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Humanity benefits immensely from nature, including through cultural ecosystem services. Geotagged crowdsourced data provide an opportunity to characterize these services at large scales. Flickr data, for example, have been widely used as an indicator of recreational value, while Wikipedia data are increasingly being used as a measure of public interest, potentially capturing often overlooked and less-tangible aspects of socio-cultural values (such as educational, inspirational, and spiritual values). So far, few studies have explored how various geotagged crowdsourced data complement each other, or how correlated these may be, particularly at national scales. To address this knowledge gap, we compare Flickr and Wikipedia datasets in their ability to help characterize the sociocultural value of designated areas in England and assess how this value relates to species richness. Our results show that there was at least one Flickr photo in 35% of all designated areas in England, and at least one Wikipedia page in 60% of them. The Wikipedia and Flickr data were shown not to be independent of each other and were significantly correlated. Species richness was positively and significantly associated with the presence of at least one geotagged Wikipedia page; more biodiverse designated areas, however, were not any more likely to have at least one Flickr photo within them. Our results highlight the potential for new, emerging datasets to capture and communicate the socio-cultural value of nature, building on the strengths of more established crowdsourced data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to better quantify spatial and temporal patterns in freshwater biodiversity, and potential underlying drivers of change, we must utilise the increasingly broad range of data available on freshwater ecosystems. Statistical advances in the field of integrated modelling provide new opportunities to further our understanding through the combined and simultaneous analysis of these diverse datasets.We briefly introduce integrated modelling in the context of freshwater biodiversity and outline the key steps involved in its implementation, from data collection to analysis. We highlight both opportunities and challenges for the application of integrated approaches.To illustrate the potential for integrated models to improve our understanding of freshwater biodiversity compared to standard approaches, we combine two datasets collected using different methods to model the distribution of Agabus water beetles in England. The integrated model had greater power to detect covariate effects on Agabus distribution, and reduced parameter uncertainty compared with analysis using only a single dataset.We show that integrated methods have the potential to increase our understanding of freshwater systems and enable us to make full use of the diversity of freshwater data available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biodiversity targets are a key tool, used at a global and national policy level, to align biodiversity goals, promote conservation action, and recover nature. Yet most biodiversity targets are not met. In England, the government has committed to legally‐binding targets to halt and recover the decline in species abundance by 2030 and 2042. We present evidence from recent population trends of 670 terrestrial animal species (for which abundance time series are available) as a species abundance indicator, together with a synthesis of case studies on species recovery, to assess the degree to which these targets are achievable. The case studies demonstrate that recovery is possible through a range of approaches. The indicator demonstrates that theoretically targets can be achieved by addressing severe declines in a relatively small number of species, as well as creating smaller benefits for many species through landscape‐scale interventions. The fact that multiple pathways exist to achieve the species abundance targets in England presents choices but also raises the possibility that targets might be reached with perverse consequences. We demonstrate that evidence on achievability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for determining what is required to deliver conservation outcomes and restore biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current dearth of long‐term insect population trends is a major obstacle to conservation. Occupancy models have been proposed as a solution, but it remains unclear whether they can yield long‐term trends from natural history collections, since specimen records are normally very sparse. A common approach for sparse data is to coarsen its spatial and/or temporal resolution, although coarsening risks violating model assumptions.We (i) test whether occupancy trends of three social wasp (Hymenoptera: Vespidae: Vespinae) species – the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris), the German wasp (Vespula germanica) and the European hornet (Vespa crabro) – have changed in England between 1900 and 2016, and (ii) test the effect of spatiotemporal resolution on the performance of occupancy models using very sparse data. All models are based on an integrated dataset of occurrence records and natural history collection specimen records.We show that occupancy models can yield long‐term species‐specific trends from very sparse natural history collection specimens. We present the first quantitative trends for three Vespinae species in England over 116 years. Vespula vulgaris and V. germanica show stable trends over the time series, whilst V. crabro's occupancy decreased from 1950 to 1970 and increased since 1970. Moreover, we show that spatiotemporal resolution has little effect on model performance, although coarsening the spatial grain is an appropriate method for achieving enough records to estimate long‐term changes.With the increasing availability of biological records, the model formulation used here has the potential to provide novel insights by making use of natural history collections' unique specimen assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective conservation decisions rely on accurate survey data, but methods can be resource‐intensive and risk false negative results. Presence of the threatened hazel dormouse (England, UK) is typically confirmed by looking for its nest in survey tubes, over a 6‐month period. As an alternative, environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys have proven benefits in efficiency and accuracy for other taxa, but generally rely on the extraction and amplification of DNA from water, soil or sediment, which are not yet dependable samples for rare terrestrial mammals like the hazel dormouse.At a known occupancy site, paper‐lined survey tubes were used to capture a DNA sample. Like other species of rodent, the hazel dormouse excretes urine freely, and this was highlighted by ultraviolet torch, swabbed from the paper, extracted and hazel dormouse eDNA amplified by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR).Hazel dormouse presence was confirmed in this way in three out of 50 tubes within 8 days. Detection by conventional nest survey occurred on day 63 when a hazel dormouse nest was found in a single survey tube. We calculate that amplification of eDNA left behind in tubes increased survey efficiency here at least 12‐fold.Synthesis and applications. In this study we demonstrate that eDNA swabbed from a clean substrate placed in survey apparatus can significantly hasten the detection of a rare species. This method has the potential to broaden the application of eDNA to other terrestrial vertebrates, including surveys at large spatiotemporal scales. Beyond presence/absence, the non‐invasive DNA sample could also offer insights into sex ratio, abundance, behaviour and population genetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, a new group of systemic insecticides–the neonicotinoids—has gained prominence in arable systems, and their application globally has risen year on year. Previous modelling studies using long-term data have suggested that neonicotinoid application has had a detrimental impact on bird populations, but these studies were either limited to a single species or neglected to analyse specific exposure pathways in conjunction with observed population trends. Using bird abundance data, neonicotinoid usage records and cropping data for England at a 5x5 km resolution, generalised linear mixed models were used to test for spatio-temporal associations between neonicotinoid use and changes in the populations of 22 farmland bird species between 1994 and 2014, and to determine whether any associations were explained by dietary preferences. We assigned farmland bird species to three categories of dietary exposure to neonicotinoids based on literature data for species diets and neonicotinoid residues present in dietary items. Significant estimates of neonicotinoid-related population change were obtained for 13 of the 22 species (9 positive effects, 4 negative effects). Model estimates for individual species were not collectively explained by dietary risk categories, so dietary exposure to neonicotinoids via ingestion of treated seeds and seedlings could not be confirmed as a causal factor in farmland bird declines. Although it is not possible to infer any generic effect of dietary exposure to neonicotinoids on farmland bird populations, our analysis identifies three species with significant negative estimates that may warrant further research (house sparrow Passer domesticus, skylark Alauda arvensis and red-legged partridge Alectoris rufa). We conclude that there was either no consistent effect of dietary exposure to neonicotinoids on farmland bird populations in England, or that any over-arching effect was not detectable using our study design. The potential for indirect effects of insecticide use on bird populations via reduced food availability was not considered here and should be a focus for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a model of butterfly abundance on transects in England. The model indicates a significant role for climate, but the direction of association is counter to expectation: butterfly population density is higher on sites with a cooler climate. However, the effect is highly heterogeneous, with one in five species displaying a net positive association. We use this model to project the population-level effects of climate warming for the year 2080, using a medium emissions scenario. The results suggest that most populations and species will decline markedly, but that the total number of butterflies will increase as communities become dominated by a few common species. In particular, Maniola jurtina is predicted to make up nearly half of all butterflies on UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) transects by 2080. These results contradict the accepted wisdom that most insect populations will grow as the climate becomes warmer. Indeed, our predictions contrast strongly with those derived from inter-annual variation in abundance, emphasizing that we lack a mechanistic understanding about the factors driving butterfly population dynamics over large spatial and temporal scales. Our study underscores the difficulty of predicting future population trends and reveals the naivety of simple space-for-time substitutions, which our projections share with species distribution modelling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protected areas are a key conservation tool, yet their effectiveness at maintaining biodiversity through time is rarely quantified. Here, we assess protected area effectiveness across sampled portions of Great Britain (primarily England) using regionalized (protected vs unprotected areas) Bayesian occupancy-detection models for 1238 invertebrate species at 1 km resolution, based on ~1 million occurrence records between 1990 and 2018. We quantified species richness, species trends, and compositional change (temporal beta diversity; decomposed into losses and gains). We report results overall, for two functional groups (pollinators and predators), and for rare and common species. Whilst we found that protected areas have 15 % more species on average than unprotected ones, declines in occupancy are of similar magnitude and species composition has changed 27 % across protected and unprotected areas, with losses dominating gains. Pollinators have suffered particularly severe declines. Still, protected areas are colonized by more locally-novel pollinator species than unprotected areas, suggesting that they might act as 'landing pads' for range-shifting pollinators. We find almost double the number of rare species in protected areas (although rare species trends are similar in protected and unprotected areas); whereas we uncover disproportionately steep declines for common species within protected areas. Our results highlight strong invertebrate reorganization and loss across both protected and unprotected areas. We therefore call for more effective protected areas, in combination with wider action, to bend the curve of biodiversity loss – where we provide a toolkit to quantify effectiveness. We must grasp the opportunity to effectively conserve biodiversity through time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]