Optimising UK urban road verge contributions to biodiversity and ecosystem services with cost-effective management.

Urban road verges can contain significant biodiversity, contribute to structural connectivity between other urban greenspaces, and due to their proximity to road traffic are well placed to provide ecosystem services. Using the UK as a case study we review and critically evaluate a broad range of evidence to assess how this considerable potential can be enhanced despite financial, contractual and public opinion constraints. Reduced mowing frequency and other alterations would enhance biodiversity, aesthetics and pollination services, whilst delivering costs savings and potentially being publically acceptable.

Food production, ecosystem services and biodiversity: We can't have it all everywhere.

Debate about how sustainable intensification and multifunctionality might be implemented continues, but there remains little understanding as to what extent they are achievable in arable landscapes. Policies that influence agronomic decisions are rarely made with an appreciation of the trade-offs that exist between food production, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision. We present an approach that can reveal such trade-offs when used to assess current and future policy options that affect agricultural inputs (e.

Protected areas facilitate species' range expansions.

The benefits of protected areas (PAs) for biodiversity have been questioned in the context of climate change because PAs are static, whereas the distributions of species are dynamic. Current PAs may, however, continue to be important if they provide suitable locations for species to colonize at their leading-edge range boundaries, thereby enabling spread into new regions. Here, we present an empirical assessment of the role of PAs as targets for colonization during recent range expansions.

Capitalizing on nature: how to implement an ecosystem approach.

The Natural Capital Initiative (www.naturalcapitalinitiative.org.

Meta-analysis of the effects of predation on animal prey abundance: evidence from UK vertebrates.

Background: Controlling vertebrate predators is one of the most widespread forms of wildlife management and it continues to cause conflict between stakeholders worldwide. It is important for managers and policy-makers to make decisions on this issue that are based on the best available scientific evidence. Therefore, it is first important to understand if there is indeed an impact of vertebrate predators on prey, and then to quantify this impact.

Minimum viable metapopulation size, extinction debt, and the conservation of a declining species.

A key question facing conservation biologists is whether declines in species' distributions are keeping pace with landscape change, or whether current distributions overestimate probabilities of future persistence. We use metapopulations of the marsh fritillary butterfly Euphydryas aurinia in the United Kingdom as a model system to test for extinction debt in a declining species. We derive parameters for a metapopulation model (incidence function model, IFM) using information from a 625-km2 landscape where habitat patch occupancy, colonization, and extinction rates for E.