She began connecting with others immediately following her arrival from China, as she joined us on our spring canoe-camping trip, for a Canadian back-country experience!

In our habitat fragmentation research: we found positive effects of fragmentation on the iconic Glanville fritillary butterfly metapopulation (pdf); we showed that patch-scale edge effects are not evidence of landscape-scale fragmentation effects (pdf); we found no lag effects of fragmentation on lichens (pdf); and we discovered a disturbing lack of fragmentation research in the boreal forest (pdf). And, we made progress in reconciling the fragmentation debate (pdf, pdf).

In other research, we showed that there is little evidence that wildlife over-passes and under-passes mitigate the effects of roads on animal movement (pdf). We found huge uncertainty in predicting the effects of climate change on Arctic shorebird distributions (pdf). We found yet more reason for concern over the fate of the migratory monarch butterfly population (pdf), we identified habitat needs of songbirds during migration (pdf), and we found support for the common space-for-time substitution in landscape ecology studies (pdf).

Sandara Brasil-Peixoto is an ecologist interested in how climate and anthropogenic changes, such as urban expansion and desertification, impact wild bee populations. Her current research aims to understand how urban environmental stressors impact bee morphological traits and how we can use this knowledge to integrate bee conservation efforts with urban planning.

Alison Ochs is an ecologist studying the effects of roads on wildlife. For her postdoctoral work, she aims to estimate the total number of vertebrate animals killed annually on roads worldwide. At the same time she is working on projects to examine the effects of roads on the movement and dispersal capability of terrestrial salamanders.

Marina de Souza is a PhD student from the Universidade Federal do ParanĂĄ in Brazil. While in the lab Marina will develop part of her thesis on road ecology using an extensive dataset to estimate the effect of paving on roadkill rate. She is excited for this period of learning and exchanging experiences.

Zilva van Rossum is a visiting master’s student from the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. During her time in the lab, she will study dispersal adaptations in the Glanville fritillary butterfly in response to fragmentation per se, landscape quality, and heterogeneity. She hopes to use this time to learn more about landscape ecology and integrate it with the landscape genetics theory she learned at her home university.

Welcome Aino!

Under the general heading of habitat loss and fragmentation: (1) we showed that a given amount of habitat is more likely to be lost from small patches than from large patches (Riva et al. 2022), despite the fact that small patches have disproportionately high conservation value on a per-area basis (Riva and Fahrig 2022); (2) we found support for the Habitat Amount Hypothesis for tropical plants, as well as evidence that habitat fragmentation shifts plant species composition (Herrero-JĂĄuregui et al. 2022); (3) we showed negative effects of habitat loss on seed dispersal at both patch and landscape scales (Cazetta and Fahrig 2022); and (4) we developed a new research agenda for the long-standing SLOSS (“single large or several small”) debate (Fahrig et al. 2022).

On landscape connectivity we found that a simple approach of maximizing habitat area for a given budget produces a prioritization for habitat protection that is similar to more complex algorithms e.g. based on focal species landscape resistance (Hanson et al. 2022). On landscape heterogeneity, we developed an approach to maximize biodiversity in managed forests by maximizing the spatial and temporal variability in management decisions (Duflot et al. 2022). And, on road ecology we showed that reduced predation on turtle nests along roads can compensate for the adult mortality from roadkill (Murphy et al. 2022).

The references are below, and you can find pdf copies of these papers here: /glel/publications/#p2022

1. Cazetta E, Fahrig L. 2022. The effects of human-altered habitat spatial pattern on frugivory and seed dispersal: a global meta-analysis. Oikos: e08288.
2. Cooke SJ, Michaels S, Nyboer EA, Schiller L, Littlechild DBR, Hanna D, Robichaud CD, Murdoch A, Roche D, Soroye P, Vermaire JC, Nguyen VM, Young N, Provencher JF, Smith PA, Mitchell GW, Avery-Gomm S, Davy CM, Buxton RT, Rytwinski T, Fahrig L, Bennett JR, Auld G. 2022. Reconceptualizing Conservation. PLoS Sustainability and Transformation 1: e0000016.
3. Duflot R, Fahrig L, Mönkkönen M. 2022. Management diversity begets biodiversity in production forest landscapes. Biological Conservation 268: 109514.
4. Fahrig L, Watling JI, Arnillas CA, Arroyo-RodrĂ­guez V, Jörger-Hickfang T, MĂŒller J, Pereira H, Riva F, Rösch V, Seibold S, Tscharntke T, May F. 2022. Resolving the SLOSS dilemma for biodiversity conservation: a research agenda. Biological Reviews 97: 99–114.
5. Hanson J, Vincent J, Schuster R, Fahrig L, Brennan A, Martin A, Hughes J, Pither R, Bennett J. 2022. A comparison of approaches for including connectivity in systematic conservation planning. Journal of Applied Ecology 59: 2507-2519.
6. Herrero-JĂĄuregui C, Camba GH, Andries DM, Aguiar S, Mastrangelo M, Fahrig L. 2022. Past and present effects of habitat amount and fragmentation per se on plant species richness, composition and traits. Biological Conservation 276: 109815.
7. Murphy RE, Martin AE, Fahrig L. 2022. Reduced predation on roadside nests can compensate for road mortality in road-adjacent turtle populations. Ecosphere 13: e3946.
8. Riva F, Martin CJ, Millard K, Fahrig L. 2022. Loss of the world’s smallest forests. Global Change Biology 28: 7164-7166.
9. Riva F, Fahrig L. 2022. The disproportionately high value of small patches for biodiversity conservation. Conservation Letters 15: e12881.

At the starting point.

Part-way there.

The ice was rough but perseverance prevailed!

To receive the award I will have to break my no-fly rule and go to Spain. Container ships are still not allowed to take passengers because of covid. But, I promise to use my part of the prize money to help some organization directly reduce their carbon emissions.

The BBVA recorded an interview with each of the winners. If you would like to hear my 13-minute interview, you can find it here: