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Bat populations are thought to have suffered significant declines in the past century throughout Europe. Fortunately, there are some signs of recovery; for instance, of the 11 species monitored in the UK, population trends of five are increasing. The drivers of past losses and recent trends are unclear; identifying them will enable targeted conservation strategies to support further recovery.We review the evidence linking proposed drivers to impacts on bat populations in Europe, using the results of a previous cross‐taxa semi‐quantitative assessment as a framework. Broadly, the drivers reviewed relate to land‐use practices, climate change, pollution, development and infrastructure, and human disturbance. We highlight where evidence gaps or conflicts present barriers to successful conservation and review emerging opportunities to address these gaps.We find that the relative importance or impacts of the potential drivers of bat population change are not well understood or quantified, with conflicting evidence in many cases. To close key gaps in the evidence for responses of bat populations to environmental change, future studies should focus on the impacts of climate change, urbanisation, offshore wind turbines, and water pollution, as well as on mitigation measures and the synergistic effects of putative drivers.To increase available evidence of drivers of bat population change, we propose utilising advances in monitoring tools and statistical methods, together with robust quantitative assessment of conservation interventions to mitigate threats and enable the effective conservation of these protected species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ghana currently lacks a systematic method for identifying children with developmental delays, and there do not appear to be any culturally sensitive assessment tools available. The objectives of this mixed-methods research study were to explore normal developmental milestones and parental practices in the Ghanaian population. The study also aimed to identify and describe culturally specific factors that should be accounted for on assessments used in the Ghanaian culture. Methods: Twenty-eight Ghanaian parents were interviewed and asked to participate in a developmental milestone picture-identification task. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses were performed. Results: The interviews revealed several cultural factors that may need to be accounted for on a standardized assessment for Ghanaian children. Some gross motor and self-care skills (e.g., crawling and toilet training) were reported to develop earlier in Ghanaian children compared to children in the United States. Discussion: Developmental assessments normed on a U.S. sample may be inappropriate to use in the Ghanaian culture. Renorming of existing developmental assessments for the Ghanaian population is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Passive acoustic sensing has emerged as a powerful tool for quantifying anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity, especially for echolocating bat species. To better assess bat population trends there is a critical need for accurate, reliable, and open source tools that allow the detection and classification of bat calls in large collections of audio recordings. The majority of existing tools are commercial or have focused on the species classification task, neglecting the important problem of first localizing echolocation calls in audio which is particularly problematic in noisy recordings. We developed a convolutional neural network based open-source pipeline for detecting ultrasonic, full-spectrum, search-phase calls produced by echolocating bats. Our deep learning algorithms were trained on full-spectrum ultrasonic audio collected along road-transects across Europe and labelled by citizen scientists from . When compared to other existing algorithms and commercial systems, we show significantly higher detection performance of search-phase echolocation calls with our test sets. As an example application, we ran our detection pipeline on bat monitoring data collected over five years from Jersey (UK), and compared results to a widely-used commercial system. Our detection pipeline can be used for the automatic detection and monitoring of bat populations, and further facilitates their use as indicator species on a large scale. Our proposed pipeline makes only a small number of bat specific design decisions, and with appropriate training data it could be applied to detecting other species in audio. A crucial novelty of our work is showing that with careful, non-trivial, design and implementation considerations, state-of-the-art deep learning methods can be used for accurate and efficient monitoring in audio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to data collected in the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) between 2009 and 2017, approximately 1 in 6 children (17%) aged 3-17 were diagnosed with a developmental disability in the United States. This data also showed that the percentage of children diagnosed with a developmental disability increased from 16.2% between 2009-2011 to 17.8% between 2015-2017.? Children are at an increased risk of developmental delay if they are low income, non-white, or negatively impacted by social determinants of health or adverse childhood experiences. To identify children with delays, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends developmental screenings be conducted at pediatric well visits, when children are aged 9, 18 and 30 months.? However, only about one-third of parents with children aged 9 to 36 months report that their children received screening from their physician.4 Lack of screening results in several developmental disabilities remaining undiagnosed before a child enters school, inhibiting the ability to offer beneficial early intervention services. Developmental monitoring combined with developmental screening has been proven more effective in identifying children with delays.5 Developmental monitoring, also known as developmental surveillance, is the process of observing a child's developmental progress to see if milestones are reached at the expected time.? This approach promotes individuals who are familiar with the child, such as parents, early educators, teachers, clinicians, etc., to monitor developmental progress and advocate for the child if milestones are not met.? Monitoring promotes parental engagement and facilitates an increased awareness of the child's development by all individuals interacting with the child. This awareness of development allows individuals to raise concerns with parents, physicians or refer to intervention services directly, as physician referrals are not required. To make a difference in identifying children as early as possible, developmental monitoring and screening need to be completed by early care and education providers, early intervention providers and community childcare workers. Partnering with all entities that work with children birth to five is essential for true progress. Education and training on developmental monitoring and screening combined with communication between service providers is recommended for coordinated care. In the United States, most infants and toddlers of working families receive non-parental care, with an increased trend towards center-based care; however, low-income families are more likely to utilize home-based care.7 Low income families are also more likely to have unstable child care, resulting in a negative impact on social-emotional development and kindergarten readiness.8 Targeting center-based early care educators and at home daycare providers for education of developmental monitoring and screening would reach the population most at risk. Due to the increased prevalence of developmental disabilities in children and demonstrated shortcomings of screening as a sole strategy for their identification, developmental monitoring should be more widely embraced as a collaborative strategy for identification and referral to intervention. Thus, combining monitoring and screening as the universal approach and extending the effort to the community as a whole, places the responsibility of child outcomes on us all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is a key global driver in the modification of land use and has been linked to population declines even in widespread and relatively common species. Cities comprise a complex assortment of habitat types yet we know relatively little about the effects of their composition and spatial configuration on species distribution. Although many bat species exploit human resources, the majority of species are negatively impacted by urbanization. Here, we use data from the National Bat Monitoring Programme, a long-running citizen science scheme, to assess how two cryptic European bat species respond to the urban landscape. A total of 124 × 1 km2 sites throughout Britain were surveyed. The landscape surrounding each site was mapped and classified into discrete biotope types (e.g., woodland). Generalized linear models were used to assess differences in the response to the urban environment between the two species, and which landscape factors were associated with the distributions of P. pipistrellus and P. pygmaeus. The relative prevalence of P. pygmaeus compared to P. pipistrellus was greater in urban landscapes with a higher density of rivers and lakes, whereas P. pipistrellus was frequently detected in landscapes comprising a high proportion of green space (e.g., parklands). Although P. pipistrellus is thought to be well adapted to the urban landscape, we found a strong negative response to urbanization at a relatively local scale (1 km), whilst P. pygmaeus was detected more regularly in wooded urban landscapes containing freshwater. These results show differential habitat use at a landscape scale of two morphologically similar species, indicating that cryptic species may respond differently to anthropogenic disturbance. Even species considered relatively common and well adapted to the urban landscape may respond negatively to the built environment highlighting the future challenges involved in maintaining biodiversity within an increasingly urbanized world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Action to reduce anthropogenic impact on the environment and species within it will be most effective when targeted towards activities that have the greatest impact on biodiversity. To do this effectively we need to better understand the relative importance of different activities and how they drive changes in species’ populations. Here, we present a novel, flexible framework that reviews evidence for the relative importance of these drivers of change and uses it to explain recent alterations in species’ populations. We review drivers of change across four hundred species sampled from a broad range of taxonomic groups in the UK. We found that species’ population change (~1970–2012) has been most strongly impacted by intensive management of agricultural land and by climatic change. The impact of the former was primarily deleterious, whereas the impact of climatic change to date has been more mixed. Findings were similar across the three major taxonomic groups assessed (insects, vascular plants and vertebrates). In general, the way a habitat was managed had a greater impact than changes in its extent, which accords with the relatively small changes in the areas occupied by different habitats during our study period, compared to substantial changes in habitat management. Of the drivers classified as conservation measures, low-intensity management of agricultural land and habitat creation had the greatest impact. Our framework could be used to assess the relative importance of drivers at a range of scales to better inform our policy and management decisions. Furthermore, by scoring the quality of evidence, this framework helps us identify research gaps and needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim We investigated the effects of disease on the local abundances and distributions of species at continental scales by examining the impacts of white-nose syndrome, an infectious disease of hibernating bats, which has recently emerged in North America. Location North America and Europe. Methods We used four decades of population counts from 1108 populations to compare the local abundances of bats in North America before and after the emergence of white-nose syndrome to the situation in Europe, where the disease is endemic. We also examined the probability of local extinction for six species of hibernating bats in eastern North America and assessed the influence of winter colony size prior to the emergence of white-nose syndrome on the risk of local extinction. Results White-nose syndrome has caused a 10-fold decrease in the abundance of bats at hibernacula in North America, eliminating large differences in species abundance patterns that existed between Europe and North America prior to disease emergence. White-nose syndrome has also caused extensive local extinctions (up to 69% of sites in a single species). For five out of six species, the risk of local extinction was lower in larger winter populations, as expected from theory, but for the most affected species, the northern long-eared bat ( Myotis septentrionalis), extinction risk was constant across winter colony sizes, demonstrating that disease can sometimes eliminate numerical rarity as the dominant driver of extinction risk by driving both small and large populations extinct. Main conclusions Species interactions, including disease, play an underappreciated role in macroecological patterns and influence broad patterns of species abundance, occurrence and extinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the development of two complementary priority species indicators (PSIs) to help the UK to report progress towards Aichi target 12 on the status of known threatened species. Based on species identified as national conservation priorities, the indicators present average changes in (i) 213 species for which trends in relative abundance are available from structured monitoring schemes, and (ii) 179 species for which trends in frequency of occurrence were modelled from data sets of unstructured biological records. Both indicators show substantial declines in priority species since 1970, of 67% and 40%, respectively, although the rate of decline in the relative abundance-based PSI may have lessened over the last five years (2007–2012). We discuss the biases and weaknesses of the indicators at present, and put forward suggestions as how these may be addressed, including through the development of a third PSI. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Understanding how parental expenditure reflects food availability and influences reproductive output is a key part of studies of breeding performance. Provisioning behaviour is an important aspect of parental expenditure. We show that Macaroni Penguins Eudyptes chrysolophus have clear sex-specific differences in provisioning behaviour. Females provision chicks throughout rearing and at higher rates than males, which only participate in the later stages. Female provisioning is consistent throughout chick-rearing and appears to relate to a threshold rate governing whether or not chicks survive. The additional expenditure by males (but not females) during the crèche period influenced chick growth and fledging mass of survivors. We suggest a very simple model to account for these sex-specific differences and effects. Interannual variation in parental expenditure resulted in differences in reproductive output between years. Years of lowest expenditure resulted in lowest growth rate of chicks. Sex-specific differences in provisioning were similar among years, however, with a consistent proportion of expenditure by males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]