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Maintaining and restoring ecological connectivity will be key in helping to prevent and reverse the loss of biodiversity. Fortunately, a growing body of research conducted over the last few decades has advanced our understanding of connectivity science, which will help inform evidence‐based connectivity conservation actions. Increases in data availability and computing capacity have helped to dramatically increase our ability to model functional connectivity using more sophisticated models. Keeping track of these advances can be difficult, even for connectivity scientists and practitioners. In this article, we highlight some key advances from the past decade and outline many of the remaining challenges. We describe the efforts to increase the biological realism of connectivity models by, for example, isolating movement behaviors, population parameters, directional movements, and the effects of climate change. We also discuss considerations of when to model connectivity for focal or multiple species. Finally, we reflect on how to account for uncertainty and increase the transparency and reproducibility of connectivity research and discuss situations where decisions may require forgoing sophistication for more simple approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many bumble bee species are declining globally from multiple threats including climate change. Identifying conservation priority areas with a changing climate will be important for conserving bumble bee species. Using systematic conservation planning, we identified priority areas for 44 bumble bee species in Canada under current and projected climates (year 2050). Conservation priority areas were identified as those that contained targeted amounts of each species predicted occurrence through climate envelope models, while minimizing the area cost of conserving the identified conservation priority areas. Conservation priority areas in the two periods were compared to established protected areas and land cover types to determine the area of current and future priority sites that are protected and the types of landscapes within priority areas. Notably, conservation priority areas were rarely within established protected areas. Priority areas were most often in croplands and grasslands, mainly within the mountain west, central and Southern Ontario, Northern Quebec, and Atlantic Canada under all climate scenarios. Conservation priority areas are predicted to increase in elevation and latitude with climate change. Our findings identify the most important regions in Canada for conserving bumble bee species under current and future climates including consistently selected future sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims Positive plant interactions can promote higher species density of beneficiary species in deserts. However, there is limited evidence examining the trait sets of seeds from beneficiary species. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that shrubs (benefactors) influence the germination of desert annuals (beneficiaries) and promote ecotypic differentiation by generating distinct microhabitats through abiotic stress amelioration. The following predictions were tested using growth chambers and field-collected seeds: (i) seed mass and viability will be greater and less variable for seeds collected from within shrub understory relative to seeds from open microhabitats, (ii) germination of seeds from shrub and open microhabitats will be greatest under simulated home (source) conditions, (iii) seeds from the shrub microhabitat will adaptively accelerate their germination rate when germinated in simulated home (source) microhabitats relative to their simulated away (reciprocal) microhabitat. Methods Seeds and their associated maternal plants were collected from four annual species found within a shrub understory (Larrea tridentata) and open microhabitats in the Mojave Desert of California (35.30°N, 117.26°W, 793 m. a.s.l.), and then reciprocally germinated in growth chambers simulating both microclimatic conditions. Cumulative germination and germination rate was measured every 4-5 days for 42 days. Important Findings There was no significant difference in the mean or coefficient of variation for seed mass and viability between the shrub and open microhabitats. The source of the seeds did not significantly impact the cumulative germination, and there was no accelerated rate of germination within potential species ecotypes thereby suggesting no ecotypic differentiation. Cumulative germination was significantly higher within the shrub-simulated microhabitat for three out of the four species examined. Cumulative germination and germination rate were significantly different between species. Hence, shrubs influence the germination of desert annuals, and the outcome of this interaction is species specific, but shrub microhabitats do not necessarily alter the more conserved seed biology traits. Future studies should examine the influence of gene flow on beneficiary adaptation and the influence of species-specificity on beneficiary species response to facilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]