The history, goals, and application of conservation physiology

Abstract

Conservation physiology is a rapidly expanding, multi-disciplinary field that utilizes physiological tools, knowledge, and concepts to understand and solve conservation problems. Here we provide a consolidated overview of the scope and goals of conservation physiology, with a focus on animals. We outline the major avenues by which conservation physiology is contributing to the monitoring, management, and restoration of animal populations, and provide a summary of the tools currently available in the conservation physiology toolbox. Overall, we illustrate how a conservation physiology approach can provide sensitive biomarkers of environmental change, reveal the underlying mechanisms of conservation issues, and allow for proactive conservation strategies. In turn, conservation physiology can tackle diverse conservation issues ranging from monitoring environmental stress, predicting the impact of climate change, understanding disease dynamics, improving captive breeding, reducing human–wildlife conflict, and many others. The diversity of taxa, biological scales, and ecosystems that are highlighted illustrate the far-reaching nature of the discipline and allow readers to gain an appreciation of the purpose, value, and status of the field.

Applied ecoimmunology: using immunological tools to improve conservation efforts in a changing world

“…Ecoimmunology offers conservation scientists and practitioners with the opportunity to expand our understanding of animal health to improve predictions and manage the impacts of anthropogenic environmental change on individuals, populations, species and communities. The utility of physiology for conservation biology lies in its ability to derive testable hypotheses by combining ecoimmunological approaches with traditional ecological metrics (population monitoring, biodiversity assessments and animal growth and abundance), and emerging or novel tools (next generation molecular tools, -omics, biotelemetry, citizen science), to understand the importance of mechanisms ( Carey, 2005 ; Cooke and O'Connor, 2010 ; Cooke et al , 2017 ; Madliger et al , 2020 ). While the case studies presented in this paper speak to the diverse ways in which ecoimmunological tools and approaches are being used to inform and manage conservation efforts in a variety of taxa, there remain key gaps in our understanding of how immune functions respond to environmental change and how we can use ecoimmunological tools to better manage issues of conservation significance.…”

Feather corticosterone is lower in translocated and historical populations of the endangered Laysan duck ( Anas laysanensis )

“…The use of physiological measures to assess and monitor the health of a population in the face of conservation challenges has become a valuable technique [1–3]. It has increased in popularity as the field of conservation physiology has grown.…”

Local Willingness to Pay Survey for Rare and Endangered Species Protection in Qianjiangyuan National Park, China

“…Some scientists predict that if the status quo remains, more than 50% of all organisms on earth will become extinct or endangered. The current extinction rate of biological species is already 10 to 1000 times faster than their natural extinction rate [7,8]. These problems highlight the urgency of protecting our limited wildlife resources.…”