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1. Implementation resistance and the human dimensions of connectivity planning

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10525  

   Williamson, Matthew A. ; Parrott, Lael ; Carter, Neil H. ; Ford, Adam T. ( September 2023 , People and Nature)

   Conserving species' ability to traverse the landscape is vital for maintaining biodiversity in the face of global change. Connectivity conservation requires identifying important pathways for species' movements and aligning societal support for conservation of those pathways. Contemporary connectivity analyses emphasize the impacts of topography, vegetation and human footprint on species' movements; but largely ignore the role that attitudes, economics and institutions play in practitioners' ability to conserve those movements.

   We introduce implementation resistance as an analogue of biophysical resistance that combines social, economic and institutional factors that promote or impede connectivity conservation. We demonstrate the utility of integrating implementation resistance as a means of choosing between competing connectivity conservation strategies using wolves in Colorado (USA) as a case study.

   Our analysis of five potential corridor locations based on biophysical costs revealed substantial differences in the social costs associated with implementing each corridor despite relatively minimal differences in the biophysical costs.

   Our comparison of hypothetical interventions to reduce implementation resistance illustrates that interventions that reduce conflicts between land use and wolves may substantially reduce overall resistance, those reductions are not as well aligned with connectivity priorities as those resulting from changes in land management agency policy.

   Our results highlight the need to design conservation interventions that fit both the social and ecological landscape and provide a framework for developing robust, interdisciplinary methods that facilitate implementable connectivity conservation.

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2. The meaning(s) of place: Identifying the structure of sense of place across a social–ecological landscape

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10112  

   Rajala, Kiandra ; Sorice, Michael G. ; Thomas, Valerie A. ; Ellis, ed., Erle C. ( June 2020 , People and Nature)

   Sense of place holds promise to understand how people perceive and respond to social and ecological change; however, using this concept to explore vulnerability and adaptation first depends on identifying the multiple ways people define their relationship with a place.

   We introduce the meaning‐dependence framework to account for the broad array of person–place connections within social–ecological landscapes.

   We applied this framework to private landowners in the Southern Great Plains of the United States, a working landscape experiencing ecological transformation from grasslands to degraded woodlands.

   Using a mail survey, we explored the structure of sense of place based on the relationship between place meanings and place attachment. We employed complementary analytical methods: correlation analysis, ordinary least squares regression, and machine learning through a regression tree and random forest.

   Place meanings explained a large amount of variation in place attachment and were characterized by intercorrelations and interactions. Across analyses, experiential meanings reflecting personal psychological connections to one's land were the predominant drivers of landowners' place attachment.Way of lifeemerged as a central meaning for understanding sense of place on private lands.

   The meaning‐dependence framework builds on existing research to account for the multiple ways meanings inform human connections to a place. This framework is broadly applicable to any setting and can capture diverse configurations of person–place relationships and increase the utility of sense of place in social–ecological research.

   A freePlain Language Summarycan be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

    

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3. Convergence science in the Anthropocene: Navigating the known and unknown

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10069  

   Angeler, David G. ; Allen, Craig R. ; Carnaval, Ana ; Palmer, ed., Clare ( February 2020 , People and Nature)

   Rapidly changing ecological and social systems currently pose significant societal challenges. Navigating the complexity of social‐ecological change requires approaches able to cope with, and potentially solve, both foreseen and unforeseen societal challenges.

   The emergent field of convergence addresses the intricacies of such challenges, and is thus relevant to a broad range of interdisciplinary issues.

   This paper suggests a way to conceptualize convergence research. It discusses how it relates to two major societal challenges (adaptation, transformation), and to the generation of policy‐relevant science. It also points out limitations to the further development of convergence research.

   A freePlain Language Summarycan be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

    

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4. A network approach for managing ecosystem services and improving food and nutrition security on smallholder farms

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10295  

   Timberlake, Thomas P. ; Cirtwill, Alyssa R. ; Baral, Sushil C. ; Bhusal, Daya R. ; Devkota, Kedar ; Harris‐Fry, Helen A. ; Kortsch, Susanne ; Myers, Samuel S. ; Roslin, Tomas ; Saville, Naomi M. ; et al ( January 2022 , People and Nature)

   Smallholder farmers are some of the poorest and most food insecure people on Earth. Their high nutritional and economic reliance on home‐grown produce makes them particularly vulnerable to environmental stressors such as pollinator loss or climate change which threaten agricultural productivity. Improving smallholder agriculture in a way that is environmentally sustainable and resilient to climate change is a key challenge of the 21st century.

   Ecological intensification, whereby ecosystem services are managed to increase agricultural productivity, is a promising solution for smallholders. However, smallholder farms are complex socio‐ecological systems with a range of social, ecological and environmental factors interacting to influence ecosystem service provisioning. To truly understand the functioning of a smallholder farm and identify the most effective management options to support household food and nutrition security, a holistic, systems‐based understanding is required.

   In this paper, we propose a network approach to understand, visualise and model the complex interactions occurring among wild species, crops and people on smallholder farms. Specifically, we demonstrate how networks may be used to (a) identify wild species with a key role in supporting, delivering or increasing the resilience of an ecosystem service; (b) quantify the value of an ecosystem service in a way that is relevant to the food and nutrition security of smallholders; and (c) understand the social interactions that influence the management of shared ecosystem services.

   Using a case study based on data from rural Nepal, we demonstrate how this framework can be used to connect wild plants, pollinators and crops to key nutrients consumed by humans. This allows us to quantify the nutritional value of an ecosystem service and identify the wild plants and pollinators involved in its provision, as well as providing a framework to predict the effects of environmental change on human nutrition.

   Our framework identifies mechanistic links between ecosystem services and the nutrients consumed by smallholder farmers and highlights social factors that may influence the management of these services. Applying this framework to smallholder farms in a range of socio‐ecological contexts may provide new, sustainable and equitable solutions to smallholder food and nutrition security.

   A freePlain Language Summarycan be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

    

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5. Assessing hybrid vigour using the thermal sensitivity of physiological trade‐offs in tiger salamanders

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.14463  

   Burger, Isabella J. ; Carter, Evin T. ; Magner, Lexie M. ; Muñoz, Martha M. ; Sears, Michael W. ; Fitzpatrick, Benjamin M. ; Riddell, Eric A. ( November 2023 , Functional Ecology)

   Hybridization between species affects biodiversity and population sustainability in numerous ways, many of which depend on the fitness of the hybrid relative to the parental species. Hybrids can exhibit fitter phenotypes compared to the parental lineages, and this ‘hybrid vigour’ can then lead to the extinction of one or both parental lines.

   In this study, we analysed the relationship between water loss and gas exchange to compare physiological performance among three tiger salamander genotypes—the native California tiger salamander (CTS), the invasive barred tiger salamanders (BTS) and CTS × BTS hybrids across multiple temperatures (13.5°C, 20.5°C and 23.5°C). We developed a new index of performance, the water‐gas exchange ratio (WGER), which we define as the ratio of gas exchange to evaporative water loss (μLVO₂/μL H₂O). The ratio describes the ability of an organism to support energetically costly activities with high levels of gas exchange while simultaneously limiting water loss to lower desiccation risk. We used flow through respirometry to measure the thermal sensitivity of metabolic rate and resistance to water loss of each salamander genotype to compare indices of physiological performance.

   We found that temperature had a significant effect on metabolic rate and resistance to water loss, with both traits increasing as temperatures warmed. Across genotypes, we found that hybrids have a higher WGER than the native CTS, owing to a higher metabolic rate despite having a lower resistance to water loss.

   These results provide a greater insight into the physiological mechanisms driving hybrid vigour and offer a potential explanation for the rapid spread of salamander hybrids. More broadly, our introduction of the WGER may allow for species‐ or lineage‐wide comparisons of physiological performance across changing environmental conditions, highlighting the insight that can be gleaned from multitrait analysis of organism performance.

   Read the freePlain Language Summaryfor this article on the Journal blog.

    

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