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As the COVID‐19 pandemic continues to affect societies across the world, the ongoing economic and social disruptions are likely to present fundamental challenges for current and future biodiversity conservation.We review the literature for outcomes of past major societal, political, economic and zoonotic perturbations on biodiversity conservation, and demonstrate the complex implications of perturbation events upon conservation efforts. Building on the review findings, we use six in‐depth case studies and the emerging literature to identify positive and negative outcomes of the COVID‐19 pandemic, known and anticipated, for biodiversity conservation efforts around the world.A number of similarities exist between the current pandemic and past perturbations, with experiences highlighting that the pandemic‐induced declines in conservation revenue and capacity, livelihood and trade disruptions are likely to have long‐lasting and negative implications for biodiversity and conservation efforts.Yet, the COVID‐19 pandemic also brought about a global pause in human movement that is unique in recent history, and may yet foster long‐lasting behavioural and societal changes, presenting opportunities to strengthen and advance conservation efforts in the wake of the pandemic. Enhanced collaborations and partnerships at the local level, cross‐sectoral engagement, local investment and leadership will all enhance the resilience of conservation efforts in the face of future perturbations. Other actions aimed at enhancing resilience will require fundamental institutional change and extensive government and public engagement and support if they are to be realised.The pandemic has highlighted the inherent vulnerabilities in the social and economic models upon which many conservation efforts are based. In so doing, it presents an opportunity to reconsider the status quo for conservation, and promotes behaviours and actions that are resilient to future perturbation. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article., A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Environmental problems often span a set of challenges that each may engage different policy actors across different policy domains. These challenges, or policy issues, nonetheless exhibit interdependencies that may constrain the ability of actors to work together towards joint solutions. Still, we have limited knowledge about whether and how policy issue interdependencies actually shape how actors collaborate. Using data derived from two venues for collaborative water governance in the Norrström basin, Sweden, we investigate whether and how policy issues and policy issue interdependencies influence actors' selection of collaborative partners. We test two alternative sets of propositions; one set assumes that partner selection is driven by actors' engagement in policy issues and their interdependencies, while the other set emphasises social positions and actor attributes. Our results show that in one venue, actors' choices of collaborative partner were associated with factors from both sets, but not with policy issue interdependencies specifically. In the other venue, only actor and relational attributes shaped social tie formation. These results suggest that how actors interact does not necessarily align with the policy issues and the policy issue interdependencies defined by the environmental problem they are to address. Our results provide an important step towards arriving at evidence‐based recommendations for more effective collaborative efforts in addressing complex environmental problems that no actor can address alone. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Migratory connectivity describes the degree of linkage between different parts of an animal’s migratory range due to the movement trajectories of individuals. High connectivity occurs when individuals from one particular part of the migratory range move almost exclusively to another localized part of the migratory range with little mixing with individuals from other regions. Conversely, low migratory connectivity describes the situation where individuals spread over a wide area during migration and experience a large degree of mixing with individuals from elsewhere. The migratory connectivity concept is frequently applied to vertebrate migrants (especially birds), and it is highly relevant to conservation and management of populations. However, it is rarely employed in the insect migration literature, largely because much less is known about the migration circuits of most migratory insects than is known about birds. In this review, we discuss the applicability of the migratory connectivity concept to long-range insect migrations. In contrast to birds, insect migration circuits typically comprise multigenerational movements of geographically unstructured (non-discrete) populations between broad latitudinal zones. Also, compared to the faster-flying birds, the lower degree of control over movement directions would also tend to reduce connectivity in many insect migrants. Nonetheless, after taking account of these differences, we argue that the migratory connectivity framework can still be applied to insects, and we go on to consider postulated levels of connectivity in some of the most intensively studied insect migrants. We conclude that a greater understanding of insect migratory connectivity would be of value for conserving threatened species and managing pests.

Tropical America is currently experiencing the establishment of a new apex insect predator, the Paleotropical dragonfly Hemianax ephippiger (Odonata: Aeshnidae). H. ephippiger is migratory and is suggested to have colonised the eastern Neotropics by chance Trans-Atlantic displacement. We report the discovery of H. ephippiger at three new locations in the Caribbean, the islands of Bonaire, Isla de Coche (Venezuela), and Martinique, and we review its reported distribution across the Neotropics. We discuss the establishment of H. ephippiger as a new apex insect predator in the Americas, both in terms of ecological implications and the possible provision of ecosystem services. We also provide an additional new species record for Bonaire, Pantala hymenaea (Odonata: Libellulidae).

Protandry is a widespread life-history phenomenon describing how males precede females at the site or state of reproduction. In migratory birds, protandry has an important influence on individual fitness, the migratory syndrome, and phenological response to climate change. Despite its significance, accurate analyses on the dynamics of protandry using data sets collected at the breeding site, are lacking. Basing our study on records collected during two time periods, 1979 to 1988 and 2006 to 2016, we aim to investigate protandry dynamics over 38 years in a breeding population of willow warblers (

The return of individual birds to a specific area in successional years, i.e. philopatry, is a remarkable behavioural trait. Here we report on the remarkably reversed: the complete absence of retur ...

Climate change can influence many aspects of avian phenology and especially migratory shifts and changes in breeding onset receive much research interest in this context. However, changes in these different life-cycle events in birds are often investigated separately and by means of ringing records of mixed populations. In this long-term study on the willow warbler Phylloscopus trochilus, we investigated timing of spring and autumn migration in conjunction with timing of breeding. We made distinction among individuals with regard to age, sex, juvenile origin and migratory phase. The data set comprised 22-yr of ringing records and two temporally separated data sets of egg-laying dates and arrival of the breeding population close to the ringing site. The results reveal an overall advancement consistent in most, but not all, phenological events. During spring migration, early and median passage of males and females became earlier by between 4.4 to 6.3 d and median egg-laying dates became earlier by 5 d. Male arrival advanced more, which may lead to an increase in the degree of protandry in the future. Among breeding individuals, only female arrival advanced in timing. In autumn, adults and locally hatched juvenile females did not advanced median passage, but locally hatched juvenile males appeared 4.2 d earlier. Migrating juvenile males and females advanced passage both in early and median migratory phase by between 8.4 to 10.1 d. The dissimilarities in the response between birds of different age, sex and migratory phase emphasize that environmental change may elicit intra-specific selection pressures. The overall consistency of the phenological change in spring, autumn and egg-laying, coupled with the unchanged number of days between median spring and autumn migration in adults, indicate that the breeding area residence has advanced seasonally but remained temporally constant.

Lichens are an important group of organisms in terms of environmental issues, conservation biology and biodiversity, principally due to their sensitivity to changes in their environment. Therefore it is important that we develop our understanding of the factors that affect lichen distribution. In this thesis, both spatial and temporal distributions of epiphytic lichens at different scales have been studied in southern Sweden.Generation time of the red-listed lichen Cliostomum corrugatum was examined using Bjarka-Saby as the study site. The results showed that the average age of an individual of C. corrugatum is 25–30 years at the onset of spore production.The rarity of C. corrugatum was also examined. DNA analysis of an intron from 85 samples, collected at five sites in Ostergotland, yielded 11 haplotypes. Results from coalescent analysis, mantel test and AMOVA indicated that C. corrugatum have a high ability to disperse. The study concluded that its rarity is most likely connected with the low amount of available habitat, old Quercus robur.The changes in the distribution of epiphytic lichens in southern Sweden, between 1986 and 2003, were also compared. For each year a centroid was calculated on all combinations of tree and lichen species. The three significant cases showed that the centroid movement pointed toward a north-east or north-north-east direction.Finally differences in species richness and cover of lichens on large Q. robur were examined between urban and rural environment. The results demonstrated that species number and percent cover was significantly higher on oaks standing rural compared to oaks standing urban. Effects of urban sprawl showed a decline in species richness and cover with increasing age of the surrounding buildings.