Accurate prediction of community assembly is a central goal in ecology but is challenging because assembly is governed by numerous mechanisms. Few theoretical models explicitly incorporate or test multiple mechanisms at once. We empirically tested the predictive performance of a plant community assembly model built using all possible combinations of four ‘mechanisms’ (soil resource competition, dispersal and colonisation, spat...

Feral cats ( Felis catus ) pose a significant global threat to biodiversity, primarily through predation, disease and competition. A key gap in parameterizing models for improving management decisions for feral cat control relates to factors that drive feral cat survival and movement in the wild. Our study objective was to conduct the first continental-scale analysis of survival rates and displacement distances for feral cats....

It can be challenging to distinguish management impacts from other population drivers, including ‘natural’ processes and co-occurring threats. However, disentangling processes is important, particularly when management may have unintended consequences, such as mesopredator release. We explored the effects of long-term, broadscale poison-baiting programs on the distribution of red foxes Vulpes vulpes (targeted invasive predator...

Monitoring is critical to gauge the effect of environmental management interventions as well as to measure the effects of human disturbances such as climate change. Recognition of the critical need for monitoring means that, at irregular intervals, recommendations are made for new government-instigated programs or to revamp existing ones. Using insights from past well-intentioned (but sadly also often failed) attempts to estab...

Aim Megafire plays a crucial role in driving the distribution of biodiversity around the world. Long‐term monitoring is vital for understanding how species are impacted immediately by megafire and subsequently respond over time. However, monitoring should be designed with sufficient statistical power to detect impact and recovery. In this study, we developed a simulation framework for optimizing the design of biodiversity moni...

Developers are often required by law to offset environmental impacts through targeted conservation actions. Most offset policies specify metrics for calculating offset requirements, usually by assessing vegetation condition. Despite widespread use, there is little evidence to support the effectiveness of vegetation‐based metrics for ensuring biodiversity persistence. We compared long‐term impacts of biodiversity offsetting bas...

Global biodiversity indices are used to measure environmental change and progress toward conservation goals, yet few indices have been evaluated comprehensively for their capacity to detect trends of interest, such as declines in threatened species or ecosystem function. Using a structured approach based on decision science, we qualitatively evaluated 9 indices commonly used to track biodiversity at global and regional scales...

Indigenous knowledge systems hold detailed information on current and past environments that can inform ecological understanding as well as contemporary environmental management. Despite its applicability, there are limited examples of indigenous knowledge being incorporated in species distribution models, which are widely used in the ecological sciences. In a collaborative manner, we designed a structured elicitation process...

Approaches to assess the impacts of landscape disturbance scenarios on species range from metrics based on patterns of occurrence or habitat to comprehensive models that explicitly include ecological processes. The choice of metrics and models affects how impacts are interpreted and conservation decisions. We explored the impacts of 3 realistic disturbance scenarios on 4 species with different ecological and taxonomic traits....

Knowing where species occur is fundamental to many ecological and environmental applications. Species distribution models (SDMs) are typically based on correlations between species occurrence data and environmental predictors, with ecological processes captured only implicitly. However, there is a growing interest in approaches that explicitly model processes such as physiology, dispersal, demography and biotic interactions. T...

Most species are imperfectly detected during biological surveys, which creates uncertainty around their abundance or presence at a given location. Decision makers managing threatened or pest species are regularly faced with this uncertainty. Wildlife diseases can drive species to extinction; thus, managing species with disease is an important part of conservation. Devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) is one such disease that led...

Many objectives motivate ecological restoration, including improving vegetation condition, increasing the range and abundance of threatened species, and improving species richness and diversity. Although models have been used to examine the outcomes of ecological restoration, few researchers have attempted to develop models to account for multiple, potentially competing objectives. We developed a combined state‐and‐transition,...

Conservation fences are an increasingly common management action, particularly for species threatened by invasive predators. However, unlike many conservation actions, fence networks are expanding in an unsystematic manner, generally as a reaction to local funding opportunities or threats. We conducted a gap analysis of Australia's large predator‐exclusion fence network by examining translocation of Australian mammals relative...

Aim Species distribution models (SDMs) are currently the most widely used tools in ecology for evaluating the suitability of environments for biodiversity in the face of future environmental change. In this study we seek to provide an assessment of the predictive performance of SDMs over time. How well do SDMs predict for future time periods and what factors influence predictive performance? Innovation We used a historical spa...

Each year, two or three species that had been considered to be extinct are rediscovered. Uncertainty about whether or not a species is extinct is common, because rare and highly threatened species are difficult to detect. Biological traits such as body size and range size are expected to be associated with extinction. However, these traits, together with the intensity of search effort, might influence the probability of detect...

Climate refugia are regions that animals can retreat to, persist in and potentially then expand from under changing environmental conditions. Most forecasts of climate change refugia for species are based on correlative species distribution models ( SDM s) using long‐term climate averages, projected to future climate scenarios. Limitations of such methods include the need to extrapolate into novel environments and uncertainty...

How should managers choose among conservation options when resources are scarce and there is uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of actions? Well‐developed tools exist for prioritizing areas for one‐time and binary actions (e.g., protect vs. not protect), but methods for prioritizing incremental or ongoing actions (such as habitat creation and maintenance) remain uncommon. We devised an approach that combines metapopulatio...

Dominant species influence the composition and abundance of other species present in ecosystems. However, forecasts of distributional change under future climates have predominantly focused on changes in species distribution and ignored possible changes in spatial and temporal patterns of dominance. We develop forecasts of spatial changes for the distribution of species dominance, defined in terms of basal area, and for specie...

Species distribution models ( SDM s) are used to inform a range of ecological, biogeographical and conservation applications. However, users often underestimate the strong links between data type, model output and suitability for end‐use. We synthesize current knowledge and provide a simple framework that summarizes how interactions between data type and the sampling process (i.e. imperfect detection and sampling bias) determi...

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a key mechanism for protecting threatened plant and animal species. Many species are not perfectly detectable and, even when present, may remain undetected during EIA surveys, increasing the risk of site‐level loss or extinction of species. Numerous methods now exist for estimating detectability of plants and animals. Despite this, regulations concerning survey protocol and effort durin...

The nature of conservation challenges can foster a reactive, rather than proactive approach to decision making. Failure to anticipate problems before they escalate results in the need for more costly and time‐consuming solutions. Proactive conservation requires forward‐looking approaches to decision making that consider possible futures without being overly constrained by the past. Strategic foresight provides a structured pro...