Biodiversity offsets and caribou conservation in Alberta: opportunities and challenges

Robichaud, Christine B.; Knopff, Kyle H.

doi:10.7557/2.35.2.3636

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(103 reference statements)

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“…For example, removal of predators and alternate prey increased survival of the endangered island fox in California (USA), leading to their recovery (Roemer & Donlan, 2004). However, control of predators and alternative prey is a short‐term solution that must be combined with land use management such as promoting protected areas, natural restoration, and reducing road networks (Robichaud & Knopff, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global change risks a threatened species due to alteration of predator–prey dynamics

et al. 2023

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Although global change can reshape ecosystems by triggering cascading effects on food webs, indirect interactions remain largely overlooked. Climate-and land-use-induced changes in landscape cause shifts in vegetation composition, which affect entire food webs. We used simulations of forest dynamics and movements of interacting species, parameterized by empirical observations, to predict the outcomes of global change on a large-mammal food web in the boreal forest. We demonstrate that climate-and land-use-induced changes in forest landscapes exacerbate asymmetrical apparent competition between moose and threatened caribou populations through wolf predation. Although increased prey mortalities came from both behavioral and numerical responses, indirect effects from numerical responses had an overwhelming effect. The increase in caribou mortalities was exacerbated by the cumulating effects of land use over the short term and climate change impacts over the long term, with higher impact of land use. Indirect trophic interactions will be key to understanding community dynamics under global change.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global change risks a threatened species due to alteration of predator–prey dynamics

et al. 2023

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“…For example, removal of predators and alternate prey increased survival of the endangered island fox in California (U.S.A.), leading to their recovery 53 . However, control of predators and alternative prey is a short-term solution that must be combined with land-use management such as promoting protected areas, natural restoration, and reducing road networks 54 . Restoring predator-prey dynamics has also the benefit of enhancing boreal carbon conservation 55 .…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global change impacts a threatened species through alteration of predator-prey dynamics

Labadie

Hardy

Boulanger

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Although global change can reshape ecosystems by triggering cascading effects on food webs, indirect interactions remain largely overlooked. Climate- and land use-induced changes on landscape cause shifts in vegetation composition, which affect entire food webs. We used simulations of forest dynamics and movements of interacting species, parameterized by empirical observations, to predict the outcomes of global change on a large-mammal food-web in boreal forest. We demonstrate that climate- and land use-induced changes of forest landscapes exacerbate asymmetrical apparent competition between moose and threatened caribou populations, through wolf predation. While increased prey mortalities came from both behavioural and numerical responses, indirect effects from numerical responses had an overwhelming effect. The increase in caribou mortalities was exacerbated by the cumulating effects of land-use over the short term and climate change impacts over the long-term, with higher impact of land-use. Indirect trophic interactions will be key to understanding community dynamics under global change.

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“…Moreover, monitoring biodiversity helps plan mitigation strategies and implement effective conservation actions (Stralberg et al, 2015). Furthermore, monitoring biodiversity is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation measures and adjust them accordingly (Robichaud and Knopff, 2015; Labadie et al, 2023). However, identifying species of many taxa to reconstruct biodiversity needs expertise and could be costly (Kim and Byrne, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A network-based methodology to reconstruct biodiversity based on interactions with indicator species

Bouderbala,

Fortin,

Tremblay

et al. 2023

Preprint

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With the ongoing decline in biodiversity, there is a need for efficient field monitoring techniques. Indicator species (IS) emerged as a promising tool to monitor diversity because their presence indicates a maximum number of conditionally co-occurring species. Accordingly, there is empirical evidence that few IS could predict local richness. However, species richness is often insufficient to characterize biodiversity. We aim to assess the effectiveness of IS for biodiversity reconstruction based on their co-occurrence with other species. We develop probabilistic models that use IS to predict the occurrence probability of co-occurring species. We predict the occurrence of species based on (1) their conditional occurrence probability with IS and (2) the occurrence probability of IS. We test the approach with field observations of birds in the Côte-Nord region of Québec. First, we identify climate networks (based on temperature and precipitation) over which bird associations remain relatively stable to identify the most locally relevant IS. We use four network-based methods to select the IS according to betweenness, betweenness-closeness centralities, and positive and negative co-occurrences. From co-occurrence networks, we conclude that the latitudinal climate gradient impacts the nature of both biotic interactions and IS composition. Indeed, the proportion of negative links, which reflect competition and avoidance liaisons, was about 25.2% in the southern network, whereas it was 13.2% in the northern network. Moreover, almost a complete turnover in the composition of the IS was observed between the northern and southern networks, with only two common IS among 17. Regarding the effectiveness in the reconstruction of assemblages occurrence, we observed a strong negative correlation (r ≤ −0.75) between the percentage of sites occupied and the dissimilarity between the original and the estimated occurrences for a given species. More precisely, species must be present in more than 25% and 33% of northern and southern sites to recover well from its co-occurrence with IS. Depending on climate clusters, our approach enables us to recover the occurrence up to 100% and 70% of species present in more than 20% of sites of northern and southern groups, respectively. However, the accuracy decreases to 9% and 12% of northern and southern groups, respectively, when we include less-present species. The higher success at the north sites reflects the lower species richness observed at higher latitudes. In conclusion, our method demonstrates that it is possible to predict local species assemblages based on the occurrence and absence of IS. Nevertheless, the relatively low success of less present species illustrates the need for further theoretical development to reconstruct biodiversity, mainly to recover the occurrence of rare species.

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Biodiversity offsets and caribou conservation in Alberta: opportunities and challenges

Cited by 3 publications

References 62 publications

Global change risks a threatened species due to alteration of predator–prey dynamics

Global change risks a threatened species due to alteration of predator–prey dynamics

Global change impacts a threatened species through alteration of predator-prey dynamics

A network-based methodology to reconstruct biodiversity based on interactions with indicator species

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