Four challenges to an effective national nature assessment.

Comprehensive biodiversity assessments play an essential role in strengthening global and national conservation strategies. The recently announced first U.S. National Nature Assessment (NNA) provides an unparalleled opportunity to comprehensively review status and trends of biodiversity at all levels. This broad context can help in the coordination of actions to conserve individual species and ecosystems. The scientific assessments that informed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted at the 2022 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) conference of parties provide models for synthesizing information on trends at multiple levels of biodiversity, including decline in abundance and distribution of species, loss of populations and genetic diversity, and degradation and loss of ecosystems and their services. The assessments then relate these trends to data on drivers of biodiversity loss and pathways to their mitigation. The U.S. NNA can augment such global analyses and avoid the pitfalls encountered by previous U.S. efforts by ensuring policy-relevant design, data accessibility, and inclusivity in process and product and by incorporating spatial data relevant to national and subnational audiences. Although the United States is not formally a CBD party, an effective NNA should take full advantage of the global context by including indicators adopted at the 2022 meeting and incorporating an independent review mechanism that supports periodic stocktaking and ratcheting up of ambition in response to identified shortfalls in stemming biodiversity loss. The challenges to design of an effective U.S. assessment are relevant globally as nations develop assessments and reporting to support the new global biodiversity framework's targets. By considering and incorporating the diverse ways in which society values and benefits from nature, such assessments can help bridge the gap between research and conservation practice and communicate the extent of the biodiversity crisis to the public, fostering broad-based support for transformative change in humanity's relationship to the natural world.

Cuatro obstáculos para una eficaz evaluación nacional de la naturaleza Resumen Las evaluaciones completas de la biodiversidad tienen un papel esencial en el fortalecimiento de las estrategias de conservación nacional y mundial. La recién anunciada Evaluación Nacional de la Naturaleza (ENN) de los EE. UU. proporciona una oportunidad sin precedentes para revisar de manera completa el estado y las tendencias de la biodiversidad en todos los niveles. Este contexto generalizado puede ayudar a la coordinación de acciones para la conservación de especies individuales y ecosistemas. Las evaluaciones científicas que guiaron el Marco Mundial de la Biodiversidad de Kumming-Montreal adoptado en la conferencia de las partes de la Convención sobre la Diversidad Biológica (CBD) de 2022 proporcionan modelos para sintetizar la información sobre las tendencias de la biodiversidad a varios niveles, incluyendo la declinación en abundancia y distribución de especies, pérdida de poblaciones y diversidad genética y la degradación y pérdida de los ecosistemas y sus servicios. Después de esto, las evaluaciones relacionan estas tendencias con la información sobre los causantes de la pérdida de la biodiversidad y las maneras de mitigarla. La ENN de los EE. UU. pueden aumentar estos análisis mundiales y evitar las dificultades enfrentadas por los esfuerzos previos al garantizar un diseño relevante para las políticas, la disponibilidad de datos y la inclusión en el proceso y el producto y también mediante la incorporación de datos espaciales relevantes para el público nacional y subnacional. Aunque los EE. UU. no son una parte formal de la CBD, una ENN efectiva debería aprovechar de lleno el contexto global al incluir los indicadores adoptados en la reunión de 2022 e incorporar un mecanismo independiente de revisión que respalde el balance periódico y el aumento de la ambición en respuesta a las deficiencias detectadas en la contención de la pérdida de biodiversidad. Los retos para diseñar una evaluación estadunidense son relevantes a nivel mundial ya que los países evalúan y reportan para mantener los objetivos mundiales de biodiversidad post-2020. Si consideramos las diferentes maneras en las que la sociedad valora y se beneficia de la naturaleza, dichas evaluaciones pueden ayudar a cerrar la brecha entre la investigación y la práctica de la conservación y a comunicarle al público el nivel de la crisis de la biodiversidad, lo que fomenta el apoyo generalizado para transformar la relación entre la humanidad y el mundo natural.

Phylogenetic supertree and functional trait database for all extant parrots.

We present a complete dataset from the literature on functional traits including morphological measurements, dietary information, foraging strategy, and foraging location for all 398 extant species of parrots. The morphological measurements include: mass, total length, wing chord, culmen length, tarsus length, and tail length. The diet data describe whether each species is known to consume particular food items (e.g. nectar, berries, and carrion), foraging strategy data describes how each species captures or accesses food, and foraging location data describe the habitat from which each species finds food (e.g. ground, canopy, and subcanopy). We also present a time-calibrated phylogenetic supertree that contains all 398 extant species as well as 15 extinct species (413 total species). These data are hosted on the Figshare data depository (https://figshare.com/s/6cdf8cf00793deab7ba6).

Adaptive Management as an Effective Strategy: Interdisciplinary Perceptions for Natural Resources Management.

Adaptive management is a well-established approach to managing natural resources, but there is little evidence demonstrating effectiveness of adaptive management over traditional management techniques. Peer-reviewed literature attempts to draw conclusions about adaptive management effectiveness using social perceptions, but those studies are largely restricted to employees of US federal organizations. To gain a more comprehensive insight into perceived adaptive management effectiveness, this study aimed to broaden the suite of disciplines, professional affiliations, and geographic backgrounds represented by both practitioners and scholars. A questionnaire contained a series of questions concerning factors that lead to or inhibit effective management, followed by another set of questions focused on adaptive management. Using a continuum representing strategies of both adaptive management and traditional management, respondents selected those strategies that they perceived as being effective. Overall, characteristics (i.e., strategies, stakeholders, and barriers) identified by respondents as contributing to effective management closely aligned with adaptive management. Responses were correlated to the type of adaptive management experience rather than an individual's discipline, occupational, or regional affiliation. In particular, perceptions of characteristics contributing to adaptive management effectiveness varied between respondents who identified as adaptive management scholars (i.e., no implementation experience) and adaptive management practitioners. Together, these results supported two concepts that make adaptive management effective: practitioners emphasized adaptive management's value as a long-term approach and scholars noted the importance of stakeholder involvement. Even so, more communication between practitioners and scholars regarding adaptive management effectiveness could promote interdisciplinary learning and problem solving for improved resources management.

Multiple dimensions of bat biodiversity along an extensive tropical elevational gradient.

Research concerning spatial dynamics of biodiversity generally has been limited to considerations of the taxonomic dimension, which is insensitive to interspecific variation in ecological or evolutionary characteristics that play important roles in species assembly and provide linkages to ecosystem services. Consequently, the assumption that the taxonomic dimension is a good surrogate for other dimensions remains unconfirmed. We assessed variation in taxonomic (species richness) as well as phylogenetic and functional (Rao's quadratic entropy, a measurement of dispersion) dimensions of bat biodiversity along an elevational gradient in the Manu Biosphere Reserve of Peru. Phylogenetic dispersion was based on relatedness of species derived from a mammalian supertree. Functional dispersion was estimated separately for each of six functional components that reflect particular niche axes (e.g. diet, foraging strategy, body size) and for all functional components combined. Species richness declined nonlinearly with elevation, whereas phylogenetic dispersion and functional dispersion based on all functional components were not significantly associated with elevation (orthogonal polynomial regression). Moreover, considerable heterogeneity in the form of elevational relationships existed among functional components. After accounting for variation in species richness, dispersion of phylogenetic, diet and foraging strategy attributes were significantly greater than expected at high elevations, whereas dispersion of body size was significantly less than expected at high elevations. Species richness was a poor surrogate for phylogenetic or functional dispersion. Functional dispersion based on multiple components obscured patterns detected by particular components and hindered identification of mechanistic explanations for elevational variation in biodiversity. Variation in phylogenetic dispersion effectively captured the composite variation represented by all functional components, suggesting a phylogenetic signal in functional attributes. Mechanisms that give rise to variation in richness do not fully account for variation in phylogenetic or functional characteristics of assemblages. Greater than expected phylogenetic, diet and foraging strategy dispersion at high elevations were associated with the loss of phylogenetically or functionally redundant species, suggesting that increasing interspecific competition with decreasing productivity resulted in competitive exclusion. In contrast, low dispersion of size attributes at high elevations suggests the importance of abiotic filtering that favours small-sized species that can more easily enter torpor.