Role of low-impact-factor journals in conservation implementation.

Academic review, promotion, and tenure processes place a premium on frequent publication in high-impact factor (IF) journals. However, conservation often relies on species-specific information that is unlikely to have the broad appeal needed for high-IF journals. Instead, this information is often distributed in low-IF, taxa- and region-specific journals. This suggests a potential mismatch between the incentives for academic researchers and the scientific needs of conservation implementation. To explore this mismatch, we looked at federal implementation of the United States Endangered Species Act (ESA), which requires the use of the "best available science" to list a species as endangered or threatened and thus receive powerful legal protections. In assessing the relationship between academic sources of this "best available science" and ESA implementation, we looked at the 13,292 sources (e.g., academic journals, books, reports, regulations, personal communications, etc.) cited by the second Obama administration (2012-2016) across all ESA listings. We compared the IFs of all 4836 journals that published peer-reviewed papers cited in these listings against their citation frequency in ESA listings to determine whether a journal's IF varied in proportion with its contribution to federal conservation. Most of the peer-reviewed academic articles referenced in ESA listings came from low-IF or no-IF journals that tended to focus on specific taxa or regions. Although we support continued attention to cutting-edge, multidisciplinary science for its ability to chart new pathways and paradigms, our findings stress the need to value and fund the taxa- and region-specific science that underpins actionable conservation laws.

El papel de las revistas con factor de impacto bajo en la implementación de la conservación Resumen Los procesos de revisión académica, promoción y titularidad otorgan primas a la publicación frecuente en revistas con factor de impacto (FI) alto. Sin embargo, la conservación depende mucho de la información específica por especie, que es poco probable que tenga el atractivo necesario para las revistas de FI alto. En lugar de esto, esta información se distribuye con frecuencia en revistas de FI bajo, específicas para la región y ciertos taxones. Esto sugiere una desigualdad potencial entre los incentivos para los investigadores académicos y las necesidades científicas de la implementación de la conservación. Exploramos esta desigualdad mediante la implementación federal de la Ley de Especies en Peligro de Extinción de Estados Unidos (ESA), la cual requiere que se use la "mejor ciencia disponible" para enlistar a una especie como en peligro o amenazada para que así reciba una protección legal sólida. Durante el análisis de la relación entre las fuentes académicas de esta "mejor ciencia disponible" y la implementación de la ESA, revisamos 13,292 fuentes (revistas académicas, libros, reportes, regulaciones, comunicación personal, etc.) citadas en la segunda administración del presidente Obama (2012 ­ 2016) en todos los listados de la ESA. Comparamos los FI de las 4, 836 revistas que publicaron artículos revisados por pares y citados en estos listados con la frecuencia de citas en los listados de la ESA para determinar si el FI de una revista varía en proporción a su contribución para la conservación federal. La mayoría de estos artículos referenciados en los listados de la ESA provenían de revistas con FI bajo o sin FI que tendían a enfocarse en regiones o taxones específicos. Aunque apoyamos la atención continua para la ciencia multidisciplinaria e innovadora por su capacidad de generar nuevos caminos y paradigmas, nuestros hallazgos resaltan la necesidad de valorar y financiar la ciencia específica por taxones y regiones que apuntala las leyes procesables de conservación.

Climate drives the geography of marine consumption by changing predator communities.

The global distribution of primary production and consumption by humans (fisheries) is well-documented, but we have no map linking the central ecological process of consumption within food webs to temperature and other ecological drivers. Using standardized assays that span 105° of latitude on four continents, we show that rates of bait consumption by generalist predators in shallow marine ecosystems are tightly linked to both temperature and the composition of consumer assemblages. Unexpectedly, rates of consumption peaked at midlatitudes (25 to 35°) in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres across both seagrass and unvegetated sediment habitats. This pattern contrasts with terrestrial systems, where biotic interactions reportedly weaken away from the equator, but it parallels an emerging pattern of a subtropical peak in marine biodiversity. The higher consumption at midlatitudes was closely related to the type of consumers present, which explained rates of consumption better than consumer density, biomass, species diversity, or habitat. Indeed, the apparent effect of temperature on consumption was mostly driven by temperature-associated turnover in consumer community composition. Our findings reinforce the key influence of climate warming on altered species composition and highlight its implications for the functioning of Earth's ecosystems.

Are the ghosts of nature's past haunting ecology today?

Humans have decimated populations of large-bodied consumers and their functions in most of the world's ecosystems. It is less clear how human activities have affected the diversity of habitats these consumers occupy. Rebounding populations of some predators after conservation provides an opportunity to begin to investigate this question. Recent research shows that following long-term protection, sea otters along the northeast Pacific coast have expanded into estuarine marshes and seagrasses, and alligators on the southeast US coast have expanded into saltwater ecosystems, habitats presently thought beyond their niche space. There is also evidence that seals have expanded into subtropical climates, mountain lions into grasslands, orangutans into disturbed forests and wolves into coastal marine ecosystems. Historical records, surveys of protected areas and patterns of animals moving into habitats that were former hunting hotspots indicate that - rather than occupying them for the first time - many of these animals are in fact recolonizing ecosystems. Recognizing that many large consumers naturally live and thrive across a greater diversity of ecosystems has implications for setting historical baselines for predator diversity within specific habitats, enhancing the resilience of newly colonized ecosystems and for plans to recover endangered species, as a greater range of habitats is available for large consumers as refugia from climate-induced threats.