Developing a national indicator of functional connectivity

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.