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In this Review, the affiliation to which authors Victor Cazalis and Ana S. L. Rodrigues are attributed (affiliation 2) should be corrected from ‘Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive CEFE UMR 5175, CNRS, Univ. de Montpellier, Univ. Paul-Valery Montpellier, EPHE, Montpellier, France’ to ‘CEFE, Univ. Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Univ. Paul Valery Montpellier 3, Montpellier, France’. This error has been corrected online.

Many predictive models of spatial and temporal distribution (e.g. in response to climate change or species introductions) assume that species have one environmental niche that applies to all individuals. However, there is growing evidence that individuals can have environmental preferences that are narrower than the species niche. Such individual specialization has mainly been studied in terms of dietary niches, but a recent increase in the availability of individual movement data opens the possibility of extending these analyses to specialisation in environmental preferences. Yet, no study to date on individual specialisation has considered the environmental niche in its multidimensionality. Here we propose a new method for quantifying individual specialisation in multiple dimensions simultaneously. We compare the hypervolumes in n-dimensional environmental niche space of each individual against that of the population, testing for significant differences against a null model. The same method can be applied to a 2-dimensional geographic space to test for site fidelity. We applied this method to test for individual environmental specialisation (across three dimensions: sea surface temperature, eddy kinetic energy, depth) and for site fidelity among satellite-tracked black-browed albatrosses (Thalassarche melanophris) and grey-headed albatrosses (Thalassarche chrysostoma), during chick-rearing at South Georgia. We found evidence for site fidelity in both species and of environmental specialisation among individual grey-headed but not black-browed albatrosses. Specialisation can affect the resilience of populations affected by natural and anthropogenic changes in the environment, and hence has implications for population dynamics and conservation. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s00227-018-3408-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) has been widely discussed as a way of mitigating climate change while concurrently benefitting biodiversity. This study combines a global land-use model and spatial data on species distributions to quantify the potential impacts of REDD in avoiding global species extinctions.

Policy action to halt the global loss of biodiversity and ecosystems is hindered by the perception that it would be so costly as to compromise economic development, yet this assumption needs testing. Inspired by the recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the leaders of the G8+5 nations commissioned a similar assessment of the economics of losing biodiversity, under the Potsdam Initiative on Biodiversity. Here, we propose a conceptual framework for such a global assessment which emphasizes several critical insights from the environmental economics and valuation literature: contrasting counterfactual scenarios which differ solely in whether they include specific conservation policies; identifying non-overlapping benefits; modeling the production, flow, use and value of benefits in a spatially-explicit way; and incorporating the likely costs as well as possible benefits of policy interventions. Tackling these challenges, we argue, will significantly enhance our ability to quantify how the loss of benefits derived from ecosystems and biodiversity compares with the costs incurred in retaining them. We also summarise a review of the current state of knowledge, in order to assess how quickly this framework could be operationalized for some key ecosystem services.

Arising from: R. Grenyer et al. , 93–96 (2006)10.1038/nature05237 ; Grenyer et al. reply Using data on the global distribution of mammal1, bird2 and amphibian3 species, Grenyer et al.4 conclude that planning based on individual taxa does not provide efficient solutions for the conservation of other taxa. They also report that the performance of existing global conservation strategies—endemic bird areas5, biodiversity hotspots6 and global 200 ecoregions7—in representing those taxa is often no better (and in some cases worse) than random. I argue here that the methodology used by Grenyer et al. was not appropriate for purported globally comprehensive analyses. Focusing on analyses of rare species as an example, I demonstrate how the data actually reveal substantial cross-taxon surrogacy and good performance of existing global conservation strategies.