Achieving a real-time online monitoring system for conservation culturomics.

Environmental monitoring is increasingly shifting toward a set of systems that describe changes in real time. In ecology specifically, a series of challenges have prevented the rollout of real-time monitoring for features such as biodiversity change or ecosystem service provision. Conservation culturomics, a field concerned with interactions between people and nature, is well placed to demonstrate how monitoring might move toward a network of real-time platforms, given its existence exclusively in the digital realm. We examined a set of considerations associated with the development of real-time monitoring platforms for conservation culturomics and introduce a near real-time platform for the Species Awareness Index, a global index of changing biodiversity awareness derived from the rate of change in page views for species on Wikipedia. This platform will update automatically each month, operating in near real time (https://joemillard.shinyapps.io/Real_time_SAI/). There are plans to make the underlying data queryable via an application programing interface independent of the platform. The real-time Species Awareness Index will represent the first real-time and entirely automated conservation culturomic platform and one of the first real-time platforms in the discipline of ecology. Real-time monitoring for culturomics can provide insight into human-nature interactions as they play out in the physical realm and provide a framework for the development of real-time monitoring in ecology. Real-time monitoring metrics can be processed on private virtual machines and hosted on publicly available cloud services. Conservation now needs an online, real-time observatory that can evolve with the structure of the web.

Obtención de un sistema virtual de monitoreo en tiempo real para la culturomía de la conservación Resumen El monitoreo ambiental se enfoca cada vez más en un conjunto de sistemas que describen los cambios en tiempo real. En cuanto a la ecología, una serie de obstáculos ha impedido el despliegue del monitoreo en tiempo real para funciones como el cambio en la biodiversidad o el suministro de servicios ambientales. La culturomía de la conservación, un campo enfocado en las interacciones entre las personas y la naturaleza, es una buena opción para demostrar cómo el monitoreo podría transformarse en una red de plataformas en tiempo real, dado que sólo existe en el ámbito digital. Analizamos una serie de consideraciones asociadas con el desarrollo de plataformas de monitoreo en tiempo real para la culturomía de la conservación e introdujimos una plataforma casi en tiempo real para el Índice de Conciencia de Especies, un índice mundial del cambio en la conciencia sobre la biodiversidad derivado de la tasa de cambio en las visitas a las páginas de Wikipedia de diferentes especies. Esta plataforma se actualizará automáticamente cada mes, por lo que opera casi en tiempo real (https://joemillard.shinyapps.io/Real_time_SAI/). Existen planes para hacer que los datos subyacentes sean consultables por medio de una interfaz de programación de aplicaciones independiente de la plataforma. El Índice de Conciencia de Especies en tiempo real será la primera plataforma de culturomía de la conservación automatizada por completo y en tiempo real, así como una de las primeras plataformas de este tipo para la disciplina de la ecología. El monitoreo en tiempo real de la culturomía puede proporcionar información sobre las interacciones humano-naturaleza conforme se desarrollan en el ámbito físico y también un marco de trabajo para el desarrollo del monitoreo en tiempo real para la ecología. Las medidas del monitoreo en tiempo real pueden procesarse en máquinas virtuales privadas y albergarse en servicios públicos de nubes de almacenamiento. Hoy en día, la conservación necesita un observatorio en línea y en tiempo real que pueda evolucionar con la estructura de la web.

The species awareness index as a conservation culturomics metric for public biodiversity awareness.

Although threats to global biodiversity are well known, slowing current rates of biodiversity loss remains a challenge. The Aichi targets set out 20 goals on which the international community should act to alleviate biodiversity decline, 1 of which (Target 1) aims to raise public awareness of the importance of biodiversity. Although conventional indicators for Target 1 are of low spatial and temporal coverage, conservation culturomics metrics show how biodiversity awareness can be quantified at the global scale. Following methods used for the Living Planet Index, we devised a species awareness index (SAI) to measure change in species awareness based on Wikipedia views. We calculated this index at the page level for 41,197 species listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) across 10 Wikipedia languages and >2 billion views from 1 July 2015 to 30 March 2020. Bootstrapped indices for the page-level SAI showed that overall awareness of biodiversity increased marginally over time, although there were differences among taxonomic classes and languages. Among taxonomic classes, overall awareness increased fastest for reptiles and slowest for amphibians. Among languages, overall species awareness increased fastest for Japanese and slowest for Chinese and German users. Although awareness of species as a whole increased and was significantly higher for traded species, from January 2016 through January 2020, change in awareness appeared not to be strongly related to whether the species is traded or is a pollinator. As a data source for public biodiversity awareness, the SAI could be integrated into the Conservation International Biodiversity Engagement Indicator.

El Índice de Sensibilización de Especie como Medida de Culturomia de la Conservación para la Sensibilización Pública por la Biodiversidad Resumen Aunque las amenazas a la biodiversidad mundial son bien conocidas, reducir las tasas actuales de pérdida de la biodiversidad todavía es un desafío. Los objetivos de Aichi establecieron 20 metas para las cuales debe actuar la comunidad internacional para aliviar la declinación de la biodiversidad. Una de estas metas (Objetivo 1) busca sensibilizar al público sobre la importancia de la biodiversidad. Aunque los indicadores convencionales del Objetivo 1 tienen una baja cobertura espacial y temporal, las medidas de culturomia para la conservación muestran cómo la sensibilización por la biodiversidad puede cuantificarse a escala global. Seguimos los métodos utilizados para el Índice del Planeta Viviente para diseñar un índice de sensibilización de especie (ISE) para medir el cambio en la sensibilización por una especie con base en las vistas en Wikipedia. Calculamos este índice a nivel de página para 41,197 especies incluidas en las listas de la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN) en diez diferentes idiomas en Wikipedia y más de 2 mil millones de vistas entre el 1 de julio de 2015 y el 30 de marzo de 2020. Los índices de arranque para el ISE a nivel de página mostraron que la sensibilización general por la biodiversidad incrementó ligeramente con el tiempo, aunque hubo diferencia entre las clasificaciones taxonómicas y los idiomas. Entre las clasificaciones taxonómicas, la sensibilización general incrementó más rápido para los reptiles y más lento para los anfibios. Entre los idiomas, la sensibilización general por especie incrementó más rápido para los usuarios del japonés y más lento para los usuarios del chino y el alemán. Aunque la sensibilización por las especies en su totalidad incrementó y fue significativamente más alta para las especies comercializadas, entre enero de 2016 y enero de 2020 el cambio en la sensibilización pareció no estar relacionado fuertemente con si la especie es un polinizador o es comercializada. Como fuente de información para la sensibilización pública por la biodiversidad, el ISE podría ser integrado dentro del Indicador de Participación Internacional para la Conservación de la Biodiversidad.

Important Crop Pollinators Respond Less Negatively to Anthropogenic Land Use Than Other Animals.

Animal-mediated pollination is a key ecosystem service required to some extent by almost three-quarters of the leading human food crops in global food production. Anthropogenic pressures such as habitat loss and land-use intensification are causing shifts in ecological community composition, potentially resulting in declines in pollination services and impacting crop production. Previous research has often overlooked interspecific differences in pollination contribution, yet such differences mean that biodiversity declines will not necessarily negatively impact pollination. Here, we use a novel species-level ecosystem service contribution matrix along with mixed-effects models to explore how groups of terrestrial species who contribute differently to crop pollination respond globally to land-use type, land-use intensity, and availability of natural habitats in the surrounding landscape. We find that the species whose contribution to crop pollination is higher generally respond less negatively (and in some cases positively) to human disturbance of land, compared to species that contribute less or not at all to pollination. This result may be due to these high-contribution species being less sensitive to anthropogenic land conversions, which has led humans to being more reliant on them for crop pollination. However, it also suggests that there is potential for crop pollination to be resilient in the face of anthropogenic land conversions. With such a high proportion of food crops requiring animal-mediated pollination to some extent, understanding how anthropogenic landscapes impact ecological communities and the consequences for pollination is critical for ensuring food security.

Key tropical crops at risk from pollinator loss due to climate change and land use.

Insect pollinator biodiversity is changing rapidly, with potential consequences for the provision of crop pollination. However, the role of land use-climate interactions in pollinator biodiversity changes, as well as consequent economic effects via changes in crop pollination, remains poorly understood. We present a global assessment of the interactive effects of climate change and land use on pollinator abundance and richness and predictions of the risk to crop pollination from the inferred changes. Using a dataset containing 2673 sites and 3080 insect pollinator species, we show that the interactive combination of agriculture and climate change is associated with large reductions in insect pollinators. As a result, it is expected that the tropics will experience the greatest risk to crop production from pollinator losses. Localized risk is highest and predicted to increase most rapidly, in regions of sub-Saharan Africa, northern South America, and Southeast Asia. Via pollinator loss alone, climate change and agricultural land use could be a risk to human well-being.

Global effects of land-use intensity on local pollinator biodiversity.

Pollinating species are in decline globally, with land use an important driver. However, most of the evidence on which these claims are made is patchy, based on studies with low taxonomic and geographic representativeness. Here, we model the effect of land-use type and intensity on global pollinator biodiversity, using a local-scale database covering 303 studies, 12,170 sites, and 4502 pollinating species. Relative to a primary vegetation baseline, we show that low levels of intensity can have beneficial effects on pollinator biodiversity. Within most anthropogenic land-use types however, increasing intensity is associated with significant reductions, particularly in urban (43% richness and 62% abundance reduction compared to the least intensive urban sites), and pasture (75% abundance reduction) areas. We further show that on cropland, the strongly negative response to intensity is restricted to tropical areas, and that the direction and magnitude of response differs among taxonomic groups. Our findings confirm widespread effects of land-use intensity on pollinators, most significantly in the tropics, where land use is predicted to change rapidly.

Climate and land-use change homogenise terrestrial biodiversity, with consequences for ecosystem functioning and human well-being.

Biodiversity continues to decline under the effect of multiple human pressures. We give a brief overview of the main pressures on biodiversity, before focusing on the two that have a predominant effect: land-use and climate change. We discuss how interactions between land-use and climate change in terrestrial systems are likely to have greater impacts than expected when only considering these pressures in isolation. Understanding biodiversity changes is complicated by the fact that such changes are likely to be uneven among different geographic regions and species. We review the evidence for variation in terrestrial biodiversity changes, relating differences among species to key ecological characteristics, and explaining how disproportionate impacts on certain species are leading to a spatial homogenisation of ecological communities. Finally, we explain how the overall losses and homogenisation of biodiversity, and the larger impacts upon certain types of species, are likely to lead to strong negative consequences for the functioning of ecosystems, and consequently for human well-being.