As a source of emerging infectious diseases, wildlife assemblages (and related spatial patterns) must be quantitatively assessed to help identify high‐risk locations. Previous assessments have largely focussed on the distributions of individual species; however, transmission dynamics are expected to depend on assemblage composition. Moreover, disease–diversity relationships have mainly been studied in the context of species lo...

Conservation planning and biodiversity assessments need quantitative targets to optimize planning options and assess the adequacy of current species protection. However, targets aiming at persistence require population‐specific data, which limit their use in favor of fixed and nonspecific targets, likely leading to unequal distribution of conservation efforts among species. We devised a method to derive equitable population ta...

World governments have committed to increase the global protected areas coverage by 2020, but the effectiveness of this commitment for protecting biodiversity depends on where new protected areas are located. Threshold‐ and complementarity‐based approaches have been independently used to identify important sites for biodiversity. We brought together these approaches by performing a complementarity‐based analysis of irreplaceab...

Size and age structure, longevity, growth, and reproductive activity of European perch ( Perca fluviatilis ) were studied at Lake Wainamu in March 2012 and 2013 as part of an introduced species eradication programme. Size and age structure of P. fluviatilis were dominated by smaller and younger individuals, while maximum age was estimated at 6 and 5 years for both years, respectively. Initial growth by the end of first year wa...

Assessing temporal changes in species extinction risk is necessary for measuring conservation success or failure and for directing conservation resources toward species or regions that would benefit most. Yet, there is no long‐term picture of genuine change that allows one to associate species extinction risk trends with drivers of change or conservation actions. Through a review of 40 years of IUCN‐related literature sources...

Data on the location and extent of protected areas, ecosystems, and species’ distributions are essential for determining gaps in biodiversity protection and identifying future conservation priorities. However, these data sets always come with errors in the maps and associated metadata. Errors are often overlooked in conservation studies, despite their potential negative effects on the reported extent of protection of species a...