Ecological time lags and the journey towards conservation success
Ecological time lags and the journey towards conservation success
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DOI：
10.1038/s41559-019-1087-8
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发表时间：
2020-01
影响因子：
16.8
通讯作者：
K. Watts;Robin C. Whytock;Kirsty J. Park;Elisa Fuentes‐Montemayor;N. Macgregor;S. Duffield;P. McGowan
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文献类型：
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作者：
K. Watts;Robin C. Whytock;Kirsty J. Park;Elisa Fuentes‐Montemayor;N. Macgregor;S. Duffield;P. McGowan
尽管采取了几十年的保护行动，但扭转生物多样性下降和停止物种灭绝的全球保护目标仍未实现。然而，生物多样性指标在实现这些目标方面缺乏可衡量的变化并不一定是保护失败的标志;相反，物种对保护行动的反应的时间滞后可能掩盖了我们观察保护成功进展的能力。在这里，我们提出了我们的观点的影响，生态时间滞后的保护成功的评估和审查的原则，时间滞后及其生态驱动程序。我们说明了一些概念物种可能会对理论景观的变化做出反应，并评估这些反应可能会如何影响我们对保护成功的解释。然后，我们调查了一个时间滞后的真实的生物多样性指标，使用经验数据和探索替代方法来了解驱动时间滞后的机制。我们建议在设定和评估保育目标时，采用里程碑，或在关键时间点与特定生态机制挂钩的中期目标，以评估保育行动是否可能奏效。在生物多样性目标和指标中考虑生态时滞将大大改善我们评估保护成功的方式。
Global conservation targets to reverse biodiversity declines and halt species extinctions are not being met despite decades of conservation action. However, a lack of measurable change in biodiversity indicators towards these targets is not necessarily a sign that conservation has failed; instead, temporal lags in species’ responses to conservation action could be masking our ability to observe progress towards conservation success. Here we present our perspective on the influence of ecological time lags on the assessment of conservation success and review the principles of time lags and their ecological drivers. We illustrate how a number of conceptual species may respond to change in a theoretical landscape and evaluate how these responses might influence our interpretation of conservation success. We then investigate a time lag in a real biodiversity indicator using empirical data and explore alternative approaches to understand the mechanisms that drive time lags. Our proposal for setting and evaluating conservation targets is to use milestones, or interim targets linked to specific ecological mechanisms at key points in time, to assess whether conservation actions are likely to be working. Accounting for ecological time lags in biodiversity targets and indicators will greatly improve the way that we evaluate conservation successes.