Abstracts available here - Society for Conservation Biology

25th International Congress for Conservation Biology • Auckland, New Zealand • 5-9 December 2011
whether increased food positively impacted body condition, survival,
reproduction, density and colony expansion. Experimental results did
not support food limitation. Reproduction and density increased from
2008–2009 but remained similar between control and treatment plots.
Correlations between vegetation biomass and density suggest that natural
food availability in 2008 may have driven population growth into 2009.
Percentage of edible vegetation varied between 2008–2009, raising the
question: are prairie dog populations’ food limited in some years but
not others? A negative correlation between winter survival and summer
density, suggests internal regulation through density-dependent mortality.
Greater overwinter survival than summer was likely due to differences in
predation pressure. Colony expansion was greater in the absence of food
supplementation, suggesting food scarcity drives colony expansion. Results
suggest that northern prairie dog populations may be functioning near
environmental carrying capacity. This research has important implications
for conservation and management of prairie dogs and reintroduced blackfooted
ferrets (Mustela nigripes) in Canada.
2011-12-08 11:06 Specialist and generalist differential responses to
different types of disturbances.
Lorrilliere, R.*, MNHN UPMC CNRS UMR 7204; Couvet, D.,
MNHN UPMC CNRS UMR 7204 ; Robert, A., MNHN UPMC
CNRS UMR 7204 ;
Human activities are expected to result in a diversity of directional or
stochastic constraints, affecting species either directly or through an effect
on their resources. Numerous evidences have suggested that specialist
species are particularly sensitive to these constraints, resulting in a biotic
homogenization where numerous specialist species are replaced by few
generalists. We developed a dynamic model that mimics the use of different
types of resource by a community of interacting species with heterogeneous
levels of specialization in resource use. We investigated the effects of different
types of environmental constraints (directly affecting either the growth
of species or the availability of resources), on the dynamics of theoretical
communities of various sizes, structures and functional attributes. We
found that : (1) moderate resource-mediated constraints lead to dramatic
reductions of the average level of specialization of communities (CSI),
whereas direct constraints have no effect on the CSI. (2) The type and
magnitude of constraints affecting communities can be diagnosed only by
using combinations of indicators (e.g., CSI + the distribution of species
abundances...). Overall, the model helps to interpret of biodiversity metrics
in the biotic homogenization context.
2011-12-08 15:15 Oceanographic drivers of recruitment, growth, and
genetic diversity in a long-lived exploited marine fish
Lotterhos, KE*, Florida State University; Markel, RW, University
of British Columbia;
Global warming is predicted to affect the timing and duration of
oceanographic events that may be important to the reproductive success
of marine species. Black rockfish (Sebastes melanops) are a long-lived
marine fish whose populations have been declining since the 1980’s due to
recreational fishing. Black rockfish release larvae (a process called parturition)
into an uncertain oceanographic environment that is characterized by
annual fluctuations in temperature as well as the strength and duration of
upwelling. We monitored black rockfish recruitment for 5 years (2005-
2010) that differed substantially in their oceanographic regimes. We
found that the abundance of recruits was determined largely by upwelling
and secondly by temperature at settlement. Through otolith and genetic
analysis we discovered that warmer temperatures between parturition and
settlement increased genetic diversity and decreased relatedness among
recruits, and upwelling at settlement increased the abundance of recruits but
not the number of breeders that contributed to that cohort. These results
suggest that colder temperatures and high upwelling cause sweepstakes-like
processes to operate on black rockfish populations, in which fewer females
produce a large cohort of fish.
2011-12-06 11:00 The Conservation Imperative in Twenty-first
Century Amazonia
Lovejoy, Thomas E*, George Mason University; A2, Heinz Center;
The challenge for Amazonian conservation in this century includes climate
change, deforestation, fire, gold mining,cattle and soybeans,infrastructure
projects plus mining,oil and gas and forestry concessions. It is instructive
to review what was effective in the past century in advancing conservation
and sustainable management, but the lessons from the past are insufficient
for the future. The Amazon needs to be managed as a system and requires an
integrated Amazon policy.
2011-12-06 11:15 Out on a Limb: Using Education as a \
Lowman, MD*, North Carolina State University;
Education of citizens, policy-makers, students (including K-through-
Gray), and other community constituents is critical to foster stewardship
of tropical forests. Innovative new partnerships and emerging educational
tools can provide mechanisms for communicating the value of ecosystem
services, inextricably linked to forest conservation. I present 3 case studies
where education of diverse stakeholders led to actions that prioritized
conservation: 1. working with religious leaders to save church forests in
Ethiopia; 2. empowering indigenous people in tropical regions by building
canopy walkways for education/ecotourism to provide revenue streams; and
3. reaching under-served audiences through innovative new technologies
and social media to raise science literacy. When conservation biologists apply
their tools and skills to engage in education outreach, positive conservation
outcomes can be achieved.
2011-12-09 14:00 Meeting the challenges in spatial conservation
prioritization in the 21st century
Loyola, RD*, Universidade Federal de Goiás;
Spatial conservation prioritization uses quantitative techniques to create
spatial information on conservation priorities. In its beginnings, most
studies addressed conceptual problems, definition of optimization methods
for complex model formulations, and development of computational tools
for providing community with a way to apply the principles of spatial
prioritization to numerous conservation problems. Today, much of these
issues are solved. Recent trends include the development of methods to
cope with data and model uncertainties, and methods for understanding
the consequences of climate change to biodiversity and the tree of life.
Conservation practitioners also include economic costs of biodiversity
conservation. Framing all these concerns is conservation opportunity, which
ultimately drives the implementation of conservation strategies and help to
develop national and international policies. Here I discuss the challenges for
spatial conservation prioritization in a changing world. I address trending
topics such as multi-action planning methods accounting for multiple
costs; the inclusion of system dynamics, stochasticity and uncertainty in
conservation planning; the incorporation of ecosystem and evolutionary
processes in spatial prioritization; and how to engage all elements of the
society into conservation planning development.
2011-12-09 12:15 Reassessing global conservation priorities with
species richness estimates
LUCAS N. JOPPA*, Microsoft Research; David Roberts, Durrell
Institute of Conservation and Ecology, School of Anthropology and
Conservation, University of Kent; Stuart Pimm, Nicholas School for
the Environment, Duke University;
For most organisms, the number of described species considerably
underestimates how many exist. This is itself a problem and causes secondary
complications given present high rates of species extinction. How different
would conservation priorities be, were the species catalogue complete?
Flowering plants form the basis of biodiversity “hotspots” — places where
high levels of endemism and habitat loss coincide to produce high extinction
rates. About 15% more species of flowering plant are likely unknown,
almost certainly rare, and depending on where they live, suffer high risks
of extinction from habitat loss and global climate disruption. Using a novel
modeling approach, we show that regions predicted to contain large numbers
of undiscovered species are already conservation priorities. Our results leave
the ranked priorities more-or-less intact, but suggest considerably higher
levels of species imperilment than previously acknowledged.
96