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Stephen E. Williams

Bio: Stephen E. Williams is an academic researcher from James Cook University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Biodiversity & Climate change. The author has an hindex of 53, co-authored 126 publications receiving 25868 citations. Previous affiliations of Stephen E. Williams include International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources & Cooperative Research Centre.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This work compared 16 modelling methods over 226 species from 6 regions of the world, creating the most comprehensive set of model comparisons to date and found that presence-only data were effective for modelling species' distributions for many species and regions.
Abstract: Prediction of species' distributions is central to diverse applications in ecology, evolution and conservation science. There is increasing electronic access to vast sets of occurrence records in museums and herbaria, yet little effective guidance on how best to use this information in the context of numerous approaches for modelling distributions. To meet this need, we compared 16 modelling methods over 226 species from 6 regions of the world, creating the most comprehensive set of model comparisons to date. We used presence-only data to fit models, and independent presence-absence data to evaluate the predictions. Along with well-established modelling methods such as generalised additive models and GARP and BIOCLIM, we explored methods that either have been developed recently or have rarely been applied to modelling species' distributions. These include machine-learning methods and community models, both of which have features that may make them particularly well suited to noisy or sparse information, as is typical of species' occurrence data. Presence-only data were effective for modelling species' distributions for many species and regions. The novel methods consistently outperformed more established methods. The results of our analysis are promising for the use of data from museums and herbaria, especially as methods suited to the noise inherent in such data improve.

7,589 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
08 Jan 2004-Nature
TL;DR: Estimates of extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.
Abstract: Climate change over the past approximately 30 years has produced numerous shifts in the distributions and abundances of species and has been implicated in one species-level extinction. Using projections of species' distributions for future climate scenarios, we assess extinction risks for sample regions that cover some 20% of the Earth's terrestrial surface. Exploring three approaches in which the estimated probability of extinction shows a power-law relationship with geographical range size, we predict, on the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that 15-37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be 'committed to extinction'. When the average of the three methods and two dispersal scenarios is taken, minimal climate-warming scenarios produce lower projections of species committed to extinction ( approximately 18%) than mid-range ( approximately 24%) and maximum-change ( approximately 35%) scenarios. These estimates show the importance of rapid implementation of technologies to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and strategies for carbon sequestration.

7,089 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
31 Mar 2017-Science
TL;DR: The negative effects of climate change cannot be adequately anticipated or prepared for unless species responses are explicitly included in decision-making and global strategic frameworks, and feedbacks on climate itself are documented.
Abstract: Distributions of Earth’s species are changing at accelerating rates, increasingly driven by human-mediated climate change. Such changes are already altering the composition of ecological communities, but beyond conservation of natural systems, how and why does this matter? We review evidence that climate-driven species redistribution at regional to global scales affects ecosystem functioning, human well-being, and the dynamics of climate change itself. Production of natural resources required for food security, patterns of disease transmission, and processes of carbon sequestration are all altered by changes in species distribution. Consideration of these effects of biodiversity redistribution is critical yet lacking in most mitigation and adaptation strategies, including the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

1,917 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is concluded that ectotherms sharing vulnerability traits seem concentrated in lowland tropical forests and their vulnerability may be exacerbated by negative biotic interactions, as genetic and selective data are scant.
Abstract: A recently developed integrative framework proposes that the vulnerability of a species to environmental change depends on the species' exposure and sensitivity to environmental change, its resilience to perturbations and its potential to adapt to change. These vulnerability criteria require behavioural, physiological and genetic data. With this information in hand, biologists can predict organisms most at risk from environmental change. Biologists and managers can then target organisms and habitats most at risk. Unfortunately, the required data (e.g. optimal physiological temperatures) are rarely available. Here, we evaluate the reliability of potential proxies (e.g. critical temperatures) that are often available for some groups. Several proxies for ectotherms are promising, but analogous ones for endotherms are lacking. We also develop a simple graphical model of how behavioural thermoregulation, acclimation and adaptation may interact to influence vulnerability over time. After considering this model together with the proxies available for physiological sensitivity to climate change, we conclude that ectotherms sharing vulnerability traits seem concentrated in lowland tropical forests. Their vulnerability may be exacerbated by negative biotic interactions. Whether tropical forest (or other) species can adapt to warming environments is unclear, as genetic and selective data are scant. Nevertheless, the prospects for tropical forest ectotherms appear grim.

1,077 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A novel integrated framework to assess vulnerability and prioritize research and management action aims to improve the ability to respond to this emerging crisis.
Abstract: [Extract] Global climate change threatens global biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human well-being, with thousands of publications demonstrating impacts across a wide diversity of taxonomic groups, ecosystems, economics, and social structure. A review by Hughes [1] identified many of the ways that organisms may be affected by and/or respond to climate change. Since then, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of case studies attesting to ecological impacts [2], prompting several recent reviews on the subject (e.g., [3–6]). Several global meta-analyses confirm the pervasiveness of the global climate change "fingerprint" across continents, ecosystems, processes, and species [7–9]. Some studies have predicted increasingly severe future impacts with potentially high extinction rates in natural systems around the world [10,11]. Responding to this threat will require a concerted, multi-disciplinary, multi-scale, multi-taxon research effort that improves our predictive capacity to identify and prioritise vulnerable species in order to inform governments of the seriousness of the threat and to facilitate conservation adaptation and management [12,13]. If we are to minimise global biodiversity loss, we need significant decreases in global emissions to be combined with environmental management that is guided by sensible prioritisation of relative vulnerability. That is, we need to determine which species, habitats, and ecosystems will be most vulnerable, exactly what aspects of their ecological and evolutionary biology determine their vulnerability, and what we can do about managing this vulnerability and minimising the realised impacts. There is an emerging literature on specific traits that promote vulnerability under climate change (e.g., thermal tolerance [14]) as well as a broad literature on the traits that influence species' vulnerability generally (e.g., review by [15]). Less is known about the various mechanisms for either ecological or evolutionary adaptation to climate change, although it is increasingly recognised as a vital component of assessing vulnerability [16,17].

1,046 citations


Cited by
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28 Jul 2005
TL;DR: PfPMP1)与感染红细胞、树突状组胞以及胎盘的单个或多个受体作用,在黏附及免疫逃避中起关键的作�ly.
Abstract: 抗原变异可使得多种致病微生物易于逃避宿主免疫应答。表达在感染红细胞表面的恶性疟原虫红细胞表面蛋白1(PfPMP1)与感染红细胞、内皮细胞、树突状细胞以及胎盘的单个或多个受体作用,在黏附及免疫逃避中起关键的作用。每个单倍体基因组var基因家族编码约60种成员,通过启动转录不同的var基因变异体为抗原变异提供了分子基础。

18,940 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols used xiii 1.
Abstract: Preface to the Princeton Landmarks in Biology Edition vii Preface xi Symbols Used xiii 1. The Importance of Islands 3 2. Area and Number of Speicies 8 3. Further Explanations of the Area-Diversity Pattern 19 4. The Strategy of Colonization 68 5. Invasibility and the Variable Niche 94 6. Stepping Stones and Biotic Exchange 123 7. Evolutionary Changes Following Colonization 145 8. Prospect 181 Glossary 185 References 193 Index 201

14,171 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the use of the maximum entropy method (Maxent) for modeling species geographic distributions with presence-only data was introduced, which is a general-purpose machine learning method with a simple and precise mathematical formulation.

13,120 citations

Journal Article
Fumio Tajima1
30 Oct 1989-Genomics
TL;DR: It is suggested that the natural selection against large insertion/deletion is so weak that a large amount of variation is maintained in a population.

11,521 citations

01 Jun 2012
TL;DR: SPAdes as mentioned in this paper is a new assembler for both single-cell and standard (multicell) assembly, and demonstrate that it improves on the recently released E+V-SC assembler and on popular assemblers Velvet and SoapDeNovo (for multicell data).
Abstract: The lion's share of bacteria in various environments cannot be cloned in the laboratory and thus cannot be sequenced using existing technologies. A major goal of single-cell genomics is to complement gene-centric metagenomic data with whole-genome assemblies of uncultivated organisms. Assembly of single-cell data is challenging because of highly non-uniform read coverage as well as elevated levels of sequencing errors and chimeric reads. We describe SPAdes, a new assembler for both single-cell and standard (multicell) assembly, and demonstrate that it improves on the recently released E+V-SC assembler (specialized for single-cell data) and on popular assemblers Velvet and SoapDeNovo (for multicell data). SPAdes generates single-cell assemblies, providing information about genomes of uncultivatable bacteria that vastly exceeds what may be obtained via traditional metagenomics studies. SPAdes is available online ( http://bioinf.spbau.ru/spades ). It is distributed as open source software.

10,124 citations