Browsing by Author "Marquet, Pablo A."

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    The commonness of rarity : global and future distribution of rarity across land plants
    (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2019) Enquist, Brian J.; Feng, Xiao; Boyle, Brad; Maitner, Brian; Newman, Erica A.; Jorgensen, Peter Moller; Roehrdanz, Patrick R.; Thiers, Barbara M.; Burger, Joseph R.; Corlett, Richard T.; Couvreur, Thomas L. P.; Dauby, Gilles; Donoghue, John C.; Foden, Wendy; Lovett, Jon C.; Marquet, Pablo A.; Merow, Cory; Midgley, Guy; Morueta-Holme, Naia; Neves, Danilo M.; Oliveira-Filho, Ary T.; Kraft, Nathan J. B.; Park, Daniel S.; Peet, Robert K.; Pillet, Michiel; Serra-Diaz, Josep M.; Sandel, Brody; Schildhauer, Mark; Simova, Irena; Violle, Cyrille; Wieringa, Jan J.; Wiser, Susan K.; Hannah, Lee; Svenning, Jens-Christian; McGill, Brian J.
    A key feature of life’s diversity is that some species are common but many more are rare. Nonetheless, at global scales, we do not know what fraction of biodiversity consists of rare species. Here, we present the largest compilation of global plant diversity to quantify the fraction of Earth’s plant biodiversity that are rare. A large fraction, ~36.5% of Earth’s ~435,000 plant species, are exceedingly rare. Sampling biases and prominent models, such as neutral theory and the k-niche model, cannot account for the observed prevalence of rarity. Our results indicate that (i) climatically more stable regions have harbored rare species and hence a large fraction of Earth’s plant species via reduced extinction risk but that (ii) climate change and human land use are now disproportionately impacting rare species. Estimates of global species abundance distributions have important implications for risk assessments and conservation planning in this era of rapid global change.
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    Insights on fostering the emergence of robust conservation actions from Zimbabwe's CAMPFIRE program
    (Elsevier, 2019) Biggs, Duan; Ban, Natalie C.; Castilla, Juan Carlos; Gelcich, Stefan; Mills, Morena; Gandiwa, Edson; Etienne, Michel; Knight, Andrew T.; Marquet, Pablo A.; Possingham, Hugh P.
    One strategy to address threats to biodiversity in the face of ongoing budget constraints is to create an enabling environment that facilitates individuals, communities and other groups to self-organise to achieve conservation outcomes. Emergence (new activities and initiatives), and robustness (durability of these activities and initiatives over time), two related concepts from the common pool resources literature, provide guidance on how to support and enable such self-organised action for conservation. To date emergence has received little attention in the literature. Our exploratory synthesis of the conditions for emergence from the literature highlighted four themes: for conservation to emerge, actors need to 1) recognise the need for change, 2) expect positive outcomes, 3) be able to experiment to achieve collective learning, and 4) have legitimate local scale governance authority. Insights from the literature on emergence and robustness suggest that an appropriate balance should be maintained between external guidance of conservation and enabling local actors to find solutions appropriate to their contexts. We illustrate the conditions for emergence, and its interaction with robustness, through discussing the Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) in Zimbabwe and reflect on efforts at strengthening local autonomy and management around the world. We suggest that the delicate balance between external guidance of actions, and supporting local actors to develop their own solutions, should be managed adaptively over time to support the emergence of robust conservation actions.