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Cities can host significant biological diversity. Yet, urbanisation leads to the loss of habitats and, potentially, to local extinctions. Understanding how multiple taxa respond to urbanisation globally is essential to promote and conserve biodiversity in cities and surrounding landscapes. Using a dataset with site-level occurrence and trait data of 5302 species from six terrestrial fauna taxonomic groups across 379 cities on 6 continents, we show that urbanisation produces taxon-specific changes in trait composition, with traits related to reproductive strategy consistently showing the strongest response. The effect of urbanisation on community trait composition is strongest at the largest spatial scale considered, and more closely linked to landscape composition (% urban) than arrangement (aggregation), although latitude and climatic variables remain a stronger influence. This study did not find evidence in support of a global urban taxa syndrome, but instead we suggest that there are four general urban trait syndromes, with resources associated with reproduction and diet likely to be driving patterns in traits associated with mobility and body size. Functional diversity measures showed a wide range of responses, leading to a shift in trait space that is most likely driven by the distribution and abundance of critical resources, and the urban trait syndrome displayed by individual species within a community. Further research is required to understand the interactions between the four general urban trait syndromes, resource distribution and abundance and changes in functional diversity of taxa at different spatial and temporal scales. Maximising opportunities to support species within taxa groups with different urban trait syndromes should be pivotal in conservation and management programmes within and among cities. This will reduce the likelihood of biotic homogenisation at the taxa level, and helps ensure that urban environments have the ecological capacity to respond to challenges such as climate change, further habitat fragmentation and loss, and other disruptions. These actions are critical if we are to reframe the role of cities in global biodiversity loss.

Purpose The University of Michigan (U-M) is planning its course toward carbon neutrality. A key component in U-M carbon accounting is the calculation of carbon sinks via estimation of carbon storage and biosequestration on U-M landholdings. Here, this paper aims to compare multiple remote sensing methods across U-M natural lands and urban campuses to determine the accurate and efficient protocol for land assessment and ecosystem service valuation that other institutions may scale as relevant. Design/methodology/approach This paper tested three remote sensing methods to determine land use and land cover (LULC), namely, unsupervised classification, supervised classification and supervised classification incorporating delineated wetlands. Using confusion matrices, this paper tested remote sensing approaches to ground-truthed data, the paper obtained via field-based vegetation surveys across a subset of U-M landholdings. Findings In natural areas, supervised classification incorporating delineated wetlands was the most accurate and efficient approach. In urban settings, maps incorporating institutional knowledge and campus tree surveys better estimated LULC. Using LULC and literature-based carbon data, this paper estimated that U-M lands store 1.37–3.68 million metric tons of carbon and sequester 45,000–86,000 Mt CO2e/yr, valued at $2.2m–$4.3m annually ($50/metric ton, social cost of carbon). Originality/value This paper compared methods to identify an efficient and accurate remote sensing methodology to identify LULC and estimate carbon storage, biosequestration rates and economic values of ecosystem services provided.

The fields of ecology and conservation have evolved rapidly over the past century. Synthesizing larger trends in these disciplines remains a challenge yet is critical to bridging subdisciplines, guiding research, and informing educational frameworks. Here, we provide what we believe is the largest full‐text culturomic analysis of ecology and conservation journals, covering 80 years, 52 journals, and half a billion words. Our analysis illuminates the boom‐and‐bust of ecological hypotheses and theories; the adoption of statistical, genetic, and social‐science approaches; and the domination of terms that have emerged in recent decades (eg climate change, invasive species, ecosystem services, meta‐analysis, and supplementary material, which largely replaced unpublished data). We track the evolution of ecology from a largely descriptive field focused on natural history and observational studies to a more data‐driven, multidisciplinary field focused on applied environmental issues. Overall, our analysis highlights the increasing breadth of the field, illustrating that there is room for more diversity of ecologists and conservationists today than ever before.

The coronavirus pandemic is more fully exposing ubiquitous economic and social inequities that pervade conservation science. In this time of prolonged stress on members of the research community, primary investigators or project leaders (PLs) have a unique opportunity to adapt their programs to jointly create more equitable and productive research environments for their teams. Institutional guidance for PLs pursuing field and laboratory work centers on the physical safety of individuals while in the lab or field, but largely ignores the vast differences in how team members may be experiencing the pandemic. Strains on mental, physical, and emotional health; racial trauma; familial responsibilities; and compulsory productivity resources, such as high-speed internet, quiet work spaces, and support are unequally distributed across team members. The goal of this paper is to summarize the shifting dynamics of leadership and mentorship during the coronavirus pandemic and highlight opportunities for increasing equity in conservation research at the scale of the project team. Here, we (1) describe how the pandemic differentially manifests inequity on project teams, particularly for groups that have been structurally excluded from conservation science, (2) consider equitable career advancement during the coronavirus pandemic, and (3) offer suggestions for PLs to provide mentorship that prioritizes equity and wellbeing during and beyond the pandemic. We aim to support PLs who have power and flexibility in how they manage research, teaching, mentoring, consulting, outreach, and extension activities so that individual team members' needs are met with compassion and attention to equity.

Pollinator conservation is of increasing interest in the light of managed honeybee (Apis mellifera) declines, and declines in some species of wild bees. Much work has gone into understanding the effects of habitat enhancements in agricultural systems on wild bee abundance, richness and pollination services. However, the effects of ecological restoration targeting “natural” ecological endpoints (e.g. restoring former agricultural fields to historic vegetation types or improving degraded natural lands) on wild bees have received relatively little attention, despite their potential importance for countering habitat loss. We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the effects of ecological restoration on wild bee abundance and richness, focusing on unmanaged bee communities in lands restored and managed to increase habitat availability and quality. Specifically, we assessed bee abundance and/or richness across studies comparing restored vs. unrestored treatments and studies investigating effects of specific habitat restoration techniques, such as burning, grazing, invasive plant removal and seeding. We analysed 28 studies that met our selection criteria: these represented 11 habitat types and 7 restoration techniques. Nearly all restorations associated with these studies were performed without explicit consideration of habitat needs for bees or other pollinators. The majority of restorations targeted plant community goals, which could potentially have ancillary benefits for bees. Restoration had overall positive effects on wild bee abundance and richness across multiple habitat types. Specific restoration actions, tested independently, also tended to have positive effects on wild bee richness and abundance. Synthesis and applications. We found strong evidence that ecological restoration advances wild bee conservation. This is important given that habitat loss is recognized as a leading factor in pollinator decline. Pollinator responses to land management are rarely evaluated in non-agricultural settings and so support for wild bees may be an underappreciated benefit of botanically focused management. Future restoration projects that explicitly consider the needs of wild bees could be more effective at providing nesting, foraging and other habitat resources. We encourage land managers to design and evaluate restoration projects with the habitat needs of wild bee species in mind.

Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Europe, overrepresenting bumblebees and raising concerns that model results may not be generalizable to other regions and taxa. To assess whether the geographic and taxonomic biases of data could undermine effectiveness of models for conservation policy, we have collated from the published literature a global dataset of bee diversity at sites facing land-use change and intensification, and assess whether bee responses to these pressures vary across 11 regions (Western, Northern, Eastern and Southern Europe; North, Central and South America; Australia and New Zealand; South East Asia; Middle and Southern Africa) and between bumblebees and other bees. Our analyses highlight strong regionally-based responses of total abundance, species richness and Simpson's diversity to land use, caused by variation in the sensitivity of species and potentially in the nature of threats. These results suggest that global extrapolation of models based on geographically and taxonomically restricted data may underestimate the true uncertainty, increasing the risk of ecological surprises. Fil: De Palma, Adriana. Natural History Museum; Reino Unido. Imperial College London; Reino Unido Fil: Abrahamczyk, Stefan. Universitat Bonn; Alemania Fil: Aizen, Marcelo Adrian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentina Fil: Albrecht, Matthias. Institute for Sustainability Sciences; Suiza Fil: Basset, Yves. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; Panamá Fil: Bates, Adam. Nottingham Trent University; Reino Unido Fil: Blake, Robin J.. University of Reading; Reino Unido Fil: Boutin, Céline. Carleton University; Canadá Fil: Bugter, Rob. Wageningen University and Research; Países Bajos Fil: Connop, Stuart. University of East London; Reino Unido Fil: Cruz López, Leopoldo. El Colegio de la Frontera del Sur; México Fil: Cunningham, Saul A.. CSIRO Exploration and Mining; Australia Fil: Darvill, Ben. University of Stirling; Reino Unido Fil: Diekötter, Tim. Geomar-Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel; Alemania. University Marburg; Alemania. Institute of Integrative Biology; Suiza Fil: Dorn, Silvia. ETH Zurich; Suiza Fil: Downing, Nicola. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; Reino Unido Fil: Entling, Martin H.. Universitat Koblenz; Alemania Fil: Farwig, Nina. Universitat Phillips; Alemania Fil: Felicioli, Antonio. Università degli Studi di Pisa; Italia Fil: Fonte, Steven J.. State University of Colorado - Fort Collins; Estados Unidos Fil: Fowler, Robert. University of Sussex; Reino Unido Fil: Franzén, Markus. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research; Alemania Fil: Goulson, Dave. Universität Göttingen; Alemania Fil: Grass, Ingo. Universität Göttingen; Alemania Fil: Hanley, Mick E.. University of Iowa; Estados Unidos Fil: Hendrix, Stephen D.. University of Iowa; Estados Unidos Fil: Herrmann, Farina. Universität Würzburg; Alemania Fil: Herzog, Felix. Institut for Sustainability Sciences; Suiza Fil: Holzschuh, Andrea. Universität Würzburg; Alemania Fil: Jauker, Birgit. Justus-Liebig University; Alemania Fil: Kessler, Michael. Institut für Systematische und Evolutionäre Botanik; Suiza Fil: Knight, M.E.. Plymouth University; Reino Unido Fil: Kruess, Andreas. Federal Agency for Nature Conservation; Alemania Fil: Lavelle, Patrick. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Institut de Recherche pour le Développement; Francia. Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical; Colombia Fil: Le Féon, Violette Alice Marie. Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique; Francia Fil: Lentini, Pia. University of Melbourne; Australia Fil: Malone, Louise A.. New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Ltd; Nueva Zelanda Fil: Marshall, Jon. Marshall Agroecology Ltd; Reino Unido Fil: Pachón, Eliana Martínez. Universidad Nacional de Colombia; Colombia Fil: McFrederick, Quinn S.. University of California; Estados Unidos Fil: Morales, Carolina Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentina Fil: Mudri Stojnic, Sonja. University of Novi Sad; Serbia Fil: Nates Parra, Guiomar. Universidad Nacional de Colombia; Colombia Fil: Nilsson, Sven G.. Lund University; Suecia Fil: Öckinger, Erik. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences; Suecia Fil: Osgathorpe, Lynne. RSPB; Reino Unido Fil: Parra-H, Alejandro. Universidad Nacional de Colombia; Colombia. Corporación para la Gestión de Servicios Ecosistémicos, Polinización y Abejas; Colombia Fil: Peres, Carlos A.. University of East Anglia; Reino Unido Fil: Persson, Anna S.. Lund University; Suecia Fil: Petanidou, Theodora. University of the Aegean; Grecia Fil: Poveda, Katja. Cornell University; Estados Unidos Fil: Power, Eileen F.. Trinity College Dublin; Irlanda Fil: Quaranta, Marino. Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l'Analisi del l'Economía Agraria; Italia Fil: Quintero, Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Centro Regional Universidad Bariloche. Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Medioambiente; Argentina Fil: Rader, Romina. University of New England; Australia Fil: Richards, Miriam H.. Brock University; Canadá Fil: Roulston, Tai. University of Virginia; Estados Unidos Fil: Rousseau, Laurent. Université du Québec a Montreal; Canadá Fil: Sadler, Jonathan P.. University of Birmingham; Reino Unido Fil: Samnegård, Ulrika. University of Birmingham; Reino Unido Fil: Schellhorn, Nancy A.. CSIRO Exploration and Mining; Australia Fil: Schüepp, Christof. University of Bern; Suiza Fil: Schweiger, Oliver. Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research; Alemania Fil: Smith Pardo, Allan H.. United States Department of Agriculture; Estados Unidos. Universidad Nacional de Colombia; Colombia Fil: Steffan Dewenter, Ingolf. Universität Würzburg; Alemania Fil: Stout, Jane C.. Trinity College Dublin; Irlanda Fil: Tonietto, Rebecca K.. Northwestern University; Estados Unidos. Chicago Botanic Garden; Estados Unidos Fil: Teja, Tscharntke. Universität Göttingen; Alemania Fil: Tylianakis, Jason M.. Imperial College London; Reino Unido. University of Canterbury; Nueva Zelanda Fil: Verboven, Hans A. F.. Katholikie Universiteit Leuven; Bélgica Fil: Vergara, Carlos H.. Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla; México Fil: Verhulst, Jort. No especifíca; Fil: Westphal, Catrin. Universität Göttingen; Alemania Fil: Yoon, Hyung Joo. National Institute of Agricultural Science; Corea del Sur Fil: Purvis, Andy. Natural History Museum; Reino Unido. Imperial College London; Reino Unido

Due to loss of natural habitats, human-dominated green spaces are likely to increase in importance for biodiversity support. We assessed the potential value of urban “green roofs” for native pollinator conservation in the Chicago region, comparing them with reference habitats of tallgrass prairie natural areas and traditional city-park green spaces. We found that native bees are present on green roofs, though at lower abundance and diversity than in reference habitats. Green-roof and prairie bee communities were distinct from each other, while those in parks were intermediate and similar to the other two habitat types. Bee-community patterns were related to habitat characteristics at both the site and landscape scales. Overall, bee abundance and species richness increased with greater proportions of green space in the surrounding landscape. However, this relationship disappeared in cases where green space was dominated by turf grass. At the site scale, bees benefited from greater plant diversity, and bee and plant-community composition were significantly correlated. Green roofs are potentially valuable sites for bee conservation in urban areas, particularly if planted with diverse native forbs to provide foraging resources, and designed to accommodate bees with different nesting habits.

Summary Phylogenies are increasingly incorporated into ecological studies on the basis that evolutionary relatedness broadly correlates with trait similarity. However, phylogenetic approaches have rarely been applied to monitoring long-term community change or guiding management. We analysed a 25-year resampling data set (1976–2001) of 41 tallgrass prairie remnants (Illinois, USA) to test for phylogenetic signals of plant community structure, change, environmental associations, fire management and functional traits. A community phylogeny was constructed using GenBank sequences, and trait data were acquired from the TRY consortium. Phylogenetic measures of alpha and beta diversity were compared with taxonomic and functional measures. From 1976 to 2001, communities became more phylogenetically clustered relative to null model expectations, that is increasingly restricted to subsets of species more closely related than expected by chance. Phylogeny was a sensitive indicator of environmental gradients and fire management. There were strong relationships between phylogeny and traits: key traits were phylogenetically non-random and phylogenetic diversity was a necessary complement to species richness for explaining variation in trait diversity. Phylogeny revealed a shift in community structure over time, with sites having been phylogenetically random in 1976 but becoming differentiated from each other by 2001. In contrast, measures of taxonomic and functional diversity showed differentiation at both time points. Phylogenetic patterns likely reflected changes in species’ abundances mediated by the influence of environmental conditions and fire frequency. Synthesis and applications. Phylogenetic analyses can elucidate factors central to sound monitoring and management of plant communities. In this system, phylogeny was not a proxy for other indicators, but provided information complementing taxonomic-based and trait-based approaches for understanding vegetation structure, change and response to fire management. Phylogenetic approaches to ecological analysis are increasingly accessible, but fuller understanding of phylogeny–trait relationships and further development of user-friendly analytical tools are needed for phylogenetics to widely inform restoration and management. In some systems, targeting phylogenetic diversity may be an effective means for restoring functionally diverse plant communities.