Showing papers in "Biological Conservation in 2005"

TL;DR: There is now sufficient evidence to regard the controversies regarding the contribution of genetic factors to extinction risk as resolved, and if genetic factors are ignored, extinction risk will be underestimated and inappropriate recovery strategies may be used.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors assess the impacts on biodiversity of organic farming, relative to conventional agriculture, through a review of comparative studies of the two systems, in order to determine whether it can deliver on the biodiversity benefits its proponents claim.

TL;DR: There is little evidence to suggest that they are more effective than other taxa as surrogate measures of biodiversity or habitat quality, and major challenges remain in extrapolating from experimental data to population level effects and in developing methodologies that will provide unbiased descriptions of amphibian population dynamics.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the relationship between species richness, habitat cover and habitat configuration using analysis of co-variance (ANCOVA), multiple linear regression and univariate nonlinear modelling.

TL;DR: This fuzzy expert system provides vulnerability estimates that correlate with observed declines more closely than previous methods, and has advantages in flexibility of input data requirements, in the explicit representation of uncertainty, and in the ease of incorporating new knowledge.

TL;DR: Overall, Fabaceae appear to be the major pollen source for most bumblebee species, but long-tongued, late emerging species such as Bombus ruderatus, Bombus humilis and Bombus subterraneus specialize heavily in gathering pollen from Fabaceae, and this group of bumblebees species have all declined.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the efficacy of wildlife crossing structures for wide-ranging large carnivores and their prey species in Banff National Park, Alberta, using data obtained from systematic, year-round monitoring of 13 newly constructed crossing structures (underpasses and overpasses) for 34 months post-construction.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors surveyed the current literature for information on ecological and social factors common to human-predator-prey conflicts and examined whether losses to predators and patterns of investment in husbandry could be linked to these factors.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated how species abundance and alpha and beta diversity are affected by fragment size and the presence of corridors in an Atlantic forest landscape, and the importance of secondary forest for the conservation of tropical fauna, the hyperdynamism of small isolated fragments and the potential of corridors to buffer habitat fragmentation effects in tropical landscapes.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors measured the frequency of several non-native plant species along transects 0-150m from the edge of highways and railways in grasslands and forests, as well as at control sites away from corridors.

TL;DR: An overview of publications from three prominent conservation journals published in 2001 is provided, found a wide breadth of studies of different topics from different climates and habitats and across a range of spatial scales, and suggested broadening the number of habitats, taxonomic groups and scales studied.

TL;DR: The authors examined the effects of forest patch and landscape metrics, and levels of forest disturbance on the patterns of local extinction of five primate and 14 carnivore species within 129 forest patches in a highly fragmented forest landscape of southern Brazilian Amazonia.

TL;DR: The importance of considering species’ perceptions of landscape, especially functional connectivity, in understanding the effects of habitat fragmentation is emphasized, as it is seen in the case of Batara cinerea.

TL;DR: In this paper, problems and correlates of success in the conservation of Africa's rain forests were evaluated for 16 protected areas in 11 countries, representing approximately half of all protected areas of this biome.

TL;DR: It is suggested that beach protection and egg relocation provide a simple and effective conservation strategy for this Northern Caribbean nesting population as long as adult survival at sea remains relatively high.

TL;DR: This work assesses the sensitivity of conservation planning outcomes to different uses of predicted species distribution data, and finds that the resulting reserve networks differed, and had different expected species representation.

TL;DR: The results suggest that man-made acoustic interference may affect anuran chorus behavior either directly by modulating call rates of the chorus participants or indirectly, by suppressing calling behavior of one set of species which in turn stimulates calling in other species.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a stochastic spatially explicit model to simulate plant dispersal across artificial fragmented landscapes, based on certain assumptions as to the dispersal mechanism, assess the impact that varying potential for rare long-distance dispersal has on the ability to move over landscapes with differing spatial arrangements of suitable habitat.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors evaluate and compare success of many different sites on an idealistic concept where all regional target species have the potential to establish in a site, but may not actually do so because the site is unsuitable or inaccessible.

TL;DR: Examination of the long-term effectiveness of four different management strategies to enhance and restore bumblebee foraging habitat on arable field margins in two regions with markedly contrasting landscape structure, farming systems and amount of semi-natural habitat found the removal of field margins from the cropping system was the best strategy.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors reviewed and analyzed patterns and between-site variation in hunter-kill profiles of mammals in tropical moist forests in west and central Africa and found that abundance was the main predictor of harvest level.

TL;DR: Tortuguero, Costa Rica, hosts the largest remaining green turtle rookery in the Atlantic basin and has been monitored and conservation of the green turtle population since pre-Columbian times.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed a modelling approach for both presence and presence/absence data to identify hotspots, using data collected from the Snowy Mountain Highway in southern New South Wales, Australia to compare the effectiveness of this approach for five species/groups of species.

TL;DR: A field test of the reliability and performance of a commonly used method to monitor the distribution of amphibians (anuran call surveys) and how detection probabilities were affected by weather and how site occupancy was affected by site specific covariates.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe a systematic conservation planning assessment for South Africa's Subtropical Thicket Biome that considered implementation opportunities and constraints from the outset by developing (maps and guidelines) that could be readily used for local government land-use planning.

TL;DR: The results support the idea that the maintenance of species in small fragments may depend on their ability to use the matrix, and that increasing the permeability of the matrix may be an option to lessen the effects of forest fragmentation.

TL;DR: Whether adult female freshwater turtles move overland more frequently than that expected from actual sex ratios and the proportions of turtles of four species that attempt to nest annually along the roadside are evaluated, it is found that under normal conditions a significantly greater proportion of adult females than males were found on land along the highway and have a greater annual probability of being killed by vehicles.

TL;DR: A significant cattle x elephant interaction on the abundance of zebra dung indicates that elephants reduce the negative effects of cattle on zebras, apparently by suppressing resource extraction (bite rates) by cattle.

TL;DR: Bats were surveyed at 30 sites in south-eastern Australia, in five habitat categories representing a range of tree densities from remnant woodland blocks (>35 trees/ha) to sparsely scattered trees.