0000000001325607
AUTHOR
Eloy Revilla
Spatio-temporal dynamics of genetic variation in the Iberian lynx along its path to extinction reconstructed with ancient DNA
here is the tendency to assume that endangered species have been both genetically and demographically healthier in the past, so that any genetic erosion observed today was caused by their recent decline. The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) suffered a dramatic and continuous decline during the 20th century, and now shows extremely low genome- and species-wide genetic diversity among other signs of genomic erosion. We analyze ancient (N = 10), historical (N = 245), and contemporary (N = 172) samples with microsatellite and mitogenome data to reconstruct the species' demography and investigate patterns of genetic variation across space and time. Iberian lynx populations transitioned from low but …
The zoogeographical domains: a new conservation target at global scale
Zooregions are classifications of the Earth’s surface based on characteristic species assemblages. Consequently, zooregions reflect how ecological, evolutionary, and historical processes have been acting over millions of years, arguably making them the largest entities to conserve the uniqueness of the species assemblages on Earth. Because species are distributed along zooregions heterogeneously, to conserve zooregions adequately, we need to protect their characteristic areas (transition, core or endemic areas), what we call the zoogeographical domains. Here we propose a method to characterize the zoogeographical domains basing on four metrics, which are independently used in macroecologica…
Measuring progress towards rewilding
Human domination of land has transformed ecosystems, modified ecological processes and influenced biodiversity composition across most of the terrestrial biosphere. Nevertheless, this global change does not necessarily translate into a total depletion of natural values. Innovative conservation actions are emerging as a promising strategy to enhance biodiversity, ecological resilience and ecosystem service delivery, as well as to retain ecological and evolutionary potential. For instance, rewilding projects have gained increasing attention from scientists, conservationists, practitioners, decision-makers and the media. Recovering the natural dynamics of ecosystems requires increasing ecosyst…
Frontiers for conservation: targeting European borders as conservation areas
It has been long recognized that political borders should not hamper wildlife, and that conservation actions involving several countries are known to bring large scale benefits to nature while helping to resolve social and political conflicts. While many neighboring countries have lived a considerable long peace time, namely the European western countries, several eastern countries were isolated from the west regions due to the so called "iron curtain". More recently, in the former Yugoslavia and currently along the border of Ukraine-Russia, devastating conflicts are also isolating regions and countries. On the other hand, human development, and particularly transportation network…
Trajectory analyses of past human land use as a tool to understand present terrestrial mammals' distribution
Apart from the known environmental factors influencing species distribution at the global scale, additional anthropogenic factors need to be considered in order to understand their current extents of occurrence. Namely, threatened species should particularly be influenced by human activities, since they are known to be in decline under their influence. The role of present human activities in modeling species distribution seems clear, but there is still a facet of land use that has not yet been sufficiently explored: land-use history. In the present work we show how to summarize overall land-use trajectories based on available data ranging from c.B.C.6000 to c.A.D.2000 by using a clustering …