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Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a "Green List of Species" (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species' progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 separate but interlinked components: a standardized method (i.e., measurement against benchmarks of species' viability, functionality, and preimpact distribution) to determine current species recovery status (herein species recovery score) and application of that method to estimate past and potential future impacts of conservation based on 4 metrics (conservation legacy, conservation dependence, conservation gain, and recovery potential). We tested the framework with 181 species representing diverse taxa, life histories, biomes, and IUCN Red List categories (extinction risk). Based on the observed distribution of species' recovery scores, we propose the following species recovery categories: fully recovered, slightly depleted, moderately depleted, largely depleted, critically depleted, extinct in the wild, and indeterminate. Fifty-nine percent of tested species were considered largely or critically depleted. Although there was a negative relationship between extinction risk and species recovery score, variation was considerable. Some species in lower risk categories were assessed as farther from recovery than those at higher risk. This emphasizes that species recovery is conceptually different from extinction risk and reinforces the utility of the IUCN Green Status of Species to more fully understand species conservation status. Although extinction risk did not predict conservation legacy, conservation dependence, or conservation gain, it was positively correlated with recovery potential. Only 1.7% of tested species were categorized as zero across all 4 of these conservation impact metrics, indicating that conservation has, or will, play a role in improving or maintaining species status for the vast majority of these species. Based on our results, we devised an updated assessment framework that introduces the option of using a dynamic baseline to assess future impacts of conservation over the short term to avoid misleading results which were generated in a small number of cases, and redefines short term as 10 years to better align with conservation planning. These changes are reflected in the IUCN Green Status of Species Standard., (© 2021 The Authors. Conservation Biology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for Conservation Biology.)

The use of artificial light at night (ALAN) is increasing exponentially worldwide and there is growing evidence that ALAN contributes to the decline of insect populations. One of the most conspicuous ecological effects is the strong attraction of ALAN to flying insects. In several studies, light sources with strong short-wavelength emissions have been shown to attract the highest numbers of flying insects. Furthermore, flying stages of aquatic insects are reported to be more vulnerable to ALAN than flying stages of terrestrial insects. This is concerning because freshwater habitats are likely affected by ALAN that originates from human activity centers, which are typically close to sources of freshwater. However, the effects of ALAN on aquatic insects, which spend their larval phase (amphibiotic insects) or their whole life cycle (fully aquatic insects) in freshwaters, are entirely understudied. Here, we investigated the phototaxis of aquatic insects to ALAN at different wavelengths and intensities. We used floating light traps and compared four, near-monochromatic, lights (blue, green, red, and yellow) at two different photopic light intensities in a ditch system, which was not exposed to ALAN previously. Similar to flying stages of (aquatic and terrestrial) insects, we found a strong positive phototaxis of aquatic life stages. However, in contrast to the flying stages, there is no clear preference for short-wavelength light. Overall, responsivity to wavelengths in the center of the visible range (green, yellow; 500-600 nm) was significant for all orders of aquatic insects studied, and the nymphs of Ephemeroptera did not respond to blue light at all. This is likely an adaption to how light is attenuated in freshwater systems, where not only the water itself but also a variety of optical constituents act as a color filter, often like in our case filtering out short-wavelength light. Therefore, insects living in freshwater bodies often live in longer wavelength-dominated environments and might therefore be especially sensitive to green/yellow light. In conclusion, the different spectral sensitivities of both aquatic and flying insects should be taken into account when planning lighting near freshwater., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.)