Search

All animals on Earth compete for free energy, which is acquired, assimilated, and ultimately allocated to growth and reproduction. Competition is strongest within communities of sympatric, ecologically similar animals of roughly equal size (i.e. horizontal communities), which are often the focus of traditional community ecology. The replacement of taxonomic identities with functional traits has improved our ability to decipher the ecological dynamics that govern the assembly and functioning of animal communities. Yet, the use of low-resolution and taxonomically idiosyncratic traits in animals may have hampered progress to date. An animal's metabolic rate (MR) determines the costs of basic organismal processes and activities, thus linking major aspects of the multifaceted constructs of ecological niches (where, when, and how energy is obtained) and ecological fitness (how much energy is accumulated and passed on to future generations). We review evidence from organismal physiology to large-scale analyses across the tree of life to propose that MR gives rise to a group of meaningful functional traits - resting metabolic rate (RMR), maximum metabolic rate (MMR), and aerobic scope (AS) - that may permit an improved quantification of the energetic basis of species coexistence and, ultimately, the assembly and functioning of animal communities. Specifically, metabolic traits integrate across a variety of typical trait proxies for energy acquisition and allocation in animals (e.g. body size, diet, mobility, life history, habitat use), to yield a smaller suite of continuous quantities that: (1) can be precisely measured for individuals in a standardized fashion; and (2) apply to all animals regardless of their body plan, habitat, or taxonomic affiliation. While integrating metabolic traits into animal community ecology is neither a panacea to disentangling the nuanced effects of biological differences on animal community structure and functioning, nor without challenges, a small number of studies across different taxa suggest that MR may serve as a useful proxy for the energetic basis of competition in animals. Thus, the application of MR traits for animal communities can lead to a more general understanding of community assembly and functioning, enhance our ability to trace eco-evolutionary dynamics from genotypes to phenotypes (and vice versa), and help predict the responses of animal communities to environmental change. While trait-based ecology has improved our knowledge of animal communities to date, a more explicit energetic lens via the integration of metabolic traits may further strengthen the existing framework.

Winter at high latitudes is characterized by low temperatures, dampened light levels and short photoperiods which shape ecological and evolutionary outcomes from cells to populations to ecosystems. Advances in our understanding of winter biological processes (spanning physiology, behaviour and ecology) highlight that biodiversity threats (e.g. climate change driven shifts in reproductive windows) may interact with winter conditions, leading to greater ecological impacts. As such, conservation and management strategies that consider winter processes and their consequences on biological mechanisms may lead to greater resilience of high altitude and latitude ecosystems. Here, we use well-established threat and action taxonomies produced by the International Union of Conservation of Nature—Conservation Measures Partnership (IUCN-CMP) to synthesize current threats to biota that emerge during, or as the result of, winter processes then discuss targeted management approaches for winter-based conservation. We demonstrate the importance of considering winter when identifying threats to biodiversity and deciding on appropriate management strategies across species and ecosystems. We confirm our expectation that threats are prevalent during the winter and are especially important considering the physiologically challenging conditions that winter presents. Moreover, our findings emphasize that climate change and winter-related constraints on organisms will intersect with other stressors to potentially magnify threats and further complicate management. Though conservation and management practices are less commonly considered during the winter season, we identified several potential or already realized applications relevant to winter that could be beneficial. Many of the examples are quite recent, suggesting a potential turning point for applied winter biology. This growing body of literature is promising but we submit that more research is needed to identify and address threats to wintering biota for targeted and proactive conservation. We suggest that management decisions consider the importance of winter and incorporate winter specific strategies for holistic and mechanistic conservation and resource management.

Biotic responses to global change include directional shifts in organismal traits. Body size, an integrative trait that determines demographic rates and ecosystem functions, is often thought to be shrinking in the Anthropocene. Here, we assess the prevalence of body size change in six taxon groups across 5,032 assemblage time-series spanning 1960-2020. Using the Price equation to partition this change into within-species body size versus compositional changes, we detect prevailing decreases in body size through time. Change in assemblage composition contributes more to body size changes than within-species trends, but both components show substantial variation in magnitude and direction. The biomass of assemblages remains remarkably stable as decreases in body size trade-off with increases in abundance.One-Sentence SummaryVariable within-species and compositional trends combine into shrinking body size, abundance increases and stable biomass.

The capacity of ectotherms to adjust their thermal tolerance limits through evolution or acclimation seems relatively modest and highly variable, and we lack satisfying explanations for both findings given a limited understanding of what ultimately determines an organism’s thermal tolerance. Here, we test if the amount of heating an ectotherm tolerates throughout a heating event until organismal failure scales with temperature’s non-linear influence on biological rates. To account for the non-linear influence of temperature on biological rates on heating tolerance, we rescaled the duration of heating events of 316 ectothermic taxa acclimated to different temperatures and describe the biological rate-corrected heating duration. This rescaling reveals that the capacity of an organism to resist a heating event is in fact remarkably constant across any acclimation temperature, enabling high-precision estimates of how organismal thermal tolerance limits vary under different thermal regimes. We also find that faster heating consistently reduces biological rate-corrected heating durations, which helps further explain why thermal tolerance limits seem so variable on absolute temperature scales. Existing paradigms are that heating tolerances and thermal tolerance limits reflect incomplete metabolic compensatory responses, are constrained by evolutionary conservatism, or index failure of systems such as membrane function; our data provide a different perspective and show that an organism’s thermal tolerance emerges from the interaction between the non-linear thermal dependence of biological rates and heating durations, which is an approximately-fixed property of a species.

Aims: contemporary climate change and biological invasions are two main drivers of biodiversity redistribution. Interactive effects between these drivers have been reported in a variety of studies, yet results are conflicting. Some studies find that contemporary climate change facilitates the spread and success of non-native species, especially those with broad physiological tolerances. Other studies conclude that non-natives are vulnerable to current and future changes in climatic conditions. Given that most studies have focused on terrestrial species, here we contribute to this debate by analysing responses of marine native and non-native fauna and flora to key climate-related stressors, namely increased temperature (warming) and decreased salinity (freshening). Location: Global. Time period: 2002–2019. Major taxa studied: Marine benthic macrophytes and invertebrates. Methods: we conducted a meta-analysis of experiments investigating the performance (e.g. growth, survival and reproduction) of benthic species in response to warming and freshening. Results: we found that non-native species tended to respond positively to elevated temperature, whereas the performance of native species declined. Similarly, decreased salinity negatively affected the biological processes of native species, but non-natives showed neutral or negative overall responses to freshening. Main conclusions: we find evidence that non-native species outperform natives under a wide variety of warming and freshening conditions. The growth and reproduction of non-natives are enhanced by warmer temperatures, and thus ocean warming is expected to facilitate future spread and success of non-native species. Increased freshening along future coastal areas, however, will likely have a negative impact in both native and non-native species and thus is expected to be a driver of significant change in coastal marine ecosystems. Our comprehensive analysis highlighted the need to expand our understanding of climate change effects beyond warming and specifically, studies focusing on salinity changes.

AimHere we aim to: 1) test whether globally-threatened vs non-threatened seabirds are separated in trait space; 2) quantify the redundancy and uniqueness of species trait combinations per IUCN Red List Category; and 3) identify traits that render species vulnerable to anthropogenic threats.LocationGlobalTime periodContemporaryMajor taxa studiedSeabirdsMethodsWe compile and impute eight traits that relate to species’ vulnerabilities and ecosystem functioning across 341 seabird species. Using these traits, we build a mixed data PCA of species’ trait space. We further quantify trait redundancy with a unique trait combinations (UTCs) approach. Finally, we employ a similarity of percentages analysis (SIMPER) to identify which traits explain the greatest difference between threat groups.ResultsWe find seabirds segregate in trait space based on threat status, indicating anthropogenic impacts are selectively removing large, long-lived, pelagic surface feeders with narrow habitat breadths. We further find that globally threatened species have higher trait redundancy, while non-threatened species have relatively unique ecological strategies and limited redundancy. Finally, we find that species with narrow habitat breadths, fast reproductive speeds, and omnivorous diets are more likely to be threatened by habitat-modifying processes (e.g., pollution and natural system modifications); whereas pelagic specialists with slow reproductive speeds and omnivorous diets are vulnerable to threats that directly impact survival and fecundity (e.g., invasive species and biological resource use).Main conclusionsOur results suggest both globally threatened and non-threatened species contribute unique ecological strategies. Consequently, conserving both threat groups, but with contrasting approaches may avoid potential changes in ecosystem functioning and stability.

Human activities are altering the structure of ecological communities, often favouring generalists over specialists. For reef fishes, increasingly degraded habitats and climate-driven range shifts may independently augment generalization, particularly if fishes with least-specific habitat requirements are more likely to shift geographic ranges to track their thermal niche. Using a unique global dataset on temperate and tropical reef fishes and habitat composition, we calculated a species generalization index that empirically estimates the habitat niche breadth of each fish species. We then applied the species generalization index to evaluate potential impacts of habitat loss and range shifts across large scales, on coral and rocky reefs. Our analyses revealed consistent habitat-induced shifts in community structure that favoured generalist fishes following regional coral mortality events and between adjacent sea urchin barrens and kelp habitats. Analysis of the distribution of tropical fishes also identified the species generalization index as the most important trait in predicting their poleward range extent, more so than body or range size. Generalist tropical reef fishes penetrate further into subtropical and temperate zones than specialists. Dynamic responses of reef fishes to habitat degradation imply loss of specialists at local scales, while generalists will be broadly favoured under intensifying anthropogenic pressures. An increased focus on individual requirements of specialists could provide useful guidance for species threat assessments and conservation actions, while ecosystem and multi-species fisheries models should recognize increasing prevalence of generalists.

Implementation of marine conservation strategies, such as increasing the numbers, extent, and effectiveness of protected areas (PAs), can help achieve conservation and restoration of ocean health and associated goods and services. Despite increasing recognition of the importance of including aspects of ecological functioning in PA design, the physical characteristics of habitats and simple measures of species diversity inform most PA designations. Marine and terrestrial ecologists have recently been using biological traits to assess community dynamics, functioning, and vulnerability to anthropogenic impacts. Here, we explore potential trait-based marine applications to advance PA design. We recommend strategies to integrate biological traits into ( a) conservation objectives (e.g., by assessing and predicting impacts and vulnerability), ( b) PA spatial planning (e.g., mapping ecosystem functions and functional diversity hot spots), and ( c) time series monitoring protocols (e.g., using functional traits to detect recoveries). We conclude by emphasizing the need for pragmatic tools to improve the efficacy of spatial planning and monitoring efforts.

Whole-organism function is underpinned by physiological and biological processes, which respond to temperature over a range of time scales. Given that environmental temperature controls biological rates within ectotherms, different experimental protocols are needed to assess the ability of organisms to withstand extreme weather events versus gradual temperature change. Here we emphasize the importance of time in shaping ecological and evolutionary processes, and as an experimental parameter that is key when interpreting physiology studies reporting thermal limits. We discuss how acute and chronic thermal performance is underpinned by mechanisms operating at different time scales — resistance, acclimation, and adaptation. We offer definitions of common physiological and biological temperature metrics and identify challenges inherent to compiling the wealth of historical temperature limit data now available into meta-analytic frameworks. We use a case study, data across temperate fishes, to highlight that false positives may occur when differences in the thermal tolerances of species are in fact due to experimental protocols. We further illustrate that false negatives can arise if researchers fail to recognize differences in thermal limits of species emerging from macrophysiological approaches that are due to biological mechanisms. We strongly advocate for the careful design, interpretation, and reporting of experimental results to ensure that conclusions arising from data synthesis efforts are grounded in theory.

Changing biodiversity alters ecosystem functioning in nature, but the degree to which this relationship depends on the taxonomic identities rather than the number of species remains untested at broad scales. Here, we partition the effects of declining species richness and changing community composition on fish community biomass across >3000 coral and rocky reef sites globally. We find that high biodiversity is 5.7x more important in maximizing biomass than the remaining influence of other ecological and environmental factors. Differences in fish community biomass across space are equally driven by both reductions in the total number of species and the disproportionate loss of larger-than-average species, which is exacerbated at sites impacted by humans. Our results confirm that sustaining biomass and associated ecosystem functions requires protecting diversity, most importantly of multiple large-bodied species in areas subject to strong human influences., Nature Communications, 12 (1), ISSN:2041-1723

As ocean temperatures rise, species distributions are tracking towards historically cooler regions in line with their thermal affinity. However, different responses of species to warming and changed species interactions make predicting biodiversity redistribution and relative abundance a challenge. Here, we use three decades of fish and plankton survey data to assess how warming changes the relative dominance of warm-affinity and cold-affinity species. Regions with stable temperatures (for example, the Northeast Pacific and Gulf of Mexico) show little change in dominance structure, while areas with warming (for example, the North Atlantic) see strong shifts towards warm-water species dominance. Importantly, communities whose species pools had diverse thermal affinities and a narrower range of thermal tolerance showed greater sensitivity, as anticipated from simulations. The composition of fish communities changed less than expected in regions with strong temperature depth gradients. There, species track temperatures by moving deeper, rather than horizontally, analogous to elevation shifts in land plants. Temperature thus emerges as a fundamental driver for change in marine systems, with predictable restructuring of communities in the most rapidly warming areas using metrics based on species thermal affinities. The ready and predictable dominance shifts suggest a strong prognosis of resilience to climate change for these communities.

M.D. is grateful for support from the Templeton Foundation (grant #60501, “Putting the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis to the Test”) and from a Leverhulme Trust Fellowship. The problem Earth‐based observations of the biosphere are spatially biased in ways that can limit our ability to detect macroecological patterns and changes in biodiversity. To resolve this problem, we need to supplement the ad hoc data currently collected with planned biodiversity monitoring, in order to approximate global stratified random sampling of the planet. We call this all‐encompassing observational system ‘the macroscope’. The solution With a focus on the marine realm, we identify seven main biosphere observation tools that compose the macroscope: satellites, drones, camera traps, passive acoustic samplers, biologgers, environmental DNA and human observations. By deploying a nested array of these tools that fills current gaps in monitoring, we can achieve a macroscope fit for purpose and turn these existing powerful tools into more than the sum of their parts. An appeal Building a macroscope requires commitment from many fields, together with coordinated actions to attract the level of funding required for such a venture. We call on macroecologists to become advocates for the macroscope and to engage with existing global observation networks. Postprint

Spatial structure of species change Biodiversity is undergoing rapid change driven by climate change and other human influences. Blowes et al. analyze the global patterns in temporal change in biodiversity using a large quantity of time-series data from different regions (see the Perspective by Eriksson and Hillebrand). Their findings reveal clear spatial patterns in richness and composition change, where marine taxa exhibit the highest rates of change. The marine tropics, in particular, emerge as hotspots of species richness losses. Given that human activities are affecting biodiversity in magnitudes and directions that differ across the planet, these findings will provide a much needed biogeographic understanding of biodiversity change that can help inform conservation prioritization. Science , this issue p. 339 ; see also p. 308

The El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase state is reported to drive interannual variability in sea temperatures along South Africa’s south coast through its influence on wind-induced upwelling...

Restricting human activities through Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is assumed to create more resilient biological communities with a greater capacity to resist and recover following climate events. Here we review the evidence linking protection from local pressures (e.g., fishing and habitat destruction) with increased resilience. Despite strong theoretical underpinnings, studies have only rarely attributed resilience responses to the recovery of food webs and habitats, and increases in the diversity of communities and populations. When detected, resistance to ocean warming and recovery after extreme events in MPAs have small effect sizes against a backdrop of natural variability. By contrast, large die-offs are well described from MPAs following climate stress events. This may be in part because protection from one set of pressures or drivers (such as fishing) can select for species that are highly sensitive to others (such as warming), creating a ‘Protection Paradox’. Given that climate change is overwhelming the resilience capacity of marine ecosystems, the only primary solution is to reduce carbon emissions. High-quality monitoring data in both space and time can also identify emergent resilience signals that do exist, in combination with adequate reference data to quantify the initial system state. This knowledge will allow networks of diverse protected areas to incorporate spatial refugia against climate change, and identify resilient biological components of natural systems. Sufficient spatial replication further offers insurance against losses in any given MPA, and the possibility for many weak signals of resilience to accumulate.

International audience; To predict the threat of biological invasions to native species, it is critical that we understand how increasing abundance of invasive alien species (IAS) affects native populations and communities. The form of this relationship across taxa and ecosystems is unknown, but is expected to depend strongly on the trophic position of the IAS relative to the native species. Using a global metaanalysis based on 1,258 empirical studies presented in 201 scientific publications, we assessed the shape, direction, and strength of native responses to increasing invader abundance. We also tested how native responses varied with relative trophic position and for responses at the population vs. community levels. As IAS abundance increased, native populations declined nonlinearly by 20%, on average, and community metrics declined linearly by 25%. When at higher trophic levels, invaders tended to cause a strong, nonlinear decline in native populations and communities, with the greatest impacts occurring at low invader abundance. In contrast, invaders at the same trophic level tended to cause a linear decline in native populations and communities, while invaders at lower trophic levels had no consistent impacts. At the community level, increasing invader abundance had significantly larger effects on species evenness and diversity than on species richness. Our results show that native responses to invasion depend critically on invasive species’ abundance and trophic position. Further, these general abundance–impact relationships reveal how IAS impacts are likely to develop during the invasion process and when to best manage them.

Warming seas, marine heatwaves, and habitat degradation are increasingly widespread phenomena affecting marine biodiversity, yet our understanding of their broader impacts is largely derived from collective insights from independent localized studies. Insufficient systematic broadscale monitoring limits our understanding of the true extent of these impacts and our capacity to track these at scales relevant to national policies and international agreements. Using an extensive time series of co-located reef fish community structure and habitat data spanning 12 years and the entire Australian continent, we found that reef fish community responses to changing temperatures and habitats are dynamic and widespread but regionally patchy. Shifts in composition and abundance of the fish community often occurred within 2 years of environmental or habitat change, although the relative importance of these two mechanisms of climate impact tended to differ between tropical and temperate zones. The clearest of these changes on temperate and subtropical reefs were temperature related, with responses measured by the reef fish thermal index indicating reshuffling according to the thermal affinities of species present. On low latitude coral reefs, the community generalization index indicated shifting dominance of habitat generalist fishes through time, concurrent with changing coral cover. Our results emphasize the importance of maintaining local ecological detail when scaling up datasets to inform national policies and global biodiversity targets. Scaled-up ecological monitoring is needed to discriminate among increasingly diverse drivers of large-scale biodiversity change and better connect presently disjointed systems of biodiversity observation, indicator research, and governance.

Success and impact metrics in science are based on a system that perpetuates sexist and racist “rewards” by prioritizing citations and impact factors. These metrics are flawed and biased against already marginalized groups and fail to accurately capture the breadth of individuals’ meaningful scientific impacts. We advocate shifting this outdated value system to advance science through principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. We outline pathways for a paradigm shift in scientific values based on multidimensional mentorship and promoting mentee well-being. These actions will require collective efforts supported by academic leaders and administrators to drive essential systemic change., This Essay argues that success and impact metrics in science are based on a system that perpetuates sexist and racist ‘rewards’ by prioritizing citations and impact factors; the authors advocate shifting this outdated value system to advance science through principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Fisheries bycatch, the incidental mortality of non-target species, is a global threat to seabirds and a major driver of their declines worldwide. Identifying the most vulnerable species is core to developing sustainable fisheries management strategies that aim to improve conservation outcomes. To advance this goal, we present a preliminary vulnerability framework that integrates dimensions of species’ exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to fisheries bycatch to classify species into five vulnerability classes. The framework combines species’ traits and distribution ranges for 341 seabirds, along with a spatially resolved fishing effort dataset. Overall, we find most species have high vulnerability scores for the sensitivity and adaptive capacity dimensions. By contrast, exposure is more variable across species, and thus the median scores calculated within seabird families is low. We further find 46 species have high exposure to fishing activities, but are not identified as vulnerable to bycatch, whilst 133 species have lower exposure, but are vulnerable to bycatch. Thus, the framework has been valuable for revealing patterns between and within the vulnerability dimensions. Still, further methodological development, additional traits, and greater availability of threat data are required to advance the framework and provide a new lens for quantifying seabird bycatch vulnerability that complements existing efforts, such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

Fisheries bycatch, the incidental mortality of non-target species, is a major threat to seabirds worldwide. Mitigating bycatch is an important factor to reduce seabird population declines and consequent changes in ocean trophic dynamics and ecosystem functioning. However, it remains an open question how and where mitigating bycatch at a global scale may conserve seabird traits and the ecological strategies that traits represent. Here we combine a dataset of species traits and distribution ranges for 341 seabirds with spatially resolved fishing effort data for gillnet, longline, trawl, and purse seine gears to: (1) understand spatial variation in seabird community traits; and (2) test whether mitigating fisheries bycatch may prevent shifts in traits of seabird communities and loss of ecological strategies. We find distinct spatial variation in the community weighted mean of five seabird traits (clutch size, body mass, generation length, foraging guild, and diet guild). Furthermore, our analysis suggests that successful bycatch mitigation could prevent strong shifts in the traits of seabird communities across the globe particularly in the North Atlantic and Southern Oceans. Specifically, changes in dominant foraging and diet guilds, and shifts towards communities with faster reproductive speeds (larger clutch sizes and shorter generation lengths) and smaller body masses could be avoided. Therefore, bycatch mitigation may have important indirect benefits for sustaining ecosystem functioning, as mediated by species traits. Incorporating species traits into management actions will provide valuable tools for marine spatial planning and when evaluating the success of conservation initiatives.

Extrapolating patterns from individuals to populations informs climate vulnerability models, yet biological responses to warming are uncertain at both levels. Here we contrast data on the heating tolerances of fishes from laboratory experiments with abundance patterns of wild populations. We find that heating tolerances in terms of individual physiologies in the lab and abundance in the wild decline with increasing temperature at the same rate. However, at a given acclimation temperature or optimum temperature, tropical individuals and populations have broader heating tolerances than temperate ones. These congruent relationships implicate a tight coupling between physiological and demographic processes underpinning macroecological patterns, and identify vulnerability in both temperate and tropical species., Communications Biology, 4 (1), ISSN:2399-3642

The COVID-19 lockdown reduced human mobility and led to immediate insights into how humans impact nature. Yet the strongest ecological impacts are likely to come. As we emerge from the pandemic, governments should avoid prioritizing short-term economic gains that compromise ecosystems and the services they provide humanity. Instead, the pandemic can be a pivot point for societal transformation to value longer term ecosystem and economic sustainability.

18 pages, 5 figures, supplementary data https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2021.109175.-- The data supporting the findings of this study are available in the Supplementary Materials (Appendix 3–5, Table A3-A5). Raw datasets (where available) and results summary tables for each analysis of human mobility and empirical datasets are deposited in a github repository: https://github.com/rjcommand/PAN-Environment, The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from 89 different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness, The Canada Research Chairs program provided funding for the core writing team. Field research funding was provided by A.G. Leventis Foundation; Agence Nationale de la Recherche, [grant number ANR-18-32–0010CE-01 (JCJC PEPPER)]; Agencia Estatal de Investigaci; Agência Regional para o Desenvolvimento da Investigação Tecnologia e Inovação (ARDITI), [grant number M1420-09-5369-FSE-000002]; Alan Peterson; ArcticNet; Arkadaşlar; Army Corp of Engineers; Artificial Reef Program; Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), National Collaborative; Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), University of Tasmania; Australian Institute of Marine Science; Australian Research Council, [grant number LP140100222]; Bai Xian Asia Institute; Batubay Özkan; BC Hydro Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Bertarelli Foundation; Bertarelli Programme in Marine Science; Bilge Bahar; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Biology Society of South Australia; Boston University; Burak Över; California State Assembly member Patrick O'Donnell; California State University Council on Ocean Affairs, Science & Technology; California State University Long Beach; Canada Foundation for Innovation (Major Science Initiative Fund and funding to Oceans Network Canada), [grant number MSI 30199 for ONC]; Cape Eleuthera Foundation; Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Charles Darwin Foundation, [grant number 2398]; Colombian Institute for the Development of Science and Technology (COLCIENCIAS), [grant number 811–2018]; Colombian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, [grant number 0041–2020]; Columbia Basin Trust; Commission for Environmental Cooperation; Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Cultural practices and environmental certification of beaches, Universidad de la Costa, Colombia, [grant number INV.1106–01–002-15, 2020–21]; Department of Conservation New Zealand; Direction de l'Environnement de Polynésie Française; Disney Conservation Fund; DSI-NRF Centre of; Excellence at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology; Ecology Project International; Emin Özgür; Environment and Climate Change Canada; European Community: RTD programme - Species Support to Policies; European Community's Seventh Framework Programme; European Union; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, [grant number 798091, 794938]; Faruk Eczacıbaşı; Faruk Yalçın Zoo; Field research funding was provided by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology; Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program; Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, [grant numbers FWC-12164, FWC-14026, FWC-19050]; Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional; Fonds québécois de la recherche nature et technologies; Foundation Segré; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT Portugal); Galapagos National Park Directorate research, [grant number PC-41-20]; Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, [grant number GBMF9881 and GBMF 8072]; Government of Tristan da Cunha; Habitat; Conservation Trust Foundation; Holsworth Wildlife Research Endowment; Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, Sevastopol, Russia; Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt; Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Brazil; Israeli Academy of Science's Adams Fellowship; King Family Trust; Labex, CORAIL, France; Liber Ero Fellowship; LIFE (European Union), [grant number LIFE16 NAT/BG/000874]; María de Maeztu Program for Units of Excellence in R&D; Ministry of Science and Innovation, FEDER, SPASIMM,; Spain, [grant number FIS2016–80067-P (AEI/FEDER, UE)]; MOE-Korea, [grant number 2020002990006]; Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund; Montreal Space for Life; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program; National Geographic Society, [grant numbers NGS-82515R-20]; National Natural Science Fund of China; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; National Parks Board, Singapore; National Science and Technology Major Project of China; National Science Foundation, [grant number DEB-1832016]; Natural Environment Research Council of the UK; Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Alliance COVID-19 grant program, [grant numbers ALLRP 550721–20, RGPIN-2014-06229 (year: 2014), RGPIN-2016-05772 (year: 2016)]; Neiser Foundation; Nekton Foundation; Network of Centre of Excellence of Canada: ArcticNet; North Family Foundation; Ocean Tracking Network; Ömer Külahçıoğlu; Oregon State University; Parks Canada Agency (Lake Louise, Yoho, and Kootenay Field Unit); Pew Charitable Trusts; Porsim Kanaf partnership; President's International Fellowship Initiative for postdoctoral researchers Chinese Academy of Sciences, [grant number 2019 PB0143]; Red Sea Research Center; Regional Government of the Azores, [grant number M3.1a/F/025/2015]; Regione Toscana; Rotary Club of Rhinebeck; Save our Seas Foundation; Science & Technology (CSU COAST); Science City Davos, Naturforschende Gesellschaft Davos; Seha İşmen; Sentinelle Nord program from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund; Servizio Foreste e Fauna (Provincia Autonoma di Trento); Sigrid Rausing Trust; Simon Fraser University; Sitka Foundation; Sivil Toplum Geliştirme Merkezi Derneği; South African National Parks (SANParks); South Australian Department for Environment and Water; Southern California Tuna Club (SCTC); Spanish Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; State of California; Sternlicht Family Foundation; Suna Reyent; Sunshine Coast Regional Council; Tarea Vida, CEMZOC, Universidad de Oriente, Cuba, [grant number 10523, 2020]; Teck Coal; The Hamilton Waterfront Trust; The Ian Potter Foundation, Coastwest, Western Australian State NRM; The Red Sea Development Company; The Wanderlust Fund; The Whitley Fund; Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline; Tula Foundation (Hakai Institute); University of Arizona; University of Pisa; US Fish and Wildlife Service; US Geological Survey; Valencian Regional Government; Vermont Center for Ecostudies; Victorian Fisheries Authority; VMRC Fishing License Fund; and Wildlife Warriors Worldwide, With funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S

Efforts to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) have led to the unprecedented concurrent confinement of nearly two-thirds of the global population. The large human lockdown and its eventual relaxation can be viewed as a Global Human Confinement Experiment. This experiment is a unique opportunity to identify positive and negative effects of human presence and mobility on a range of natural systems, including wildlife, and protected areas, and to study processes regulating biodiversity and ecosystems. We encourage ecologists, environmental scientists, and resource managers to contribute their observations to efforts aiming to build comprehensive global understanding based on multiple data streams, including anecdotal observations, systematic assessments and quantitative monitoring. We argue that the collective power of combining diverse data will transcend the limited value of the individual data sets and produce unexpected insights. We can also consider the confinement experiment as a “stress test” to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses in the adequacy of existing networks to detect human impacts on natural systems. Doing so will provide evidence for the value of the conservation strategies that are presently in place, and create future networks, observatories and policies that are more adept in protecting biological diversity across the world., Highlights • 4.5 billion humans have been confined to control the COVID-19 epidemic, reaching a maximum on April 5. • This “Global Human Confinement Experiment” offers understanding of how human presence and activity affects nature. • Parallel data streams identify strong responses across socio-ecological systems. • Observation networks with global capacity are needed to identify strategic actions. • Large-scale societal change is possible.

Ecologically distinct species - species with distinct trait combinations - are not directly prioritized in current conservation frameworks. The consequence of this blind spot means species with the most distinct ecological strategies might be lost. Here, we quantify ecological distinctiveness, based on six traits, for 10,960 bird and 5,278 mammal species, summarizing species-level ecological irreplaceability. We find that threatened birds and mammals are, on average, more ecologically distinct. Specific examples of ecologically distinct and highly threatened species are Great Indian Bustard, Amsterdam Albatross, Asian Elephant and Sumatran Rhinoceros. These species have potentially irreplaceable ecological roles and their loss could undermine the integrity of ecological processes and functions. Yet, we also identify ecologically distinct widespread generalists, such as Lesser Black-backed Gull and Wild Boar. These generalist species have distinct ecological strategies that allow them to thrive across multiple environments. Thus, we suggest that high ecological distinctiveness is associated with either high extinction risk or successful hyper-generalism. We also find that ecologically distinct species are generally charismatic (using a previous measure of public perceptions of charisma). We thus highlight a conservation opportunity: capitalizing on public preferences for charismatic species could provide support for the conservation of the most ecologically distinct birds and mammals. Overall, our prioritization framework supports the conservation of species with irreplaceable ecological strategies, complementing existing frameworks that target extinction risk and evolutionary distinctiveness.