Pooling biodiversity offsets to improve habitat connectivity and species conservation.

Land developers can apply biodiversity offsetting in different ways, from a project-by-project approach to a pooled and proactive approach, this latter appearing to provide greater advantages both in terms of implementation and of the No Net Loss objective. Incorporating landscape connectivity into the mitigation hierarchy is commonly recommended, but the benefits of pooling and anticipating offsets have never really been demonstrated from modeling approaches. Here, we compare connectivity gains from two different offsetting scenarios, when interconnections at offset sites are taken and not taken into account.

Maximizing habitat connectivity in the mitigation hierarchy. A case study on three terrestrial mammals in an urban environment.

Environmental policies and the objective of no net loss highlight the importance of preserving ecological networks to limit the fragmentation of natural habitats and biodiversity loss, especially due to urbanization. In the environmental impact assessment context, habitat connectivity and the spatio-temporal dynamics of biodiversity are crucial to obtaining reliable predictions that can support decision-making. We propose a methodological framework 1) to quantify the overall impact of a development project on the functioning of an ecological network, and 2) to select the best locations for implanting new habitat patches intended to enhance landscape connectivity.

Environmental impact assessment of development projects improved by merging species distribution and habitat connectivity modelling.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is performed to limit potential impacts of development projects on species and ecosystem functions. However, the methods related to EIA actually pay little attention to the landscape-scale effects of development projects on biodiversity. In this study we proposed a methodological framework to more properly address the landscape-scale impacts of a new stadium project in Lyon (France) on two representative mammal species exemplary for the endemic fauna, the red squirrel and the Eurasian badger.

Author Correction: Agricultural landscapes and the Loire River influence the genetic structure of the marbled newt in Western France.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Agricultural landscapes and the Loire River influence the genetic structure of the marbled newt in Western France.

Amphibians are particularly sensitive to landscape fragmentation. Potential barriers between breeding sites can negatively influence the dispersal of individuals and increase genetic structure between populations. In this study, we genotyped 10 microsatellites for 334 marbled newts (Triturus marmoratus) at 11 different locations in Western France.

Epizoochorous dispersal by ungulates depends on fur, grooming and social interactions.

The transport phase of the animal-mediated plant dispersal process is critical to dispersal effectiveness as it determines the spatial distribution of the diaspores released and their chance for further recruitment. Assessing this specific phase of the dispersal process generally requires combining diaspore retention times with the associated distances covered. Here, we specifically tested the effect of grooming behavior, interindividual contacts and ungulate fur on diaspore retention times and associated dispersal distances for the hooked diaspores of L.