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Methods to detect and monitor the spread of invasive grasses are critical to avoid ecosystem transformations and large economic costs. The rapid spread of non‐native buffelgrass(Pennisetum ciliare) has intensified fire risk and is replacing fire intolerant native vegetation in the Sonoran Desert of the southwestern US. Coarse‐resolution satellite imagery has had limited success in detecting small patches of buffelgrass, whereas ground‐based and aerial survey methods are often cost prohibitive. To improve detection, we trained 2 m resolution DigitalGlobe WorldView‐2 satellite imagery with 12 cm resolution unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery and classified buffelgrass on Google Earth Engine, a cloud computing platform, using Random Forest (RF) models in Saguaro National Park, Arizona, USA. Our classification models had an average overall accuracy of 93% and producer's accuracies of 94–96% for buffelgrass, although user's accuracies were low. We detected a 2.92 km2 area of buffelgrass in the eastern Rincon Mountain District (1.07% of the total area) and a 0.46 km2 area (0.46% of the total area) in the western Tucson Mountain District of Saguaro National Park. Buffelgrass cover was significantly greater in the Sonoran Paloverde‐Mixed Cacti Desert Scrub vegetation type, on poorly developed Entisols and Inceptisol soils and on south‐facing topographic aspects compared to other areas. Our results demonstrate that high‐resolution imagery improve on previous attempts to detect and classify buffelgrass and indicate potential areas where the invasive grass might spread. The methods demonstrated in this study could be employed by land managers as a low‐cost strategy to identify priority areas for control efforts and continued monitoring.

Nonnative conifers are widespread in the southern hemisphere, where their use as plantation species has led to adverse ecosystem impacts sometimes intensified by invasion. Mechanical removal is a common strategy used to reduce or eliminate the negative impacts of nonnative conifers, and encourage native regeneration. However, a variety of factors may preclude active ecological restoration following removal. As a result, passive restoration – unassisted natural vegetation regeneration – is common following conifer removal. We asked, ‘what is the response of understorey cover to removal of nonnative conifer stands followed by passive restoration?' We sampled understorey cover in three site types: two‐ to ten‐year‐old clearcuts, native forest and current plantations. We then grouped understorey species by origin (native/nonnative) and growth form, and compared proportion and per cent cover of these groups as well as of bare ground and litter between the three site types. For clearcuts, we also analysed the effect of time since clearcut on the studied variables. We found that clearcuts had a significantly higher average proportion of nonnative understorey vegetation cover than native forest sites, where nonnative vegetation was nearly absent. The understorey of clearcut sites also averaged more overall vegetation cover and more nonnative vegetation cover (in particular nonnative shrubs and herbaceous species) than either plantation or native forest sites. Notably, 99% of nonnative shrub cover in clearcuts was the invasive nonnative species Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius). After ten years of passive recovery since clearcutting, the proportion of understorey vegetation cover that is native has not increased and remains far below the proportion observed in native forest sites. Reduced natural regeneration capacity of the native ecosystem, presence of invasive species in the surrounding landscape and land‐use legacies from plantation forestry may inhibit native vegetation recovery and benefit opportunistic invasives, limiting the effectiveness of passive restoration in this context. Abstract in Spanish is available with online material.

As demand for water in the arid southwest increases, pressure is mounting on many aquatic and riparian species that rely on riverine habitat for survival. Some of these riverine areas are managed as private, state, or federal lands with differing levels of mandated protections; however, few efforts have explored the potential of filling gaps in riverine protection afforded by designation under the protection of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act (WSRA) of 1968. Here, we examine how inclusion of eligible rivers, specifically the Nationwide Rivers Inventory (NRI), could fill gaps in protection for a species of high conservation need. A gap analysis overlapping the predicted species range with human disturbances and the level of protection identifies where sufficient protections for a species exist and where there are shortcomings, that is, gaps, potentially addressed by elevating NRI reaches to WSRA protection. This study uses the narrow‐headed garter snake as an indicator species for riverine ecosystem health of free‐flowing perennial reaches within the Arizona/New Mexico Mountains EPA Level III ecoregion. Over a quarter of NRI‐eligible reaches within the ecoregion are within the protection gap for the narrow‐headed garter snake. If designated Wild and Scenic, these reaches could offer needed protection for this species.

Premise of the Study Over one‐third of the native flowering plant species in the Hawaiian Islands are listed as federally threatened or endangered. Lack of sufficient pollination could contribute to reductions in populations, reproduction, and genetic diversity among these species but has been little studied. Methods We used systematic observations and manual flower treatments to quantify flower visitation and outcrossing dependency of eight native (including four endangered) plant species in a dryland ecosystem in Hawaii: Argemone glauca, Bidens menziesii, Dubautia linearis, Haplostachys haplostachya, Sida fallax, Silene lanceolata, Stenogyne angustifolia, and Tetramolopium arenarium. Key Results During 576.36 h of flower observations, only insects visited the flowers. Out of all recorded flower visits, 85% were performed by non‐native species, particularly the honeybee (Apis mellifera) and flies in the family Syrphidae. Some plant species received little visitation (e.g., S. angustifolia received one visit in 120 h of observation), whereas others were visited by a wide diversity of insects. The endangered plant species were visited by fewer visitor taxa than were the common native plant species. For six of the focal plant species, bagging of flowers to exclude pollinators resulted in significant reductions in seed set. Conclusions The flower visitor community in this system, although heavily dominated by non‐native insects, appears to be facilitating pollination for multiple plant species. Non‐native insects may thus be sustaining biotic interactions otherwise threatened with disruption in this island ecosystem. This may be particularly important for the studied endangered plant species, which exhibit fewer partners than the more common plant species.

Although resilience thinking is increasingly popular and attractive among restoration practitioners, it carries an abstract quality that hinders effective application. Because resilience and its components are defined differently in social and ecological contexts, individual managers or stakeholders may disagree on the definition of a system's state, occurrence of a state change, preferred state characteristics, and appropriate methods to achieve success. Nevertheless, incentives and mandates often force managers to demonstrate how their work enhances resilience. Unclear or conflicting definitions can lead to ineffective or even detrimental decision‐making in the name of resilience; essentially, any convenient action can be touted as resilience‐enhancing in this case. We contend that any successful resilience management project must clearly identify up‐front the stressors of concern, state traits, scales of appropriate management, and success indicators (the 4S's) relevant to the management targets. We propose a deliberate process for determining these components in advance of resilience management for conservation. Our recommendations were inspired and informed by two case studies wherein different definitions of stressors, state, scales, and success would result in very different management choices, with potentially serious consequences for biodiversity targets.

Since its inception, conservation biology has inspired thousands of students, spurred the creation of new initiatives, organizations and agencies, and informed conservation efforts worldwide. Nevertheless, global biodiversity loss is accelerating (Butchart et al. 2010), and our field needs to change to keep pace with mounting challenges. Conservation would benefit if scientists more enthusiastically pushed the institutional boundaries of our field through their efforts to expand their own and others’ career options and professional opportunities. We discuss several key areas of expansion, a critical subset of a longer list of comprehensive solutions. We aim to spark productive conversation and self-reflection to galvanize individual and institutional change in our field. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Interspecific interactions are important structuring forces in ecological communities. Interactions can be disturbed when species are lost from a community. When interactions result in fitness gains for at least one participating organism, that organism may experience reduced fitness as a result of interaction disturbance. However, many species exhibit traits that enable individuals to persist and reproduce in spite of such disruptions, resulting in resilience to interaction disturbance. Such traits can result in interaction generalization, phenotypic and behavioral plasticity, and adaptive capacity. We discuss examples of these traits and use case studies to illustrate how restoration practitioners can use a trait-based approach to examine species of concern, identify traits that are associated with interspecific interactions and are relevant to resilience, and target such traits in restoration. Restoration activities that bolster interaction resilience could include, for example, reintroducing or supporting specific functional groups or managing abiotic conditions to reduce interaction dependence by at-risk species (e.g. providing structural complexity offering shelter and cover). Resilience may also be an important consideration in species selection for restoration. Establishment of resilient species, able to persist after interaction disturbance, may be essential to restoring to a functioning ecological community. Once such species are present, they could help support more specialized species that lack resilience traits, such as many species of concern. Understanding the conditions under which processes linked to resilience may enable species to persist and communities to reform following interaction disturbance is a key application of community ecology to ecological restoration.

In situations where native mutualists have become extinct, non-native species may partner with remnant native species. However, non-native mutualists may differ behaviorally from extinct native mutualists. In the case of pollination, novel relationships between natives and non-natives could differ both quantitatively and qualitatively from native-native relationships. In Hawaii, the non-native Japanese White-eye (Zosterops japonicus) has largely replaced endemic birds as pollinator of the endemic Clermontia parviflora and C. mon- tis-loa. We surveyed Clermontia patches and found that they ranged from 106 to 1198 m in diameter. We performed manual pollina- tion of flowers with pollen taken from plants at five distance categories, ranging from 0 (self-fertilization) to 20 km, and examined the germination of resulting seeds. We used radiotelemetry to estimate daily Japanese White-eye movement distances. Percent germi- nation of seeds after short- to intermediate-distance pollination crosses (i.e., 20-1200 m, or intra-patch pollen transfer distances) sig- nificantly exceeded germination of seeds from selfed trials for C. parviflora. No significant differences in germination rates among treatments were detected for C. montis-loa. The maximum daily movement distances of radio-tracked birds were generally

Protected area delineation and conservation action are urgently needed on marine islands, but the potential biodiversity benefits of these activities can be difficult to assess due to lack of species diversity information for lesser known taxa. We used linear mixed effects modeling and simple spatial analyses to investigate whether conservation activities based on the diversity of well-known insular taxa (birds and mammals) are likely to also capture the diversity of lesser known taxa (reptiles, amphibians, vascular land plants, ants, land snails, butterflies, and tenebrionid beetles). We assembled total, threatened, and endemic diversity data for both well-known and lesser known taxa and combined these with physical island biogeog- raphy characteristics for 1190 islands from 109 archipelagos. Among physical island biogeography factors, island area was the best indicator of diversity of both well-known and little-known taxa. Among taxonomic factors, total mammal species richness was the best indicator of total diversity of lesser known taxa, and the combination of threatened mammal and threatened bird diversity was the best indicator of lesser known endemic richness. The results of other intertaxon diversity comparisons were highly variable, however. Based on our results, we suggest that protecting islands above a certain minimum threshold area may be the most efficient use of conservation resources. For example, using our island database, if the threshold were set at 10 km 2 and the smallest 10% of islands greater than this threshold were protected, 119 islands would be protected. The islands would range in size from 10 to 29 km 2 and would include 268 lesser known species endemic to a single island, along with 11 bird and mammal species endemic to a single island. Our results suggest that for islands of equivalent size, prioritization based on total or threatened bird and mammal diversity may also capture opportunities to protect lesser known species endemic to islands.

Native plant species that have lost their mutualist partners may require non-native pollinators or seed dispersers to maintain reproduction. When natives are highly specialized, however, it appears doubtful that introduced generalists will partner effectively with them. We used visitation observations and pollination treatments (experimental manipulations of pollen transfer) to examine relationships between the introduced, generalist Japanese White-eye (Zosterops japonicus )a nd 3e ndemic Hawaiian plant species (Clermontia parvi- flora, C. montis-loa ,a ndC. hawaiiensis). These plants are characterized by curved, tubular flowers, apparently adapted for pollination by curve-billed Hawaiian honeycreepers. Z. japonicus were responsible for over 80% of visits to flowers of the small-flowered C. parviflora and the midsize-flowered C. montis-loa. Z. japonicus-visited flowers set significantly more seed than did bagged flowers. Z. japonicus also demonstrated the potential to act as an occasional Clermontia seed disperser, although ground-based frugivory by non-native mammals likely dominates seed dispersal. The large-flowered C. hawaiiensis received no visitation by any birds during obser- vations. Unmanipulated and bagged C. hawaiiensis flowers set similar numbers of seeds. Direct examination of Z. japonicus and Clermontia morphologies suggests a mismatch between Z. japonicus bill morphology and C. hawaiiensis flower morphology. In combination, our results suggest that Z. japonicus has established an effective pollination relationship with C.parviflora and C.montis-loa and that the large flowers of C.hawaiiensis preclude effective visitation by Z. japonicus.

Conservation practitioners and scientists are often faced with seemingly intractable problems in which traditional approaches fail. While other sectors (e.g., business) frequently emphasize creative thinking to overcome complex challenges, creativity is rarely identified as an essential skill for conservationists. Yet more creative approaches are urgently needed in the effort to sustain Earth's biodiversity. We identified 4 strategies to develop skills in creative thinking and discuss underlying research and examples supporting each strategy. First, by breaking down barriers between disciplines and surrounding oneself with unfamiliar people, concepts, and perspectives, one can expand base knowledge and experiences and increase the potential for new combinations of ideas. Second, by meeting people where they are (both literally and figuratively), one exposes oneself to new environments and perspectives, which again broadens experiences and increases ability to communicate effectively with stakeholders. Third, by embracing risk responsibly, one is more likely to develop new, nontraditional solutions and be open to high-impact outcomes. Finally, by following a cycle of learning, struggle, and reflection, one can trigger neurophysiological changes that allow the brain to become more creative. Creativity is a learned trait, rather than an innate skill. It can be actively developed at both the individual and institutional levels, and learning to navigate the relevant social and practical barriers is key to the process. To maximize the success of conservation in the face of escalating challenges, one must take advantage of what has been learned from other disciplines and foster creativity as both a professional skill and an essential component of career training and individual development.

Extinctions can leave species without mutualist partners and thus potentially reduce their fitness. In cases where non-native species function as mutualists, mutualism disruption associated with species' extinction may be mitigated. To assess the effectiveness of mutualist species with different origins, we conducted a meta-analysis in which we compared the effectiveness of pollination and seed-dispersal functions of native and non-native vertebrates. We used data from 40 studies in which a total of 34 non-native vertebrate mutualists in 20 geographic locations were examined. For each plant species, opportunistic non-native vertebrate pollinators were generally less effective mutualists than native pollinators. When native mutualists had been extirpated, however, plant seed set and seedling performance appeared elevated in the presence of non-native mutualists, although non-native mutualists had a negative overall effect on seed germination. These results suggest native mutualists may not be easily replaced. In some systems researchers propose taxon substitution or the deliberate introduction of non-native vertebrate mutualists to reestablish mutualist functions such as pollination and seed dispersal and to rescue native species from extinction. Our results also suggest that in places where all native mutualists are extinct, careful taxon substitution may benefit native plants at some life stages.

Summary 1. Early detection of biological invasions can reduce the costs of control and increase its e!cacy. Although much research focuses on the appearance or establishment of new invaders, few studies target the detection of spread from established populations. Managers of natural areas have limited resources; therefore, there is need for e!cient methods of quantifying the spread of likely invaders inlocal and regionalareas. 2. We employed homeowner surveys, seedling outplanting, directed seedling searches and randomly located plots to determine whether two introduced species of Oleaceae, Ligustrum lucidum and Olea europaea, demonstrate invasive levels of recruitment in California’s Sacramento Valley. These methodsare examples of low-costapproaches toexamining theregional spreadof non-native woodyspecieswithdi"eringhabitat requirements. 3. Homeowner surveys indicated abundant recruitment of L. lucidum in irrigated areas, with no evident decline by distance from horticultural source trees. Ligustrum lucidum seedlings established readily when planted immediately adjacent to streams, but were unable to survive summer drought whenlocated furtherfromthe water. 4. Recruitment of O. europaea at distances >100 m from source trees was uncommon. Spread of O. europaea is rare relative to the number of reproductive individuals that have been planted in the studyarea; whereitoccurs, seedling recruitmentappearslargelya function of propagulepressure. 5. Synthesis and applications. Low-cost and rapid methods are essential for successful long-term monitoring of spread from populations of introduced, woody plant species. We employed highe!ciency methods of spread detection for two species of Oleaceae with invasive potential and existing populations in the study region. We detected no barriers to spread by L. lucidum in areas with elevated soil moisture and consider the species a likely riparian invader. By comparison, O. europaea shows little tendency to spread. We suggest that managers combine low-input methods and direct surveys towards habitats of conservation concern and routes of likely seed dispersal.

Ecological restoration typically focuses on promoting vegetation recovery in degraded habitat or reintroducing endangered animals to enhance their regional or global persistence. Here, we argue that attention should also be devoted to vertebrate reintroductions in overhunted but floristically intact tropical forests in order to prevent insidious regime shifts in these systems. Growing evidence suggests that tropical forests deprived of seed-dispersing animals exhibit replacement of fleshy fruiting trees by species with abiotic seed dispersal. Left unchecked, this process could eventually render the forest uninhabitable by frugivores through reduced density and diversity of their food plants. In tropical areas where hunting can be controlled, we contend that frugivore reintroduction, regulation of wild fruit harvest by humans, and outplanting of native fruiting trees should be deployed as management tools long before the systems are in need of traditional habitat restoration.

Introduced species have the potential to impact processes central to the organization of ecological communities. Although hundreds of nonnative plant species have naturalized in the United States, only a small percentage of these have been studied in their new biotic communities. Their interactions with resident (native and introduced) bird species remain largely unexplored. As a group, citizen scientists such as ornithologists possess a wide range of experiences. They may offer insights into the prevalence and form of bird interactions with nonnative plants on a broad geographic scale. We surveyed 173 ornithologists from four U.S. states, asking them to report observations of bird interactions with nonnative plants. The primary goal of the survey was to obtain information useful in guiding future empirical research. In all, 1143 unique bird-plant interactions were reported, involving 99 plant taxa and 168 bird species. Forty-seven percent of reported interactions concerned potential dispersal (feeding on seeds or fruits). Remaining "habitat interactions" involved bird use of plants for nesting, perching, woodpecking, gleaning, and other activities. We utilized detrended correspondence analysis to ordinate birds with respect to the plants they reportedly utilize. Results illuminate the new guilds formed by these interactions. We assessed the existing level of knowledge about invasiveness of those plants reported most often in feeding interactions, identifying information gaps for biological invasions research priority. To exemplify the usefulness of citizen science data, we utilized survey results to guide field research on invasiveness in some of these plant species and observed both qualitatively and quantitatively strong agreement between survey reports and our empirical data. Questionnaire reports are therefore heuristically informative for the fields of both avian ecology and invasion biology.

Control of biological invasions depends on the collective decisions of resource managers across invasion zones. Regions with high land-use diversity, which we refer to as “management mosaics”, may be subject to severe invasions, for two main reasons. First, as land becomes increasingly subdivided, each manager assumes responsibility for a smaller portion of the total damages imposed by invasive species; the incentive to control invasives is therefore diminished. Secondly, managers opting not to control the invasion increase control costs for neighboring land managers by allowing their lands to act as an invader propagule source. Coordination among managers can help mitigate these effects, but greater numbers ‐ and a wider variety ‐ of land managers occupying a region hinder collective action. Here, we discuss the challenges posed by management mosaics, using a case study of the yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) invasion in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. We suggest that the incorporation of management mosaic dynamics into invasive species research and management is essential for successful control of invasions, and provide recommendations to address this need.