-effectiveness of such conservation efforts.

Threats of COVID-19 arouse public awareness of climate change risks.

Public climate change awareness is indispensable to dealing with climate change threats. Understanding whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on individuals' climate change risk perception would thus be critical to green economic recovery. We conducted a longitudinal survey study in China when the pandemic was at its height and when it was mitigated. The cross-lagged analysis confirmed our assumed "arousal" effect of perceived COVID-19 risks on climate change risk awareness. We further tested and verified the proposed "dual-pathway" mechanisms of affective generalization (i.e., negative affective states aroused by COVID-19 "spillover" to the assessment of climate change risk) and cognitive association (i.e., the outbreak of COVID-19 awakens people's recognition of the human-nature-climate issues) via multiple mediation analyses. Our results implied that climate policies could be integrated into pandemic control, and that the public should be more awakened to confront multiple crises with proper guidance.

Global patterns and abiotic drivers of ecosystem multifunctionality in dominant natural ecosystems.

The potential patterns and processes of ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) across global ecosystems are largely unknown, which limits our understanding of how ecosystems respond to drivers. Here we compile a global dataset that consists of 973 unique sites across the forest, grassland, and shrub ecosystems. We identify a critical global pattern of hump-shaped EMF relationship with mean annual precipitation at a threshold of ∼671 mm, where low and high precipitation patterns are discriminated. We find that climatic and soil factors jointly drive the EMF in low precipitation areas, and climatic factors dominate the EMF in high precipitation regions. However, when comparing across the three dominant ecosystems and precipitation regions, the key driver in EMF differs substantially. Specifically, climatic and soil factors dominate the EMF of low and high precipitation regions across forest ecosystems, respectively. Climatic drivers dominate the EMF under different precipitation conditions across grassland and shrub ecosystems. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of climatic and soil drivers on EMF, which should be considered in ecosystem stability models in response to global climate and land-use change scenarios.

Unravelling the structure of species extinction risk for predictive conservation science.

Extinction risk varies across species and space owing to the combined and interactive effects of ecology/life history and geography. For predictive conservation science to be effective, large datasets and integrative models that quantify the relative importance of potential factors and separate rapidly changing from relatively static threat drivers are urgently required. Here, we integrate and map in space the relative and joint effects of key correlates of The International Union for Conservation of Nature-assessed extinction risk for 8700 living birds. Extinction risk varies significantly with species' broad-scale environmental niche, geographical range size, and life-history and ecological traits such as body size, developmental mode, primary diet and foraging height. Even at this broad scale, simple quantifications of past human encroachment across species' ranges emerge as key in predicting extinction risk, supporting the use of land-cover change projections for estimating future threat in an integrative setting. A final joint model explains much of the interspecific variation in extinction risk and provides a remarkably strong prediction of its observed global geography. Our approach unravels the species-level structure underlying geographical gradients in extinction risk and offers a means of disentangling static from changing components of current and future threat. This reconciliation of intrinsic and extrinsic, and of past and future extinction risk factors may offer a critical step towards a more continuous, forward-looking assessment of species' threat status based on geographically explicit environmental change projections, potentially advancing global predictive conservation science.

Deforestation and avian extinction on tropical landbridge islands.

There are few empirical data, particularly collected simultaneously from multiple sites, on extinctions resulting from human-driven land-use change. Southeast Asia has the highest deforestation rate in the world, but the resulting losses of biological diversity remain poorly documented. Between November 2006 and March 2008, we conducted bird surveys on six landbridge islands in Malaysia and Indonesia. These islands were surveyed previously for birds in the early 1900 s, when they were extensively forested. Our bird inventories of the islands were nearly complete, as indicated by sampling saturation curves and nonparametric true richness estimators. From zero (Pulau Malawali and Pulau Mantanani) to 15 (Pulau Bintan) diurnal resident landbird species were apparently extirpated since the early 1900 s. Adding comparable but published extinction data from Singapore to our regression analyses, we found there were proportionally fewer forest bird extinctions in areas with greater remaining forest cover. Nevertheless, the statistical evidence to support this relationship was weak, owing to our unavoidably small sample size. Bird species that are restricted to the Indomalayan region, lay few eggs, are heavier, and occupy a narrower habitat breadth, were most vulnerable to extinction on Pulau Bintan. This was the only island where sufficient data existed to analyze the correlates of extinction. Forest preservation and restoration are needed on these islands to conserve the remaining forest avifauna. Our study of landbridge islands indicates that deforestation may increasingly threaten Southeast Asian biodiversity.

Build up conservation research capacity in China for biodiversity governance.

To achieve the grand vision of 'Ecological Civilization' and to build a more sustainable Belt and Road Initiative, China's conservation policies must be underpinned by research. However, recent institutional and vertebrate conservation scientists' publication data suggest that China has a growing conservation research capacity deficit. China lacks a pipeline for the training and development of conservation scientists locally and abroad. The network of active conservation scientists is rapidly shrinking and institutions are exhibiting signs of academic inbreeding. Career advancement policies are perversely incentivized away from practical conservation research, thereby constraining capacity building. Comparative data indicate that China severely lags behind the United States and United Kingdom in research quality and capacity. We outline possible recommendations that include developing a different performance evaluation system, promoting training and international exchanges, encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration, and fostering international collaborative networks for China-based conservation scientists. For global biodiversity governance, China must act to make up for considerable shortfalls in conservation research capacity and research collaborative networks.

Disparities between observed and predicted impacts of climate change on winter bird assemblages.

Understanding how climate change affects the structure and function of communities is critical for gauging its full impact on biodiversity. To date, community-level changes have been poorly documented, owing, in part, to the paucity of long-term datasets. To circumvent this, the use of 'space-for-time' substitution--the forecasting of temporal trends from spatial climatic gradients--has increasingly been adopted, often with little empirical support. Here we examine changes from 1975 to 2001 in three community attributes (species richness, body mass and occupancy) for 404 assemblages of terrestrial winter avifauna in North America containing a total of 227 species. We examine the accuracy of space-for-time substitution and assess causal associations between community attributes and observed changes in annual temperature using a longitudinal study design. Annual temperature and all three community attributes increased over time. The trends for the three community attributes differed significantly from the spatially derived predictions, although richness showed broad congruence. Correlations with trends in temperature were found with richness and body mass. In the face of rapid climate change, applying space-for-time substitution as a predictive tool could be problematic with communities developing patterns not reflected by spatial ecological associations.