10.5061/DRYAD.WM37PVMM0
Hermoso, Virgilio
0000-0003-3205-5033
Centre Tecnològic Forestal de Catalunya
Vasconcelos, Rita
Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO/InBIO)
Henriques, Sofia
Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre
Filipe, Ana
Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos (CIBIO/InBIO)
Carvalho, Silvia
Instituto Superior de Agronomia
Conservation planning across realms: enhancing connectivity for
multi-realm species
Dryad
dataset
2020
Estuarine
Marine
Marxan
Tagus River
2020-11-02T00:00:00Z
2020-11-02T00:00:00Z
en
417964 bytes
2
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Connectivity plays a key role in biodiversity conservation as it sustains
ecological processes important for the maintenance of populations such as
migrations. Connectivity is especially relevant for species that rely on
different realms during their life cycle or use different realms daily or
seasonally (multi-realm species). However, effort to address conservation
across multiple realms have focused on identifying priority areas for
conservation in a single realm (mostly marine) accounting for threats
propagating from other realms or single species needs. Here, we
demonstrate how to identify priority areas for conservation across three
different realms (freshwater-terrestrial, estuary and marine) for multiple
species, including some multi-realm species, that inhabit or move across
the three realms. We use the whole Tagus River Basin, its estuary and
nearby marine area as a case study. We compared the allocation of priority
areas and spatial connectivity achieved under three scenarios:
no-connectivity, within-realm and cross-realm connectivity scenarios.
There were some differences in the spatial allocation of priority areas
across scenarios. The most remarkable difference laid on the connectivity
achieved under each scenario, which experienced a 3-fold increase when
considering connectivity across realms, compared to solutions that
considered only connectivity within each realm independently. This
improvement in connectivity was especially marked for some of the species
that occur across the three realms. There were, however, trade-offs
between this improvement in connectivity: i) an increase in the number of
planning units selected, especially in the estuary, the realm that links
the other two; and ii) a decline in connectivity achieved within the
freshwater—terrestrial and marine realms. Synthesis and applications:
Addressing connectivity across realms deserves especial attention when
planning for conservation of multi-realm species to ensure adequacy of
conservation recommendations to respond to the needs of these species.
Given the potential trade-offs between enhanced cross-realm connectivity
and total area needed or internal within-realm connectivity, consideration
of cross-realm connectivity must be cautiously evaluated and integrated in
multi-realm conservation plans.