The role of funding in the performance of Latin America's protected areas.

Conservationists have long argued that inadequate funding for managing protected areas (PAs) jeopardizes their ability to achieve conservation goals. However, this claim has rarely been substantiated by quantitative evaluations. To address this, we examined the impact of funding on PA effectiveness both at the scale of 17 national PA systems across Latin America and within a PA system (Ecuador), for which we had precise historical financial data. Most PAs reduced deforestation between 2000 and 2010, demonstrating their crucial role in forest conservation. However, large deficits in funding considerably reduced the effectiveness of PAs in Ecuador (on average, a unit decrease in deficit leads to a 3.07% increase in effectiveness in avoiding deforestation). While differences in effectiveness between individual PAs in Ecuador were associated with funding deficits, national-level socioeconomic metrics (e.g., the Human Development Index) were the major factor when comparing PA system-level effectiveness among countries. This result suggests that while funding plays a major role in the performance of individual PAs, the quality of the socioeconomic context at the country level is critical for the overall performance of the PA systems. We, therefore, emphasize that maximizing the effectiveness of PAs requires a multilevel approach that includes better and more strategic resource allocation for individual PAs, combined with actions for strengthening the governance and institutions that regulate PA systems.

Scaling approaches and macroecology provide a foundation for assessing ecological resilience in the Anthropocene.

In the Anthropocene, intensifying ecological disturbances pose significant challenges to our predictive capabilities for ecosystem responses. Macroecology-which focuses on emergent statistical patterns in ecological systems-unveils consistent regularities in the organization of biodiversity and ecosystems. These regularities appear in terms of abundance, body size, geographical range, species interaction networks, or the flux of matter and energy. This paper argues for moving beyond qualitative resilience metaphors, such as the 'ball and cup', towards a more quantitative macroecological framework. We suggest a conceptual and theoretical basis for ecological resilience that integrates macroecology with a stochastic diffusion approximation constrained by principles of biological symmetry. This approach provides an alternative novel framework for studying ecological resilience in the Anthropocene. We demonstrate how our framework can effectively quantify the impacts of major disturbances and their extensive ecological ramifications. We further show how biological scaling insights can help quantify the consequences of major disturbances, emphasizing their cascading ecological impacts. The nature of these impacts prompts a re-evaluation of our understanding of resilience. Emphasis on regularities of ecological assemblages can help illuminate resilience dynamics and offer a novel basis to predict and manage the impacts of disturbance in the Anthropocene more efficiently. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ecological novelty and planetary stewardship: biodiversity dynamics in a transforming biosphere'.

Perspectives on the timing of ecosystem collapse in a changing climate.

Climate change is one of the most important drivers of ecosystem change, the global-scale impacts of which will intensify over the next 2 decades. Estimating the timing of unprecedented changes is not only challenging but is of great importance for the development of ecosystem conservation guidelines. Time of emergence (ToE) (point at which climate change can be differentiated from a previous climate), a widely applied concept in climatology studies, provides a robust but unexplored approach for assessing the risk of ecosystem collapse, as described by the C criterion of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Ecosystems (RLE). We identified 3 main theoretical considerations of ToE for RLE assessment (degree of stability, multifactorial instead of one-dimensional analyses, and hallmarks of ecosystem collapse) and 4 sources of uncertainty when applying ToE methodology (intermodel spread, historical reference period, consensus among variables, and consideration of different scenarios), which aims to avoid misuse and errors while promoting a proper application of the framework by scientists and practitioners. The incorporation of ToE for the RLE assessments adds important information for conservation priority setting that allows prediction of changes within and beyond the time frames proposed by the RLE.

Perspectivas sobre el momento del colapso ecosistémico en un clima cambiante Resumen El cambio climático es uno de los principales causantes del cambio ecosistémico, cuyo impacto a escala global se intensificará en las próximas dos décadas. No sólo es un reto estimar el momento de los cambios sin precedentes, sino también es de gran importancia para el desarrollo de las directrices de conservación de los ecosistemas. El momento de aparición (MdA), el punto en el que el cambio climático puede diferenciarse de un clima previo; es un concepto de aplicación extensa en los estudios de climatología y proporciona una estrategia sólida pero poco explorada para evaluar el riesgo del colapso ecosistémico, como está descrito por el criterio C de la Lista Roja de Ecosistemas (LRE) de la Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza. Identificamos las tres consideraciones teóricas del MdA para la evaluación de la LRE (grado de estabilidad, análisis multifactoriales en vez de unidimensionales y distintivos del colapso ecosistémico) y cuatro fuentes de incertidumbre cuando se aplica la metodología MdA (difusión intermodelo, periodo de referencia histórica, consenso entre las variables y consideración de escenarios distintos), la cual busca evitar el mal uso y los errores mientras se promueve una aplicación adecuada del marco de los científicos y lo practicantes. La incorporación del MdA a las evaluaciones de la LRE añade información importante para el establecimiento de prioridades de conservación que permiten la predicción de cambios dentro y más allá del marco temporal propuesto por la LRE.

Metastatic cells exploit their stoichiometric niche in the network of cancer ecosystems.

Metastasis is a nonrandom process with varying degrees of organotropism-specific source-acceptor seeding. Understanding how patterns between source and acceptor tumors emerge remains a challenge in oncology. We hypothesize that organotropism results from the macronutrient niche of cells in source and acceptor organs. To test this, we constructed and analyzed a metastatic network based on 9303 records across 28 tissue types. We found that the topology of the network is nested and modular with scale-free degree distributions, reflecting organotropism along a specificity/generality continuum. The variation in topology is significantly explained by the matching of metastatic cells to their stoichiometric niche. Specifically, successful metastases are associated with higher phosphorus content in the acceptor compared to the source organ, due to metabolic constraints in proliferation crucial to the invasion of new tissues. We conclude that metastases are codetermined by processes at source and acceptor organs, where phosphorus content is a limiting factor orchestrating tumor ecology.

Violence in fishing, hunting, and gathering societies of the Atacama Desert coast: A long-term perspective (10,000 BP-AD 1450).

In this study, we examine the long-term trajectory of violence in societies that inhabited the coast of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile using three lines of evidence: bioarchaeology, geoarchaeology and socio-cultural contexts (rock art, weapons, and settlement patterns). These millennia-old populations adopted a way of life, which they maintained for 10,000 years, based on fishing, hunting, and maritime gathering, complementing this with terrestrial resources. We analyzed 288 adult individuals to search for traumas resulting from interpersonal violence and used strontium isotopes 87Sr/86Sr as a proxy to evaluate whether individuals that showed traces of violence were members of local or non-local groups. Moreover, we evaluated settlement patterns, rock art, and weapons. The results show that the violence was invariant during the 10,000 years in which these groups lived without contact with the western world. During the Formative Period (1000 BC-AD 500), however, the type of violence changed, with a substantial increase in lethality. Finally, during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1450), violence and lethality remained similar to that of the Formative Period. The chemical signal of Sr shows a low frequency of individuals who were coastal outsiders, suggesting that violence occurred between local groups. Moreover, the presence of weapons and rock art depicting scenes of combat supports the notion that these groups engaged in violence. By contrast, the settlement pattern shows no defensive features. We consider that the absence of centralized political systems could have been a causal factor in explaining violence, together with the fact that these populations were organized in small-scale grouping. Another factor may have been competition for the same resources in the extreme environments of the Atacama Desert. Finally, from the Formative Period onward, we cannot rule out a certain level of conflict between fishers and their close neighbors, the horticulturalists.

A general theory for temperature dependence in biology.

At present, there is no simple, first principles-based, and general model for quantitatively describing the full range of observed biological temperature responses. Here we derive a general theory for temperature dependence in biology based on Eyring-Evans-Polanyi's theory for chemical reaction rates. Assuming only that the conformational entropy of molecules changes with temperature, we derive a theory for the temperature dependence of enzyme reaction rates which takes the form of an exponential function modified by a power law and that describes the characteristic asymmetric curved temperature response. Based on a few additional principles, our model can be used to predict the temperature response above the enzyme level, thus spanning quantum to classical scales. Our theory provides an analytical description for the shape of temperature response curves and demonstrates its generality by showing the convergence of all temperature dependence responses onto universal relationships-a universal data collapse-under appropriate normalization and by identifying a general optimal temperature, around 25 ∘C, characterizing all temperature response curves. The model provides a good fit to empirical data for a wide variety of biological rates, times, and steady-state quantities, from molecular to ecological scales and across multiple taxonomic groups (from viruses to mammals). This theory provides a simple framework to understand and predict the impact of temperature on biological quantities based on the first principles of thermodynamics, bridging quantum to classical scales.

How do we best synergize climate mitigation actions to co-benefit biodiversity?

A multitude of actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural and modified ecosystems can have co-benefits for both climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation. Reducing greenhouse emissions to limit warming to less than 1.5 or 2°C above preindustrial levels, as outlined in the Paris Agreement, can yield strong co-benefits for land, freshwater and marine biodiversity and reduce amplifying climate feedbacks from ecosystem changes. Not all climate mitigation strategies are equally effective at producing biodiversity co-benefits, some in fact are counterproductive. Moreover, social implications are often overlooked within the climate-biodiversity nexus. Protecting biodiverse and carbon-rich natural environments, ecological restoration of potentially biodiverse and carbon-rich habitats, the deliberate creation of novel habitats, taking into consideration a locally adapted and meaningful (i.e. full consequences considered) mix of these measures, can result in the most robust win-win solutions. These can be further enhanced by avoidance of narrow goals, taking long-term views and minimizing further losses of intact ecosystems. In this review paper, we first discuss various climate mitigation actions that evidence demonstrates can negatively impact biodiversity, resulting in unseen and unintended negative consequences. We then examine climate mitigation actions that co-deliver biodiversity and societal benefits. We give examples of these win-win solutions, categorized as 'protect, restore, manage and create', in different regions of the world that could be expanded, upscaled and used for further innovation.

Areas of global importance for conserving terrestrial biodiversity, carbon and water.

To meet the ambitious objectives of biodiversity and climate conventions, the international community requires clarity on how these objectives can be operationalized spatially and how multiple targets can be pursued concurrently. To support goal setting and the implementation of international strategies and action plans, spatial guidance is needed to identify which land areas have the potential to generate the greatest synergies between conserving biodiversity and nature's contributions to people. Here we present results from a joint optimization that minimizes the number of threatened species, maximizes carbon retention and water quality regulation, and ranks terrestrial conservation priorities globally. We found that selecting the top-ranked 30% and 50% of terrestrial land area would conserve respectively 60.7% and 85.3% of the estimated total carbon stock and 66% and 89.8% of all clean water, in addition to meeting conservation targets for 57.9% and 79% of all species considered. Our data and prioritization further suggest that adequately conserving all species considered (vertebrates and plants) would require giving conservation attention to ~70% of the terrestrial land surface. If priority was given to biodiversity only, managing 30% of optimally located land area for conservation may be sufficient to meet conservation targets for 81.3% of the terrestrial plant and vertebrate species considered. Our results provide a global assessment of where land could be optimally managed for conservation. We discuss how such a spatial prioritization framework can support the implementation of the biodiversity and climate conventions.