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Reversing large-scale habitat degradation and deforestation goes beyond what can be achieved by site-level ecological restoration and a landscape ecology perspective is fundamental. Here we assess the relative importance of tree cover and its configuration on forest-dependent birds and late-successional tree seedlings in restoration sites in southern Costa Rica. The abundance and species richness of birds increased in landscapes with more corridors, higher tree cover, and lower levels of fragmentation, highlighting the importance of riparian corridors for connectivity, and continuous tree cover as suitable habitat. Landscape variables affected abundance and species richness of seedlings similarly, but effects were weaker, possibly because seedlings face establishment limitation in addition to dispersal limitation. Moreover, the scale of landscape effects on seedlings was small, likely because proximal individual trees can significantly influence recruitment in restoration plots. Results underscore the importance of incorporating landscape-level metrics to restoration projects, as knowing the extent, and how the landscape may affect restoration outcomes can help to infer what kind of species will arrive to restoration plots., Scientific Reports, 12 (1), ISSN:2045-2322

Boundary spanning – the practice of facilitating knowledge exchange to address complex sustainability challenges – has the potential to align research and policymaking and increase the uptake of research in decision making. But the goals, methods, and outcomes of boundary-spanning activities in the environment sector can be difficult to describe, missing an opportunity to share lessons learned and improve as a community of practice. This paper describes boundary-spanning activities to integrate research about environmental sustainability with federal ocean policy dialogues in the U.S. We describe the process of organizing, facilitating, and learning from a series of meetings in which five interdisciplinary researchers engaged with federal ocean policy audiences. While the longer-term impacts of the activities associated with these meetings are subtle and remain difficult to detect, more immediate outcomes are observable. These include new professional relationships among researchers and policy staff, reported relevance of the research to general policy discourse, and a narrative that frames the opportunity for policymakers to learn from past industrialization on land as they manage an emerging industrial revolution in the ocean. By presenting the process and outcomes of our boundary-spanning activities, we aim to stimulate timely debate within ocean policy, management, and research communities about the importance of multiple benefits provided by healthy and intact ocean ecosystems and how to protect them in the face of the expanding industrialization of the ocean.

Five wealthy nations control most of the world’s industrial, affecting the future of food, health, and poverty., The patterns by which different nations share global fisheries influence outcomes for food security, trajectories of economic development, and competition between industrial and small-scale fishing. We report patterns of industrial fishing effort for vessels flagged to higher- and lower-income nations, in marine areas within and beyond national jurisdiction, using analyses of high-resolution fishing vessel activity data. These analyses reveal global dominance of industrial fishing by wealthy nations. Vessels flagged to higher-income nations, for example, are responsible for 97% of the trackable industrial fishing on the high seas and 78% of such effort within the national waters of lower-income countries. These publicly accessible vessel tracking data have important limitations. However, insights from these new analyses can begin to strategically inform important international- and national-level efforts underway now to ensure equitable and sustainable sharing of fisheries.

© 2015 McCauley et al. The common hippopotamus, Hippopotamus amphibius, transports millions of tons of organic matter annually from its terrestrial feeding grounds into aquatic habitats. We evaluated whether carbon stable isotopes (δ13C) can be used as tracers for determining whether H. amphibius-vectored allochthonous material is utilized by aquatic consumers. Two approaches were employed to make this determination: (1) lab-based feeding trials where omnivorous river fish were fed a H. amphibius dung diet and (2) field sampling of fish and aquatic insects in pools with and without H. amphibius. Lab trials revealed that fish fed exclusively H. amphibius dung exhibited significantly more positive δ13C values than fish not fed dung. Fish and aquatic insects sampled in a river pool used for decades by H. amphibius also exhibited more positive δ13C values at the end of the dry season than fish and insects sampled from an upstream H. amphibius-free reference pool. Fish sampled in these same pools at the end of the wet season (high flow) showed no significant differences in δ13C values, suggesting that higher flows reduced retention and use of H. amphibius subsidies. These data provide preliminary evidence that δ13C values may be useful, in certain contexts, for quantifying the importance H. amphibius organic matter.

BACKGROUND: Comparing patterns of ter- restrial and marine defaunation helps to place human impacts on marine fauna in context and to navigate toward recovery. De- faunation began in ear- nest tens of thousands of years later in the oceans than it did on land. Al- though defaunation has been less severe in the oceans than on land, our effects on marine animals are increasing in pace and impact. Humans have caused few complete extinctions in the sea, but we are responsible for many ecological, commercial, and local extinctions. Despite our late start, humans have already powerfully changed virtually all major marine ecosystems. ADVANCES: Humans have profoundly de- creased the abundance of both large (e.g., whales) and small (e.g., anchovies) marine fauna. Such declines can generate waves of ecological change that travel both up and down marine food webs and can alter ocean ecosystem functioning. Human harvesters have also been a major force of evolutionary change in the oceans and have reshaped the genetic structure of marine animal popula- tions. Climate change threatens toaccelerate marine defaunation over the next century. The high mobility of many marine animals offers some increased, though limited, ca- pacity for marine species to respond to cli- mate stress, but it also exposes many species to increased risk from other stressors. Be- cause humans are intensely reliant on ocean ecosystems for food and other ecosystem ser- vices, we are deeply affected by all of these forecasted changes. Three lessons emerge when comparing the marine and terrestrial defaunation ex