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In this Letter, the middle initial of author G. J. Nabuurs was omitted, and he should have been associated with an additional affiliation: ‘Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands’ (now added as affiliation 182). In addition, the following two statements have been added to the Supplementary Acknowledgements. (1): ‘We would particularly like to thank The French NFI for the work of the many field teams and engineers, who have made extraordinary efforts to make forest inventory data publicly available.’ (1): ‘Sergio de Miguel benefited from a Serra- Húnter Fellowship provided by the Generalitat of Catalonia.’ Finally, the second sentence of the Methods section should have cited the French NFI, which provided a national forestry database used in our analysis, to read as follows: ‘The GFBi database consists of individual-based data that we compiled from all the regional and national GFBi forest-inventory datasets, including the French NFI (IGN—French National Forest Inventory, raw data, annual campaigns 2005 and following, https://inventaire-forestier.ign.fr/spip.php?rubrique159, site accessed on 01 January 2015)’. All of these errors have been corrected online.

This pandemic situation requests a correct understanding of our impacts on wildlife conservation, which would also provide benefits for our species. In this commentary we revised and discussed some of the repercussions that SARS-CoV-2 pandemic may have to wildlife. We propose four actions that should be taken into account to protect and conserve wildlife in this pandemic era: wildlife "wet" markets must close; human interference with wildlife must be reduced; bats and pangolins must be conserved and not blamed; and Chinese traditional medicine must be more controlled.

Although they have received little attention, interspecific feeding associations are a particular predation behavior in which two or more different species temporary feed simultaneously on the same food sources to obtain greater success in predation. These collaborations can be either mutualistic, commensalistic, or parasitic. One of the best-known examples is the seabird–cetacean associations. Prey herding is the foraging tactic most used in these associations and consists of swimming around and under prey balls to trap them in the water column. Here we reported some new evidence of a fish–bird interspecific feeding association between the European seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758) and the European shag, Gulosus aristotelis (Linnaeus, 1761). We analyzed this association through the photograph and video documentation provided by “citizen scientists” in the Mediterranean Sea. We collected reliable proofs of this behavior, at least, in three instances from observations made by recreational fishermen in the Kvarner bay (Croatia, North Adriatic Sea). From the photographs and videos made available, we attempted to reconstruct a predation strategy adopted by these associated species to better understand the advantage this provides during hunting. Although it is not yet clear whether this association is an opportunistic behavior of the European seabass or a mutualistic strategy used by both species to improve their catching success, this feeding association seems to increase the chances to defeat prey defense strategies. Notably, some behavioral imitation of hunting strategies may be put in place by seabasses, which often feed in association with dolphins and other birds using similar prey herding strategies.

It was New Year's Eve when Chinese authorities alerted WHO that several cases of an unusual pneumonia appeared in Wuhan (Huang et al. 2020). The COVID-19 was still unknown at that time but, in the first months of 2020, its outbreak has infected millions of people, killing (directly or indirectly) hundreds of thousands of them (WHO 2020). The panic related to the pandemic distribution of the virus shut down whole regions (in China, Iran, the United States, etc.) and even entire countries (Italy, Spain, Austria, etc.). Although it is not the worst microscopic killer humanity has ever known (for instance, think about the casualties due to the Black Death and the HIV; Wainberg et al. 2008; Haensch et al. 2010), this coronavirus is already changing our state of mind and impacting on our lifestyle, at a global scale.

Tropical forests inhabited by endangered orangutans, rhinos, tigers, and elephants in South-east Asia are threatened by deforestation, including oil palm expansion. Certification has been proposed to label sustainable palm oil production. However, from a remotely sensed time-series and imagery analysis (1984–2020), we discovered that most of the currently certified grower supply bases and concessions in Sumatra and Borneo are located in the 1990s large mammals habitat and in areas that were biodiverse tropical forests less than 30 years ago. In light of this dramatic evidence, we suggest that certification schemes claim for the “sustainable” production of palm oil just because they neglect a very recent past of deforestation and habitat degradation.

Limited research has been done to estimate the root biomass (belowground biomass) of savanna grasslands. The advent of remote sensing and related products have facilitated the estimation of biomass in terrestrial ecosystems, providing a synoptic overview on ecosystems biomass. Multispectral remote sensing was used in this study to estimate total biomass (belowground and aboveground) of selected tropical savanna grassland species. Total biomass was estimated by assessing the relationship between aboveground and belowground biomass, the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and belowground biomass, and NDVI and total biomass. Results showed a positive significant relationship (p = 0.005) between belowground and aboveground biomass. NDVI was significantly correlated (p = 0.0386) to aboveground biomass and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) was 18.97 whilst the model BIAS was 0.019, values within acceptable ranges. A significant relationship (p = 0) was found between belowground biomass and NDVI and the RMSE was 5.53 and the model BIAS was 0.0041. More so, a significant relationship (p = 0.054) was observed between NDVI and total biomass. The positive relationships between NDVI and total grass biomass and the lack of bias in the model provides an opportunity to routinely monitor carbon stock and assess seasonal carbon storage fluctuations in grasslands. There is great potential in the ability of remote sensing to become an indispensable tool for assessing, monitoring and inventorying carbon stocks in grassland ecosystems under tropical savanna conditions.

Russian forests preserve biodiversity, host endemic species, store carbon, and are inhabited by indigenous people. However, in the last years, large areas of these forests have been damaged by different factors, mainly by logging and fires. This led to important tree loss even in protected areas. Despite it, no previous comprehensive research has been conducted to understand the trends and the causes of this tree loss. This study aims to investigate how Russian protected areas effectively contribute to nature conservation and can reduce forest loss within their borders. For the first time, we analysed the longest time-series available (2001–2018) of tree loss and fires in 201 Russian protected areas (those with the highest protection level). Studying the temporal trends of forest loss, we hypothesized that uncontrolled wildfire should result as the main cause of the forest loss expected within the highest protection areas of Russia and that logging and other anthropogenic activities - because prohibited in these areas - should be a minor threat. Instead, from Earth Observation datasets, we detected that even in the 201 areas with the highest protection, more than 2Mha of forests have been lost between 2001 and 2018. Fire contributed about 25% to this loss but was not the major driver. From a year-by-year analysis of the time series, we were able to disentangle the potential contribution of “other-than-fire” causes of loss. We found that, in 15 out of 18 years of our time series, causes not due to fire were the main driver of tree loss in these strictly protected areas, which reached a peak recently, between 2013 and 2018. Overall, of the 201 strictly protected areas in Russia, 135 experienced tree loss between 2001 and 2018. In 34 of them, the loss was higher than 10,000 ha, where a major percentage was attributable to fire only in 3 sites. In the other 31 protected areas, fire contributed to the total forest loss less than 50%. Our analysis also showed that five strictly protected areas experienced a massive tree loss (> 100kha) from 2001 to 2018. Among them, Lake Baikal, a World Heritage site, suffered an astonishing forest loss of 485 k ha, whose only 21% may be attributed to fire. Considering that we discovered that most of the causes of forest loss may be related to human activities, the situation could be controlled through better management and policy.

A relatively small number of broad-scale patterns describe the distribution of biodiversity across the earth. All of them explore biodiversity focusing on a mono or bi-dimensional space. Conversely, the volume of the forests is rarely considered. In the present work, we tested a global correlation between vascular plant species richness (S) and average forest canopy height (H), the latter regarded as a proxy of volume, using the NASA product of Global Forest Canopy Height map and the global map of plant species diversity. We found a significant correlation between H and S both at global and macro-climate scales, with strongest confidence in the tropics. Hence, two different regression models were compared and discussed to provide a possible pattern of the H–S relation. We suggested that the volume of forest ecosystems should be considered in ecological studies as well as in planning and managing natural sites, although in this first attempt, we cannot definitively prove our hypothesis. Again, high-resolution spatial data could be highly important to confirm the H–S relation, even at different scales.

Among tropical areas, Africa is considered to be poor in terms of biodiversity as compared with Amazon or South-East Asia, especially with respect to forest diversity. Despite this lower diversity, some African tropical zones, such as Ghana, harbour a plethora of species, particularly of trees. Unfortunately, as a result of anthropogenic impacts, biological diversity in West Africa dramatically decreased in the last decades, with very limited reference to evaluate the amount of the loss. Due to these growing pressure, a collection of relevant biodiversity information in this region seems to be urgent. We surveyed 127 temporary plots randomly distributed within 3 protected areas in Ghana and we collected data on tree (dbh>10 cm) species richness and their abundances. We also performed α, and β diversity analyses, and estimated the effective number of species, adopting various indices and approaches to provide further information on each assemblage. The main goals of this research were: (i) to provide a wide tree species database (abundance-based data), together with some biodiversity analyses; (ii) to estimate the sampling effort needed for next biodiversity surveys in the same and similar regions; and (iii) to calculate some indices useful to monitor the future of these protected areas both in terms of conservation and biodiversity research.

The studies on the moraine complex of the Maly Aktru glacier (Altai, Russia) revealed multidirectional correlations of microbial functional diversity and microorganisms population density depending on the temperature regime of their habitats on the moraines. The closer to the glacier, the bigger functional diversity of microorganisms and the less the density of their populations are. The decrease in the higher plants diversity and the projective cover of plant communities on the whole is linearly related to proximity to the glacier.

The total freshwater biodiversity is not fully known. In particular, freshwater invertebrates and microbes are poorly studied groups, and in tropical latitudes, that support most of the species of the world, the information is lacking. Although almost a hundred thousand of species live in fresh water, the species losses continue at the high rate and the probability of preserving much of the remaining biodiversity in fresh water seems to be very low. Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly influenced by multiple stressors that lead to loss of sensitive species and an overall reduction in diversity. Environmental change threatens freshwater biodiversity. This paper reports an extensive review of work that evaluates the current main threats for freshwater biodiversity, on a local and global scale.

Degradation, a reduction of the ecosystem’s capacity to supply goods and services, is widespread in tropical forests and mainly caused by human disturbance. To maintain the full range of forest ecosystem services and support the development of effective conservation policies, we must understand the overall impact of degradation on different forest resources. This research investigates the response to disturbance of forest structure using several indicators: soil carbon content, arboreal richness and biodiversity, functional composition (guild and wood density), and productivity. We drew upon large field and remote sensing datasets from different forest types in Ghana, characterized by varied protection status, to investigate impacts of selective logging, and of illegal land use and resources extraction, which are the main disturbance causes in West Africa. Results indicate that functional composition and the overall number of species are less affected by degradation, while forest structure, soil carbon content and species abundance are seriously impacted, with resources distribution reflecting the protection level of the areas. Remote sensing analysis showed an increase in productivity in the last three decades, with higher resiliency to change in drier forest types, and stronger productivity correlation with solar radiation in the short dry season. The study region is affected by growing anthropogenic pressure on natural resources and by an increased climate variability: possible interactions of disturbance with climate are also discussed, together with the urgency to reduce degradation in order to preserve the full range of ecosystem functions.

Motivation The BioTIME database contains raw data on species identities and abundances in ecological assemblages through time. These data enable users to calculate temporal trends in biodiversity within and amongst assemblages using a broad range of metrics. BioTIME is being developed as a community-led open-source database of biodiversity time series. Our goal is to accelerate and facilitate quantitative analysis of temporal patterns of biodiversity in the Anthropocene. Main types of variables included The database contains 8,777,413 species abundance records, from assemblages consistently sampled for a minimum of 2 years, which need not necessarily be consecutive. In addition, the database contains metadata relating to sampling methodology and contextual information about each record. Spatial location and grain BioTIME is a global database of 547,161 unique sampling locations spanning the marine, freshwater and terrestrial realms. Grain size varies across datasets from 0.0000000158 km2 (158 cm2) to 100 km2 (1,000,000,000,000 cm2). Time period and grain BioTIME records span from 1874 to 2016. The minimal temporal grain across all datasets in BioTIME is a year. Major taxa and level of measurement BioTIME includes data from 44,440 species across the plant and animal kingdoms, ranging from plants, plankton and terrestrial invertebrates to small and large vertebrates. Software format .csv and .SQL., Global Ecology and Biogeography, 27 (7), ISSN:1466-822X, ISSN:1466-8238

In an epoch of fast and dramatic changes in ecosystems, a complete survey of biodiversity and an analysis of its spatial patterns from the field shall be associated with satellite imagery, which can provide a synoptic observation in space and time of the territory. This work presents the preliminary results of a new approach to monitor the biodiversity of a well-defined area, which takes into account species diversity and the landscape characteristics in terms of ecosystems diversity (land cover classes). We developed a Multilevel Biodiversity Index (MBI) and we tested it in a study site of 400 km2, belonging to the Central Mediterranean Ecoregion and consisting of forested areas, scrublands and steppes (Murge). With the aim to reach a global land cover classification system and a standardisation of the biodiversity surveys, the MBI can be easily adapted to study areas of different ecoregions on Earth. This index could certainly be useful for future studies and to address environmental policies in order to protect vulnerable ecosystems and assign a conservation priority rank that takes into account the presence of diversity both in terms of species and ecosystems. Keywords: Biodiversity, Monitoring, Multilevel biodiversity index, Satellite analyses, Mediterranean ecoregion, Field and RS monitoring

Terrestrial isopods are a well-studied invertebrate taxon in Sicily and in the surrounding islands (Maltese archipelago included). During the last 30years their systematics, ecology and biogeography have been analysed by many authors. The size and the diverse geological origin of the Sicilian archipelago represents an ideal open laboratory in which to study some biogeographical patterns, such as the species-area relationship (SAR). Since many species show limited adaptation to broad physiological conditions and low mobility, and, therefore, their active dispersion is very slow, SAR can be a useful means to examine biogeographical patterns of isopods. Here we analyse their biogeography and whether there is a relationship between the area and the habitat variability of the island surveyed, and whether these factors have an either direct or coupled influence on species richness and ecology. Moreover, we evaluate a potential relationship between Isopoda species richness and the distance from the centre of dispersion (Sicily). Finally, we test for a difference in species and habitat richness between volcanic and non-volcanic islands. Our results show a positive correlation between the area and the habitat, more significant than that between the area and the species, leading us to speculate that habitat diversity has an influence on the SAR of isopods. We find a significantly higher richness of both species and habitats on non-volcanic islands. Finally, our analysis confutes the hypothesis that the number of isopod species on the archipelago’s islets declines with the distance from Sicily. We suggest some potential explanations.

Althought commercial selective logging is considered a sustainable practice, it creates gaps and disturbance into tropical forests that could alter the ecosystem dynamics. Weeds and vines grow to fill the empty space, following the arrival of the light. This invasion alter significantly the forest in the surroundings of the cut. Here we propose a mathematical model to describe the behaviour of tropical rainforest subject to selective logging. As a preliminary result, we show the solution profile of the model and its behaviour in simulated examples.

Several studies have reported significant emission of greenhouse gasses (GHG) from beaver dams, suggesting that ponds created by beavers are a net source of CO2 and CH4. However, most evidence come from studies conducted in North America (on Castor canadensis) without a parallel comparison with the Eurasian beaver's (Castor fiber) impacts and a critical consideration of the importance of the carbon deposition in dam sediments. The most abundant population of the Eurasian beaver lives in Russia, notably within the River Ob watershed in Western Siberia which is the second largest floodplain on Earth. Consequently, we assessed the holistic impact of Eurasian beavers on the multiple carbon pools in water and on other related biogeochemical parameters of the Ob's floodplain streams. We compared dammed and flowing streams in a floodplain of the middle course of the river. We found that beavers in western Siberia increase the stream emission of methane by about 15 times by building their dams. This is similar to what has been documented in North America. A new finding from the present study is that Siberian beavers facilitate 1) nutrient recycling by speeding up the nutrient release from particulate organic matter; and 2) carbon sequestration by increasing the amount of dissolved organic carbon. This carbon becomes in part recalcitrant when buried in sediments and is, therefore, removed from the short-term carbon cycle. These new results should be taken into consideration in river management and provide a further reason for the conservation and management of Eurasian Beavers.

In this article, we report and discuss the results obtained from a survey of plants, microorganisms (bacteria and fungi), and soil elements along a chronosequence in the first 600m of the Maliy Aktru glacier's forefront (Altai Mountains, Russia). Many glaciers of the world show effects of climate change. Nonetheless, except for some local reports, the ecological effects of deglaciation have been poorly studied and have not been quantitatively assessed in the Altai Mountains. Here, we studied the ecological changes of plants, fungi, bacteria, and soil elements that take the form of a primary ecological succession and that took place over the deglaciated soil of the Maliy Aktru glacier during the last 50year. According to our measurements, the glacier lost about 12m per year during the last 50years. Plant succession shows clear signs of changes along the incremental distance from the glacier forefront. The analysis of the plant α- and β-diversity confirmed an expected increase of them with increasing distance from the glacier forefront. Moreover, the analysis of β-diversity confirmed the hypothesis of the presence of three main stages of the plant succession: (a) initial (pioneer species) from 30 to 100m; (b) intermediate (r-selected species) from 110 to 120–150m; and (c) final (K-selected species) from 150 to 550. Our study also shows that saprotrophic communities of fungi are widely distributed in the glacier retreating area with higher relative abundances of saprotroph ascomycetes at early successional stages. The evolution of a primary succession is also evident for bacteria, soil elements, and CO2 emission and respiration. The development of biological communities and the variation in geochemical parameters represent an irrefutable proof that climate change is altering soils that have been long covered by ice.

The study the biodiversity is not just an attempt to understand the differences or similarities between species, habitats or genomes. It also includes an understanding of how nature regulates the processes that characterise ecosystems and ensure their functionality. It means as well to increase the ability to predict the impact of current and future anthropogenic actions on nature (Midgley et al. 2002). Biodiversity is what makes the Earth a unique planet. In the Universe, for all we know, or at least in our galaxy, life is the exception rather than the rule (Dick 1999). And even if a day when we are able to document the presence of living beings on other planets will come, this will also be an exception. The appearance of life is a phenomenon that has always fascinated mankind since without it, our human species would have never existed and no hairless biped would have studied life, with great admiration, and destroyed it with equal force (Cardinale et al. 2012).

The alterations in the salinity profile are an indirect, but potentially sensitive, indicator for detecting changes in precipitation, evaporation, river run-off, glacier retreat, and ice melt. These changes have a high impact on the growth of coastal plant species, such as mangroves. Here, we present estimates of the variability of salinity and the biomass of a stenoecious mangrove species (Heritiera fomes, commonly referred to as Sundari) in the aquatic subsystem of the lower Gangetic delta based on a dataset from 2004 to 2015. We highlight the impact of salinity alteration on the change in aboveground biomass of this endangered species that, due to different salinity profile in the western and central sectors of the lower Gangetic plain, shows an increase only in the former sector, where the salinity is dropping and low growth in the latter, where the salinity is increasing.

The mechanisms that allow species to evolve, coexist, compete, cooperate or become extinct are becoming always more understood. At the same time, the factors that allow species to coexist in a given time within the same environment are still debated. Many theories and hypotheses suggest that competition tends to differentiate the ecological requirements after repeated interactions and to allow the presence of many different species in the same area (i.e. biodiversity). After all, a thorough understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of biodiversity, which could somehow explain the current distribution patterns and mechanisms of coexistence, must consider the biogeographic and phylogenetic approaches. Here I propose a new graphic model that reviews the past and present, and sometimes debated, trends in biodiversity and evolutionary science, pointing out the importance of the avoidance of competition, the biological history, the endogenosymbiosis and the three-dimensionality as the main forces that structure ecosystems and allow the evolution of biological diversity. This model is an attempt to explain and summarize some of the mechanisms that underlie the current presence of the awesome number of species that currently inhabit our planet.

Treeline shift and tree growth often respond to climatic changes and it is critical to identify and quantify their dynamics. Some regions are particularly sensitive to climate change and the Altai Mountains, located in Central and East Asia, are showing unequivocal signs. The mean annual temperature in the area has increased by 1.3–1.7 °C in the last century. As this mountain range has ancient and protected forests on alpine slopes, we focus on determining the treeline structure and dynamics. We integrated in situ fine-scale allometric data with analyses from dendrochronological samples, high-resolution 3D drone photos and new satellite images to study the dynamics and underlying causal mechanisms of any treeline movement and growth changes in a remote preserved forest at the Aktru Research Station in the Altai Mountain. We show that temperature increase has a negative effect on mountain tree growth. In contrast, only younger trees grow at higher altitudes and we document a relatively fast upward shift of the treeline. During the last 52 years, treeline moved about 150 m upward and the rate of movement accelerated until recently. Before the 1950s, it never shifted over 2150–2200 m a.s.l. We suggest that a continuous upward expansion of the treeline would be at the expense of meadow and shrub species and radically change this high-mountain ecosystem with its endemic flora. This documented treeline shift represents clear evidence of the increased velocity of climate change during the last century.