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Habitat loss is a significant driver of biodiversity loss, causing fragmentation into small, isolated patches of suitable land cover. This reduces the permeability of landscapes to the movement of individuals and reduces the likelihood of metapopulation persistence. Quantifying functional connectivity, the ability of a focal species to move between resource patches, is therefore essential for conservation management. There is substantial evidence supporting a technique based on ‘population synchrony’- the degree of correlation in time-series of annual population growth rates between different long-term monitoring sites, to provide a measure of functional connectivity. However, synchronised population dynamics are not only driven by the movement of individuals between sites, but also shared environmental conditions which must be accounted for. Here, we use species survey data from over four decades to investigate average levels and temporal trends in population synchrony for 58 British bird and butterfly species. We first show that population synchrony is significantly associated with synchrony in some seasonal climatic variables. Once we accounted for spatiotemporal climatic patterns, we found that synchrony in butterflies declined over time by 71% between 1985 and 2000 but increased by 64% in recent years. Synchrony in birds showed some decline between 1999 and 2005, after which there appears to being recovery, however most species (74%) show no significant overall change in synchrony. Our proposed indicator provides a ‘species-eye-view’ of functional connectivity using widely available abundance data. Developing such indicators of functional connectivity, which can be updated annually, is crucial to improve the effectiveness of land management strategies for conservation under increasing environmental change.

Habitat loss is a significant driver of biodiversity loss, causing fragmentation into small, isolated patches of suitable land cover. This reduces the permeability of landscapes to the movement of individuals and reduces the likelihood of metapopulation persistence. Quantifying functional connectivity, the ability of a focal species to move between resource patches, is therefore essential for conservation management. There is substantial evidence supporting a technique based on ‘population synchrony’- the degree of correlation in time-series of annual population growth rates between different long-term monitoring sites, to provide a measure of functional connectivity. However, synchronised population dynamics are not only driven by the movement of individuals between sites, but also shared environmental conditions which must be accounted for. Here, we use species survey data from over four decades to investigate average levels and temporal trends in population synchrony for 58 British bird and butterfly species. We first show that population synchrony is significantly associated with synchrony in some seasonal climatic variables. Once we accounted for spatiotemporal climatic patterns, we found that synchrony in butterflies declined over time by 71% between 1985 and 2000 but increased by 64% in recent years. Synchrony in birds showed some decline between 1999 and 2005, after which there appears to being recovery, however most species (74%) show no significant overall change in synchrony. Our proposed indicator provides a ‘species-eye-view’ of functional connectivity using widely available abundance data. Developing such indicators of functional connectivity, which can be updated annually, is crucial to improve the effectiveness of land management strategies for conservation under increasing environmental change.

1. Functional diversity metrics based on species traits are widely used to investi-gate ecosystem functioning. In theory, such metrics have different implications depending on whether they are calculated from traits mediating responses to en-vironmental change (response traits) or those regulating function (effect traits), yet trait choice in diversity metrics is rarely scrutinized.2. Here, we compile effect and response traits for British bird species supplying two key ecological services—seed dispersal and insect predation—to assess the rela-tionship between functional diversity and both mean and stability of community abundance over time.3. As predicted, functional diversity correlates with stability in community abun-dance of seed dispersers when calculated using response traits. However, we found a negative relationship between functional diversity and mean community abundance of seed dispersers when calculated using effect traits. Subsequently, when combining all traits together, we found inconsistent results with functional diversity correlating with reduced stability in insectivores, but greater stability in seed dispersers.4. Our findings suggest that trait choice should be considered more carefully when applying such metrics in ecosystem management.

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1. Public data archiving (PDA) is widely advocated as a means of achieving open data standards, leading to improved data preservation, increased scientific reproducibility, and transparency, as well as additional data use. 2. Public data archiving was primarily conceived to archive data from short‐term, single‐purpose scientific studies. It is now more widely applied, including to large‐scale citizen science biodiversity recording and monitoring schemes which combine the efforts of volunteers with professional scientists. 3. This may affect the financial security of such schemes by reducing income from data and analytical services. Communication between scheme organizers and researchers may be disrupted, reducing scientific quality and impeding scheme development. It may also have an impact on the participation of some volunteers. 4. Synthesis and applications. In response to the challenges of public data archiving for citizen science biodiversity recording and monitoring schemes, the archive function of scheme organizations should be better recognized by those promoting open data principles. Increased financial support from the public sector or from commercial or academic data users may offset financial risk. Those in favour of public data archiving should do more to facilitate communication between nonscheme users and the originating schemes, while a more flexible approach to data archiving may be required to address potential impacts on volunteer participation.

Climate change is increasingly altering the composition of ecological communities, in combination with other environmental pressures such as high-intensity land use. Pressures are expected to interact in their effects, but the extent to which intensive human land use constrains community responses to climate change is currently unclear. A generic indicator of climate change impact, the community temperature index (CTI), has previously been used to suggest that both bird and butterflies are successfully ‘tracking’ climate change. Here, we assessed community changes at over 600 English bird or butterfly monitoring sites over three decades and tested how the surrounding land has influenced these changes. We partitioned community changes into warm- and cold-associated assemblages and found that English bird communities have not reorganized successfully in response to climate change. CTI increases for birds are primarily attributable to the loss of cold-associated species, whilst for butterflies, warm-associated species have tended to increase. Importantly, the area of intensively managed land use around monitoring sites appears to influence these community changes, with large extents of intensively managed land limiting ‘adaptive’ community reorganization in response to climate change. Specifically, high-intensity land use appears to exacerbate declines in cold-adapted bird and butterfly species, and prevent increases in warm-associated birds. This has broad implications for managing landscapes to promote climate change adaptation.

In order to assess the significance of the presumed “umbrella effect” of Natura 2000 areas the European Commission initiated a study, in 2013, to address the following questions: 1) Which are, amongst the species regularly occurring within the European territory of the EU-28 Member States, those that significantly benefit from the site conservation under the EU Birds and Habitats Directive? 2) What is the percentage of all species occurring in the wild in the EU that benefit significantly from Natura 2000? 3) How significant is the contribution of Natura 2000 in relation to the objective of halting and reversing biodiversity loss? The approach used existing data, and covered the terrestrial mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibian, butterfly and plant species. The analysis is mostly based on statistical distribution models and GIS processing of species distribution data in relation to their presence within protected areas of the Natura 2000 network. The main findings for all species groups were: Animal species for which Natura 2000 areas were not specifically designated occur more frequently inside Natura 2000 than outside (in particular breeding birds and butterflies). These species do, therefore, gain benefit from the protected areas network. The species for which Natura 2000 areas were designated generally occur more frequently within the Natura 2000 site boundaries than the nonannex species; this is in particular the case for birds and butterflies, for amphibians and reptiles the difference is negligible. More specific conclusions and findings, as well as discussion of these results and implications for further studies are included in the report.

Many species are extending their leading-edge (cool) range margins polewards in response to recent climate change. In the present study, we investigated range margin changes at the northern (cool) range margins of 1573 southerly-distributed species from 21 animal groups in Great Britain over the past four decades of climate change, updating previous work. Depending on data availability, range margin changes were examined over two time intervals during the past four decades. For four groups (birds, butterflies, macromoths, and dragonflies and damselflies), there were sufficient data available to examine range margin changes over both time intervals. We found that most taxa shifted their northern range margins polewards and this finding was not greatly influenced by changes in recorder effort. The mean northwards range margin change in the first time interval was 23 km per decade (N = 13 taxonomic groups) and, in the second interval, was 18 km per decade (N = 16 taxonomic groups) during periods when the British climate warmed by 0.21 and 0.28 °C per decade, respectively. For the four taxa examined over both intervals, there was evidence for higher rate of range margin change in the more recent time interval in the two Lepidoptera groups. Our analyses confirm a continued range margin shift polewards in a wide range of taxonomic groups.

1. The use of data documenting how species’ distributions have changed over time is crucial for testing how well correlative species distribution models (SDMs) predict species’ range changes. So far, however, little attention has been given to developing a reliable methodological framework for using such data. 2. We develop a new tool – the temporal validation (TV) plot – specifically aimed at making use of species’ distribution records at two times for a comprehensive assessment of the prediction accuracy of SDMs over time. 3. We extend existing presence–absence calibration plots to make use of distribution records from two time periods. TV plots visualize the agreement between change in modelled probabilities of presence and the probability of observing sites gained or lost between time periods. We then present three measures of prediction accuracy that can be easily calculated from TV plots. 4. We present our methodological framework using a virtual species in a simplified landscape and then provide a real-world case study using distribution records for two species of breeding birds from two time periods of intensive recording effort across Great Britain. 5. Together with existing approaches, TV plots and their associated measures offer a simple tool for testing how well SDMs model species’ observed range changes – perhaps the best way available to assess their ability to predict likely future changes.

Climate change is leading to the development of land-based mitigation and adaptation strategies that are likely to have substantial impacts on global biodiversity. Of these, approaches to maintain carbon within existing natural ecosystems could have particularly large benefits for biodiversity. However, the geographical distributions of terrestrial carbon stocks and biodiversity differ. Using conservation planning analyses for the New World and Britain, we conclude that a carbon-only strategy would not be effective at conserving biodiversity, as have previous studies. Nonetheless, we find that a combined carbon-biodiversity strategy could simultaneously protect 90% of carbon stocks (relative to a carbon-only conservation strategy) and > 90% of the biodiversity (relative to a biodiversity-only strategy) in both regions. This combined approach encapsulates the principle of complementarity, whereby locations that contain different sets of species are prioritised, and hence disproportionately safeguard localised species that are not protected effectively by carbon-only strategies. It is efficient because localised species are concentrated into small parts of the terrestrial land surface, whereas carbon is somewhat more evenly distributed; and carbon stocks protected in one location are equivalent to those protected elsewhere. Efficient compromises can only be achieved when biodiversity and carbon are incorporated together within a spatial planning process.

Conservation planners often wish to predict how species distributions will change in response to environmental changes. Species distribution models (SDMs) are the primary tool for making such predictions. Many methods are widely used; however, they all make simplifying assumptions, and predictions can therefore be subject to high uncertainty. With global change well underway, field records of observed range shifts are increasingly being used for testing SDM transferability. We used an unprecedented distribution dataset documenting recent range changes of British vascular plants, birds, and butterflies to test whether correlative SDMs based on climate change provide useful approximations of potential distribution shifts. We modelled past species distributions from climate using nine single techniques and a consensus approach, and projected the geographical extent of these models to a more recent time period based on climate change; we then compared model predictions with recent observed distributions in order to estimate the temporal transferability and prediction accuracy of our models. We also evaluated the relative effect of methodological and taxonomic variation on the performance of SDMs. Models showed good transferability in time when assessed using widespread metrics of accuracy. However, models had low accuracy to predict where occupancy status changed between time periods, especially for declining species. Model performance varied greatly among species within major taxa, but there was also considerable variation among modelling frameworks. Past climatic associations of British species distributions retain a high explanatory power when transferred to recent time – due to their accuracy to predict large areas retained by species – but fail to capture relevant predictors of change. We strongly emphasize the need for caution when using SDMs to predict shifts in species distributions: high explanatory power on temporally-independent records – as assessed using wi

1. Species distribution models (SDMs) are increasingly used in applied conservation biology, yet the predictive ability of these models is often tested only on detection/non-detection data. The probability of long-term population persistence, however, depends not only upon patch occupancy but upon more fundamental population parameters such as mean population density and stability over time. 2. Here, we test estimated probability of occurrence scores generated from SDMs built using species occupancy data against independent empirical data on population density and stability for 20 bird and butterfly species across 1941 sites over 15 years. We devised a measure of population stability over time which was independent of mean density and time-series duration, yet positively correlated with risk of local extinction. This may be a useful surrogate measure of population persistence for use in applied conservation. 3. We found that probability of occurrence scores were significantly positively correlated with mean population density for both butterflies and birds. In contrast, probability of occurrence scores were at best weakly positively correlated with population stability. Referring to established ecological theory, we discuss why SDMs may be appropriate for predicting population density but not stability. 4.Synthesis and applications. Species distribution models are often constructed using species occupancy data because, for the majority of species and regions, these are the best data available. The models are then often used for projecting species’ distributions in the future and identifying areas where management could be targeted to improve species’ prospects. However, our results suggest that an overreliance on these SDMs may result in an exclusive focus on landscape management approaches that promote patch occupancy and density, but may overlook features important for long-term population persistence such as population stability. Other landscape metrics that take

In human-dominated regions, protected areas are complemented by other conservation strategies (e.g., restrictive zoning, incentive payments) to maintain biodiversity and other ecosystem services. These strategies are often not mutually exclusive, with many areas covered by multiple (tiered) management strategies. However, it is not known whether tiering increases (or decreases) representation of ecosystem services. Here, we compare the representation of four ecosystem services by areas protected by both tiered and single conservation strategies (protected areas, restrictive zoning, and incentive payments to landowners) in a human-dominated region (England). Tiering always coincided with the highest levels of stored carbon, sometimes coincided with high biodiversity and agricultural production, but never coincided with high recreational value. We also show that tiering is common in England and biased towards upland areas. Future evaluations of the effectiveness of conservation strategies should consider the degree of overlap of the different strategies fully to understand which are most effective.

An increasing number of studies are taking the important first step in global efforts to conserve key ecosystem services by mapping their spatial distributions. However, a lack of primary data for most services in most places has largely forced such mapping exercises to be based on proxies. The common way of producing these proxies is through benefits transfer-based mapping, in which estimates of the values of services are obtained from a small region for particular land cover types, and then extrapolated to a larger area for these same types. However, the errors that may result from such extrapolations are poorly understood. Here, we separate the generalization errors associated with benefits transfer mapping into three constituent components – uniformity, sampling, and regionalization error – and evaluate their effects using primary data for four ecosystem services in England. Variation in ecosystem services within a particular land cover type (uniformity error) alone led to a poor fit to primary data for most services; sampling effects (sampling error) and extrapolating from a small region to a larger area (regionalization error) led to substantial, but highly variable, additional reductions in the fit to primary data. We also show that combining multiple ecosystem services into a single layer is likely to be even more problematic as it contains the errors in each of the constituent layers. These errors are sufficiently large to undermine decisions that might be based on such extrapolated maps. Greatly improved mapping of the actual distributions of ecosystem services is therefore needed to achieve the goal of conserving these vital assets.

Distribution models are commonly used to generalise across species distributions, to project future potential range changes, and to identify potential areas for species reintroductions and recovery plans. Building several models that incorporate different potential causal factors is a useful way of formalising alternative hypotheses. We developed a series of models to test hypotheses about the factors influencing the distribution of a species of conservation importance – the hen harrier Circus cyaneus. A climate-based model using continental distribution data was consistent with the continental distribution and observational studies in Britain. According to the climate-model the parts of Britain occupied by the hen harrier are the least climatically suitable. Habitat-based models using detailed distribution data from seven Scottish areas explained the recent British distribution well, with birds largely confined to heather dominated areas. These patterns were inconsistent with historical data on the species’ distribution, its habitat use in other parts of its range and with the climate-based model. Our burn intensity index of gamekeeper activity was highly correlated with climatic suitability within the best 25% of 10 km squares by modelled habitat suitability, negatively associated with the productivity data and associated with a decrease in abundances between 1998 and 2004. Gamekeeper activity may be keeping hen harriers out of the most climatically suitable areas with habitat similar to that which they currently occupy within Britain and or keeping the population numbers too low and isolated for the natural re-expansion of the species into parts of the range where it was historically extirpated.

Distribution models are commonly used to generalise across species distributions, to project future potential range changes, and to identify potential areas for species reintroductions and recovery plans. Building several models that incorporate different potential causal factors is a useful way of formalising alternative hypotheses. We developed a series of models to test hypotheses about the factors influencing the distribution of a species of conservation importance – the hen harrier Circus cyaneus. A climate-based model using continental distribution data was consistent with the continental distribution and observational studies in Britain. According to the climate-model the parts of Britain occupied by the hen harrier are the least climatically suitable. Habitat-based models using detailed distribution data from seven Scottish areas explained the recent British distribution well, with birds largely confined to heather dominated areas. These patterns were inconsistent with historical data on the species’ distribution, its habitat use in other parts of its range and with the climate-based model. Our burn intensity index of gamekeeper activity was highly correlated with climatic suitability within the best 25% of 10 km squares by modelled habitat suitability, negatively associated with the productivity data and associated with a decrease in abundances between 1998 and 2004. Gamekeeper activity may be keeping hen harriers out of the most climatically suitable areas with habitat similar to that which they currently occupy within Britain and or keeping the population numbers too low and isolated for the natural re-expansion of the species into parts of the range where it was historically extirpated.

To attain international importance and thus protection as a Ramsar site or as a Special Protection Area (SPA) a wetland site must either “regularly” support at least 20,000 waterbirds or seabirds, or 1% of the individuals of a population of a species or subspecies of waterbird. In most cases, sites have been designated by using the maxima of individual counts. These counts will underestimate volume (i.e. total number) of birds passing through the site if turnover of birds occurs. Using count data, observations of individually marked birds and survival and recruitment mark-recapture models, we present three different methods (V1, V2 & V3) implemented in the StopOver Duration Analysis or SODA program (Choquet & Pradel 2007) for estimating the total volume of birds passing through a site. We use simulated data to determine their performance using both biased and unbiased data. Specifically, we tested whether the estimates of volume were biased where the following parameters varied: proportion of birds marked, daily resighting rate, timing of arrival, proportion of transients in the population, heterogeneity in the resighting rates (i.e. some individuals with a high or low resighting rate), variation in arrival and stopover time and count error. With a relatively simple dataset (single arrival, no biases), the proportion of individuals marked had little effect on the reliability of the resulting volume estimates for both V1 and V3. Estimates of volume from V2 were always overestimated. The major factor that caused a small positive bias in V1 and V3 was the resighting probability. Lower resighting probabilities caused a small positive bias in the volume estimates. Resighting heterogeneity (i.e. some birds more likely to be seen than others) caused a substantial positive bias for all estimators. Transience (i.e. some birds stopping over for shorter time than others) caused no bias in V1 and V3, but a strong negative bias in V2.Transience seemed to reduce the positive bias