The North American monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is renowned for its annual multigenerational migration cycle. Every fall, individuals east of the Rocky Mountains travel up to 4300 km from their summer breeding range across the northern United States and southern Canada to central Mexico, where millions of butterflies aggregate at high densities in high-altitude oyamel fir (Abies religiosa) forests to overwinter (Calvert & Brower, 1986). However, declining populations observed in overwintering grounds have raised concerns for the conservation of this iconic species (Rendón-Salinas et al., 2020). Both diminishing habitat throughout the monarch's breeding range and increasing obstacles along their migratory journey have been implicated in this decline (Saunders et al., 2019;Taylor et al., 2020). Both of these conservation challenges may be further exacerbated by ongoing global climate change (Robinson et al., 2009;Wilcove & Wikelski, 2008).Previous research has indicated that climate change may threaten the migration and survival of monarchs in multiple ways, including changing microclimates in their overwintering habitat, increasing the strength and frequency of hurricanes on their migratory pathway along the Gulf of Mexico, and altering the range and toxicity of their
Hurricanes are expected to increase in both frequency and intensity as a result of climate change, but the impacts of these disturbances on the evolutionary trajectories of the species they affect are not yet well understood. In this project, we investigated population-level changes in morphology in the lizard Anolis carolinensis after Hurricane Irma in 2017. We found that anole populations were morphologically distinct after the hurricane, exhibiting significantly longer forelimbs and hindlimbs compared with pre-hurricane measurements. These morphological changes were consistent across two replicate islands and between males and females. The observed morphological shifts were potentially driven by positive selection from Hurricane Irma on clinging capacity. In this opportunistic study, we documented post-hurricane changes in the morphology of island lizards and suggest the potential for increasingly frequent and intense hurricanes to play an important role in natural selection and anole evolution.
High biodiversity and endemism combined with persistently high deforestation rates mark Madagascar as one of the hottest biodiversity hot spots. Contemporary rising interest in large-scale reforestation, both globally and throughout Madagascar itself, presents a promising impetus for forest restoration and biodiversity conservation across the island. However, Madagascar may face unique restoration challenges due to its equally unique eco-evolutionary trajectory, which must be understood to enable successful ecological restoration. We conducted a systematic review of potential barriers to restoration for terrestrial forest biomes (rain forests, dry forests, and subhumid highland forests) in Madagascar. Our results indicate that aboveground biomass recovery of Malagasy forests appears to be slower than other tropical forests. We suggest four key synergistic factors that inhibit restoration in Madagascar: (a) lack of resilience to shifting nutrient and fire regimes arising from widespread high-intensity shifting cultivation; (b) predominance of nutrient-poor, highly weathered ferralitic soils; (c) vulnerability of regenerating native trees to competition with invasive species due to their evolutionary isolation; and (d) low seed dispersal into regenerating forests due to the unique dependence of Malagasy trees on dispersal by forest-dependent endangered or extinct primates. However, we note that rigorous experimental study of regenerating forests in Madagascar is currently lacking. There are great opportunity and need for such research to disentangle drivers and interactions inhibiting forest restoration. These studies would enable reforestation practitioners to effectively capitalize on current global momentum to implement the large-scale restoration necessary for the conservation of Madagascar's numerous endemic species.
Global mapping efforts to date have relied on vague and oversimplified definitions of “abandoned” agricultural land which results in overestimates of the land area that is likely to support persistent increases in forest cover and associated carbon sequestration. We propose a new conceptualization of abandoned agricultural land that incorporates changes in landholding status over time into determining whether land should be considered as abandoned. In order to develop more realistic estimates of the amount of land available for reforestation, we recommend clearly defining how abandoned land is categorized, discerning who owns and has rights to use the land, and combining remotely sensed data with household/stakeholder surveys to understand landowner motivations for not cropping or grazing land.
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