Tapping into non-English-language science for the conservation of global biodiversity.

The widely held assumption that any important scientific information would be available in English underlies the underuse of non-English-language science across disciplines. However, non-English-language science is expected to bring unique and valuable scientific information, especially in disciplines where the evidence is patchy, and for emergent issues where synthesising available evidence is an urgent challenge. Yet such contribution of non-English-language science to scientific communities and the application of science is rarely quantified. Here, we show that non-English-language studies provide crucial evidence for informing global biodiversity conservation. By screening 419,679 peer-reviewed papers in 16 languages, we identified 1,234 non-English-language studies providing evidence on the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation interventions, compared to 4,412 English-language studies identified with the same criteria. Relevant non-English-language studies are being published at an increasing rate in 6 out of the 12 languages where there were a sufficient number of relevant studies. Incorporating non-English-language studies can expand the geographical coverage (i.e., the number of 2° × 2° grid cells with relevant studies) of English-language evidence by 12% to 25%, especially in biodiverse regions, and taxonomic coverage (i.e., the number of species covered by the relevant studies) by 5% to 32%, although they do tend to be based on less robust study designs. Our results show that synthesising non-English-language studies is key to overcoming the widespread lack of local, context-dependent evidence and facilitating evidence-based conservation globally. We urge wider disciplines to rigorously reassess the untapped potential of non-English-language science in informing decisions to address other global challenges. Please see the Supporting information files for Alternative Language Abstracts.

The significance of region-specific habitat models as revealed by habitat shifts of grey-faced buzzard in response to different agricultural schedules.

To determine large scales habitat suitability for focal species, habitat models derived from one region are often extrapolated to others. However, extrapolation can be inappropriate due to regional variation of habitat selection. Accounting for the ecological mechanisms causing such variation is necessary to resolve this problem. We focused on grey-faced buzzards in agricultural landscapes of Japan, which show geographically different habitat selection. To determine whether this variation is caused by the difference in climatic conditions at geographical scales or the difference in agricultural practices at smaller regional scales, we surveyed distributions of buzzards and their major prey (frogs/orthopterans) in regions differing in rice-transplanting schedules within the same climatic zone. We found that buzzards preferred paddy-forest landscapes in the early transplanting regions, but grassland-forest landscapes in the late transplanting regions. Frogs were more abundant in the early transplanting regions due to flooded paddies, while the abundance of orthopterans did not differ. The regional variation in habitat selection of buzzards may be due to different prey availabilities caused by different agricultural schedules. We propose that habitat suitability assessments of organisms inhabiting agricultural landscapes should consider differences in production systems at regional scales and such regional partitioning is effective for accurate assessments.