Ecosystem Management

Samson, Fred B.; Knopf, Fritz L.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-4018-1

Cited by 22 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 364 publications

(553 reference statements)

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“…Hershler, Ratcliffe, Liu, Lang, & Hay, 2014;Szarowska, 2006). Furthermore, stochastic natural processes and anthropogenic actions have profoundly and diversely impacted hydrobiid species (Collen et al, 2014;Cowie, Regnier, Fontaine, & Bouchet, 2017;Sisk, Launer, Switky, & Ehrlich, 1994), making the group a priority for conservation studies over the past two decades (e.g. Bouchet & Gargominy, 1998;Hershler, Liu, & Howard, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global species richness of hydrobiid snails determined by climate and evolutionary history

et al. 2018

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Efforts to describe spatial patterns of freshwater diversity and to evaluate their underlying factors have traditionally been focused on some animal groups (e.g. amphibians, fish or dragonflies). Despite being a dominant component in continental aquatic ecosystems and crucial for determining priority areas for conservation, broad‐scale data on gastropod total species, endemic and threatened species richness are limited. Based on these biodiversity indices, we identify global hotspots, extinction risk along the elevational gradient and the drivers of species richness patterns in the largest group of freshwater gastropods, the family Hydrobiidae. Given the strong dependency to a nonmarine aquatic environment, the observed richness patterns of extant hydrobiid species could be significantly influenced by large‐scale geography and dispersal processes as well as climatic conditions affecting continental ecosystems. Therefore, we tested several predictions for species richness derived from ecological and evolutionary hypotheses postulated for other freshwater groups. Based on a comprehensive literature and biodiversity database review, we compiled the number of total, endemic and threatened species per freshwater ecoregion. We classified ecoregions as hotspots if each biodiversity index was in the top 25% of its range and assessed the effect of 13 environmental and evolutionary factors on species richness using generalised linear models. We identified 906 species and 157 genera of Hydrobiidae showing mainly a Nearctic–Palearctic distribution and 19 biodiversity hotspots, most located across the Mediterranean Basin. In our data set, 83% of the species were endemic to a single ecoregion. Of the 43% non‐data deficient species, we found almost three times more threatened than non‐threatened species, and extinction risk peaked at 1,500 m a.s.l. Species richness was unequally distributed over biogeographic realms, increased with higher connectivity among ecoregions, and was negatively related with annual temperature range. Latitude and precipitation seasonality explained part of the richness variation by a nonlinear relationship. The identified hotspots correspond with those of other freshwater taxa. The hump‐shaped relationship of extinction risk with elevation is likely the consequence of decreasing natural and anthropogenic perturbations at higher elevations. Global hotspots of Hydrobiidae richness represent areas of climatic stability with medium precipitation and temperature seasonality that are well connected with other hydrological basins. Our results illustrate that both evolutionary and environmental factors determine these global patterns and that future changes of the latter factors may affect hydrobiid richness.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global species richness of hydrobiid snails determined by climate and evolutionary history

et al. 2018

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“…An ecosystem engineer is any organism that creates or significantly modifies habitat structure, and as a result is important for maintaining the biodiversity of the environment in which it lives (Samson and Knopf, 1996). Some herbivorous reptiles can have a profound effect on vegetation.…”

Section: Reptiles As Ecosystem Engineersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Plight of Reptiles as Ecological Actors in the Tropics

Miranda

Everton²

2017

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Earth's tropical ecosystems have witnessed several extinctions and a dramatic reduction of the range and abundance of large reptile species, which is directly related to the rise of early and modern humans. The occurrence of such extinctions, range reduction, species loss, and the consequences for several paramount ecosystem processes are poorly documented compared to other large vertebrate species. Here, I reviewed the literature on the ecological processes performed by large tropical reptile species and their human-induced widespread demise in order to determine knowledge gaps and encourage a paradigm shift in understanding on the interactiveness of such species. The interactions and species involved indicate that large abundant reptiles in the tropics are important in ecological processes, and can consequently have an important role in ecosystem function through gene dispersal, nutrient cycling, trophic action, and ecosystem engineering. These important interactions performed by reptiles are not solely performed by few species, or geographically restricted to islands, but instead present a pattern that repeatedly occurs in large reptiles distributed over tropical ecosystems. The observed tendency of reptiles to be tightly involved in these ecological interactions has important implications for the ecology of tropical ecosystems. Lost and current ecological processes performed by large reptiles may be orders of magnitude higher than what is currently perceived, and the misleading baseline of those processes must be addressed otherwise we risk losing species and services that are dependent of such interactions. To fix this bias I suggest: (a) Increase information spreading about Pleistocene-Holocene reptile extinctions using popular media; (b) Improved exchange between the research field of megafauna effects in ecosystems and herpetologists working with large reptiles; (c) Increase research effort on anthropogenic reptile extinctions and their potential to predict future losses; (d) Address the knowledge gaps, as human-reptile conflict, chelonian seed dispersal and nutrient movement; (e) Increase quantitative research on large reptile population ecology, density, and abundance. (f) address the potentially present or lost ecosystem effects of extant and extinct reptile species. Although the importance of reptiles in most tropical ecosystems has been perceived as negligible, this study shows that this may be a misleading paradigm.

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“…Indeed, the performance of random forests for inferring predator-prey interactions among terrestrial vertebrates has not been assessed despite this group including many species of high conservation concern (Tilman et al 2017, Cox et al 2022 and of important ecological function (e.g. ecological engineers, Samson and Knopf 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting predator–prey interactions in terrestrial endotherms using random forest

et al. 2023

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Species interactions play a fundamental role in ecosystems. However, few ecological communities have complete data describing such interactions, which is an obstacle to understanding how ecosystems function and respond to perturbations. Because it is often impractical to collect empirical data for all interactions in a community, various methods have been developed to infer interactions. Machine learning is increasingly being used for making interaction predictions, with random forest being one of the most frequently used of these methods. However, performance of random forest in inferring predator‐prey interactions in terrestrial vertebrates and its sensitivity to training data quality remain untested. We examined predator–prey interactions in two diverse, primarily terrestrial vertebrate classes: birds and mammals. Combining data from a global interaction dataset and a specific community (Simpson Desert, Australia), we tested how well random forest predicted predator–prey interactions for mammals and birds using species' ecomorphological and phylogenetic traits. We also tested how variation in training data quality – manipulated by removing records and switching interaction records to non‐interactions – affected model performance. We found that random forest could predict predator–prey interactions for birds and mammals using ecomorphological or phylogenetic traits, correctly predicting up to 88 and 67% of interactions and non‐interactions in the global and community‐specific datasets, respectively. These predictions were accurate even when there were no records in the training data for focal species. In contrast, false non‐interactions for focal predators in training data strongly degraded model performance. Our results demonstrate that random forest can identify predator–prey interactions for birds and mammals that have few or no interaction records. Furthermore, our study provides guidance on how to prepare training data to optimise machine learning classifiers for predicting species interactions, which could help ecologists 1) address knowledge gaps and explore network‐related questions in data‐poor situations, and 2) predict interactions for range‐expanding species.

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Ecosystem Management

Cited by 22 publications

References 364 publications

Global species richness of hydrobiid snails determined by climate and evolutionary history

Global species richness of hydrobiid snails determined by climate and evolutionary history

The Plight of Reptiles as Ecological Actors in the Tropics

Predicting predator–prey interactions in terrestrial endotherms using random forest

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