Characterizing the trophy hunting debate on Twitter.

Social media is an arena of debate for contentious political and social topics. One conservation topic debated online is the acceptability of trophy hunting, a debate that has implications for national and international policy. We used a mixed-methods approach (grounded theory and quantitative clustering) to identify themes in the trophy hunting debate on Twitter. We examined commonly co-occurring categories that describe people's stances on trophy hunting. We identified 12 categories and 4 preliminary archetypes opposing trophy hunting-activism, scientific, condemning, and objecting-whose opposition derived from different moral reasoning. Few tweets (22) in our sample of 500 supported trophy hunting, whereas 350 opposed it. The debate was hostile; 7% of tweets in our sample were categorized as abusive. Online debates can be unproductive, and our findings may be important for stakeholders wishing to effectively engage in the trophy hunting debate on Twitter. More generally, we contend that because social media is increasingly influential, it is important to formally contextualize public responses to contentious conservation topics in order to aid communication of conservation evidence and to integrate diverse public perspectives in conservation practice.

Caracterización del debate sobre la cacería de trofeos en Twitter Resumen Las redes sociales son arenas de debate para temas políticos y sociales polémicos. Un tema de conservación que se debate en línea es la aceptación de la cacería de trofeos, cuya discusión tiene implicaciones políticas nacionales e internacionales. Usamos una estrategia de métodos mixtos (teoría fundamentada y datos cuantitativos agrupados) para identificar los temas en el debate sobre la cacería de trofeos en Twitter. Analizamos las categorías concurrentes más comunes que describían la postura de las personas con respecto al tema. Identificamos doce categorías y cuatro arquetipos preliminares en contra de la cacería de trofeos (activista, científico, condenatorio y opositor), cuya oposición derivó de diferentes razonamientos morales. Pocos tuits (22) en nuestra muestra de 500 apoyaban la cacería de trofeos, mientras que 350 se oponían a ella. El debate era hostil, pues 7% de los tuits en nuestra muestra estuvieron categorizados como abusivos. Los debates en línea pueden ser improductivos y nuestros descubrimientos pueden ser importantes para los actores que desean participar de forma efectiva en el debate sobre la cacería de trofeos en Twitter. De manera más generalizada, sostenemos que, debido a la creciente influencia de las redes sociales, es importante que las respuestas públicas a los temas polémicos de conservación estén contextualizadas de manera formal para así auxiliar a la comunicación de la evidencia de conservación y para integrar las diferentes perspectivas públicas en la práctica de la conservación.

A safe and just operating space for human identity: a systems perspective.

A safe and just operating space for socioecological systems is a powerful bridging concept in sustainability science. It integrates biophysical earth-system tipping points (ie, thresholds at which small changes can lead to amplifying effects) with social science considerations of distributional equity and justice. Often neglected, however, are the multiple feedback loops between self-identity and planetary boundaries. Environmental degradation can reduce self-identification with nature, leading to decreased pro-environmental behaviours and decreased cooperation with out-groups, further increasing the likelihood of transgressing planetary boundaries. This vicious cycle competes with a virtuous one, where improving environmental quality enhances the integration of nature into self-identity and improves health, thereby facilitating prosocial and pro-environmental behaviour. These behavioural changes can also cascade up to influence social and economic institutions. Given a possible minimum degree of individual self-care to maintain health and prosperity, there would seem to exist an analogous safe and just operating space for self-identity, for which system stewardship for planetary health is crucial.

The influence of chalk grasslands on butterfly phenology and ecology.

The influence of large-scale variables such as climate change on phenology has received a great deal of research attention. However, local environmental factors also play a key role in determining the timing of species life cycles. Using the meadow brown butterfly Maniola jurtina as an example, we investigate how a specific habitat type, lowland calcareous grassland, can affect the timing of flight dates. Although protracted flight periods have previously been reported in populations on chalk grassland sites in the south of England, no attempt has yet been made to quantify this at a national level, or to assess links with population genetics and drought tolerance. Using data from 539 sites across the UK, these differences in phenology are quantified, and M. jurtina phenology is found to be strongly associated with both site geology and topography, independent of levels of abundance. Further investigation into aspects of M. jurtina ecology at a subset of sites finds no genetic structuring or drought tolerance associated with these same site conditions.

Associations between COVID-19 transmission rates, park use, and landscape structure.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe impacts on global public health. In England, social distancing measures and a nationwide lockdown were introduced to reduce the spread of the virus. Green space accessibility may have been particularly important during this lockdown, as it could have provided benefits for physical and mental wellbeing. However, the associations between public green space use and the rate of COVID-19 transmission are yet to be quantified, and as the size and accessibility of green spaces vary within England's local authorities, the risks and benefits to the public of using green space may be context-dependent. To evaluate how green space affected COVID-19 transmission across 299 local authorities (small regions) in England, we calculated a daily case rate metric, based upon a seven-day moving average, for each day within the period June 1st - November 30th 2020 and assessed how baseline health and mobility variables influenced these rates. Next, looking at the residual case rates, we investigated how landscape structure (e.g. area and patchiness of green space) and park use influenced transmission. We first show that reducing mobility is associated with a decline in case rates, especially in areas with high population clustering. After accounting for known mechanisms behind transmission rates, we found that park use (showing a preference for park mobility) was associated with decreased residual case rates, especially when green space was low and contiguous (not patchy). Our results support that a reduction in overall mobility may be a good strategy for reducing case rates, endorsing the success of lockdown measures. However, if mobility is necessary, outdoor park use may be safer than other forms of mobility and associated activities (e.g. shopping or office-based working).

Predicting resilience of ecosystem functioning from co-varying species' responses to environmental change.

Understanding how environmental change affects ecosystem function delivery is of primary importance for fundamental and applied ecology. Current approaches focus on single environmental driver effects on communities, mediated by individual response traits. Data limitations present constraints in scaling up this approach to predict the impacts of multivariate environmental change on ecosystem functioning. We present a more holistic approach to determine ecosystem function resilience, using long-term monitoring data to analyze the aggregate impact of multiple historic environmental drivers on species' population dynamics. By assessing covariation in population dynamics between pairs of species, we identify which species respond most synchronously to environmental change and allocate species into "response guilds." We then use "production functions" combining trait data to estimate the relative roles of species to ecosystem functions. We quantify the correlation between response guilds and production functions, assessing the resilience of ecosystem functioning to environmental change, with asynchronous dynamics of species in the same functional guild expected to lead to more stable ecosystem functioning. Testing this method using data for butterflies collected over four decades in the United Kingdom, we find three ecosystem functions (resource provisioning, wildflower pollination, and aesthetic cultural value) appear relatively robust, with functionally important species dispersed across response guilds, suggesting more stable ecosystem functioning. Additionally, by relating genetic distances to response guilds we assess the heritability of responses to environmental change. Our results suggest it may be feasible to infer population responses of butterflies to environmental change based on phylogeny-a useful insight for conservation management of rare species with limited population monitoring data. Our approach holds promise for overcoming the impasse in predicting the responses of ecosystem functions to environmental change. Quantifying co-varying species' responses to multivariate environmental change should enable us to significantly advance our predictions of ecosystem function resilience and enable proactive ecosystem management.