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Habitat connectivity is important for tropical biodiversity conservation. Expansion of commodity crops, such as oil palm, fragments natural habitat areas, and strategies are needed to improve habitat connectivity in agricultural landscapes. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) voluntary certification system requires that growers identify and conserve forest patches identified as High Conservation Value Areas (HCVAs) before oil palm plantations can be certified as sustainable. We assessed the potential benefits of these conservation set‐asides for forest connectivity.We mapped HCVAs and quantified their forest cover in 2015. To assess their contribution to forest connectivity, we modelled range expansion of forest‐dependent populations with five dispersal abilities spanning those representative of poor dispersers (e.g. flightless insects) to more mobile species (e.g. large birds or bats) across 70 plantation landscapes in Borneo.Because only 21% of HCVA area was forested in 2015, these conservation set‐asides currently provide few connectivity benefits. Compared to a scenario where HCVAs contain no forest (i.e. a no‐RSPO scenario), current HCVAs improved connectivity by ~3% across all dispersal abilities. However, if HCVAs were fully reforested, then overall landscape connectivity could improve by ~16%. Reforestation of HCVAs had the greatest benefit for poor to intermediate dispersers (0.5–3 km per generation), generating landscapes that were up to 2.7 times better connected than landscapes without HCVAs. By contrast, connectivity benefits of HCVAs were low for highly mobile populations under current and reforestation scenarios, because range expansion of these populations was generally successful regardless of the amount of forest cover. Synthesis and applications. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) requires that High Conservation Value Areas (HCVAs) be set aside to conserve biodiversity, but HCVAs currently provide few connectivity benefits because they contain relatively little forest. However, reforested HCVAs have the potential to improve landscape connectivity for some forest species (e.g. winged insects), and we recommend active management by plantation companies to improve forest quality of degraded HCVAs (e.g. by enrichment planting). Future revisions to the RSPO's Principles and Criteria should also ensure that large (i.e. with a core area >2 km2) HCVAs are reconnected to continuous tracts of forest to maximize their connectivity benefits., The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) requires that High Conservation Value Areas (HCVAs) be set aside to conserve biodiversity, but HCVAs currently provide few connectivity benefits because they contain relatively little forest. However, reforested HCVAs have the potential to improve landscape connectivity for some forest species (e.g. winged insects), and we recommend active management by plantation companies to improve forest quality of degraded HCVAs (e.g. by enrichment planting). Future revisions to the RSPO's Principles and Criteria should also ensure that large (i.e. with a core area >2 km2) HCVAs are reconnected to continuous tracts of forest to maximize their connectivity benefits.

1. It is necessary to improve knowledge exchange between scientists and decision‐makers so that scientific evidence can be readily accessed to inform policy. 2. To maximise impact of scientific evidence in policy development, the scientific community should engage more fully with decision‐makers, building long‐term working relationships in order to identify and respond to ‘policy windows’ with science that is reframed for policy‐relevance. 3. We illustrate the process and challenges using a case study in which we synthesised evidence from studies of habitat fragmentation to provide information for improved biodiversity conservation in the oil palm sector, resulting in the uptake of this research into new industry guidelines. 4. Policy implications. The case study demonstrates how having an in‐depth understanding of the ‘policy arena’ (the state of policy and the actors and influencing factors that affect policy) and responding with relevant and specific information, enabled effective uptake of science to inform the design of conservation set‐asides in the oil palm industry.

Competition between mycelia of saprotrophic cord-forming basidiomycetes occurs both within dead woody resources and in the soil-litter interface, and involves a variety of antagonistic mechanisms including the production of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The antagonistic potential of VOC profiles from interactions in wood blocks and in soil microcosms was assessed using shared headspace experiments, and the profile of VOCs emitted over the course of interactions elucidated using solid phase microextraction (SPME) with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS). Quantitative and qualitative changes in VOC production occurred in interactions compared to self-pairing controls, with different VOC profiles from fungi growing in wood blocks compared to soil trays. There were both stimulatory and inhibitory effects of VOCs on target mycelial extension rate, hyphal coverage and fractal dimension. VOC-mediated effects were greater in self-pairing controls compared to interactions, and differed depending on the substratum in which the VOC-producing fungi were growing.

The aim was to test promotive effects of oligosaccharins on root growth and development at the root apical meristem and the cell cycle using the model systems, Arabidopsis thaliana and the tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) BY-2 cell line. Arabidopsis was grown on medium supplemented with 0.1 mg L−1 oligoxyloglucan (OX), 10 mg L−1 Pectimorf® (P) or 0.5 mg L−1 indole butyric acid (IBA). Primary root length, number of lateral root primordia, root apical meristem (RAM) length and epidermal cell length were recorded. Three genotypes were used: wild type (WT) and transgenic lines expressing either Schizosaccharomyces pombe (Sp) cdc25 or over-expressing(oe) Arath;WEE1. All treatments promoted primary root elongation but repressed lateral root production. Only P had a clear positive effect on meristem length whereas all other genotype × treatment interactions showed shorter RAMs. Whilst IBA, OX and P induced an increase in cell length in Spcdc25, the same treatments caused a significant decrease in WEE1 oe . Mitotic indices were also significantly higher in roots treated with oligosaccharins suggesting a shortening of the cell cycle. This hypothesis was tested in the BY-2 cell line. Both OX and P shortened the cell cycle exclusively through a shortening of G1 whilst mitotic cell size remained constant between treatments. In conclusion, both OX and P do indeed stimulate growth and shorten the cell cycle in higher plants and at the cellular level are able to reverse large and small cell size phenotypes normally exhibited by WEE1 oe and Spcdc25 genotypes, respectively.