Exploring the potential for plant translocations to adapt to a warming world

Abstract

1. Anthropogenic climate warming is undisputed and yet, there is much that is unknown regarding biological impacts of changing temperature and precipitation, and the management options presented as solutions to biodiversity losses-such as translocations of plants and seeds-are often controversial. This SpecialFocus presents five new studies and two recently published articles in Journal of Ecology and Ecological Solutions and Evidence that analyse the use of existing plant translocations, assess the potential to use translocations to offset past declines and future population losses, and articulate the need to involve a broader range of stakeholders in the use of translocations. 3. Our recommendations include improving the monitoring of plant translocations; harnessing existing translocations to form a global monitoring array for climate change impacts on biological diversity and strengthening research-practice linkages improving data sharing and broadening the stakeholders involved in translocations. 4. Synthesis. Further study of translocations and integration of information from translocation projects holds the opportunity to provide a wealth of new knowledge and improved ways to counter climate change impacts on biological diversity and ecosystems.

Population demographic history and evolutionary rescue: influence of a bottleneck event

“…Our findings have implications for conservation in our changing world. Managers often have been concerned with maintaining adaptation to local environments of the populations they manage (Dalrymple et al ., 2021). In the Anthropocene, where environments are changing extremely rapidly, a focus on supporting sufficient genetic variation for ongoing adaptation to shifting conditions is important.…”

Translocations of threatened plants in the Mediterranean Basin: current status and future directions

“…Promoting long-term monitoring would allow better assessment of the success of a translocation so that valuable insights can be made regarding plant response to climate change (e.g., Fenu et al 2020;Diallo et al 2021;Dalrymple et al 2021;Julien et al 2022b). At the same time, although numerous cases are known nationally or internationally, none of the papers described a failed translocation.…”

Optimising conservation translocations of threatened

“…With limited financial resources currently available globally for conservation and translocation of threatened plants (Dalrymple et al 2021) and increased pressure to prioritise species for conservation (see papers reviewed in Cullen 2012), maximising what limited resources are currently available for plant conservation is critical. Given that anthropogenic climate change (Ciavarella et al 2020) will result in assisted migration being the only option for translocation of many species (Dalrymple et al 2021), understanding the niche that will sustain both adults and seedlings becomes increasingly important when choosing sites outside of their known habitat (Bellis et al 2020). Given that 70% of translocations are unsuccessful (average of results provided in reviews by Godefroid et al 2011, Dalrymple et al 2021, Reiter et al 2016and Silcock et al 2019, large financial savings could be made by modest improvements.…”

“…Given that anthropogenic climate change (Ciavarella et al 2020) will result in assisted migration being the only option for translocation of many species (Dalrymple et al 2021), understanding the niche that will sustain both adults and seedlings becomes increasingly important when choosing sites outside of their known habitat (Bellis et al 2020). Given that 70% of translocations are unsuccessful (average of results provided in reviews by Godefroid et al 2011, Dalrymple et al 2021, Reiter et al 2016and Silcock et al 2019, large financial savings could be made by modest improvements. On the basis of the assumptions of costs of translocating a population in Zimmer et al (2019), broken down into a cost per propagule, we showed that combining the optimal microsite niche for both adult survival and recruitment can lead to a cost saving of A$31 611 ± $15 067 to $179 900 ± $85 750 for a single threatened species.…”