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The composition of species communities is changing rapidly through drivers such as habitat loss and climate change, with potentially serious consequences for the resilience of ecosystem functions on which humans depend. To assess such changes in resilience, we analyse trends in the frequency of species in Great Britain that provide key ecosystem functions—specifically decomposition, carbon sequestration, pollination, pest control and cultural values. For 4,424 species over four decades, there have been significant net declines among animal species that provide pollination, pest control and cultural values. Groups providing decomposition and carbon sequestration remain relatively stable, as fewer species are in decline and these are offset by large numbers of new arrivals into Great Britain. While there is general concern about degradation of a wide range of ecosystem functions, our results suggest actions should focus on particular functions for which there is evidence of substantial erosion of their resilience. Global change may affect the resilience of ecosystem functions by altering community composition. Here, Oliver et al. show that in Great Britain since the 1970s there have been significant net declines among animal species that provide key ecosystem functions such as pollination and pest control.

Range shifting is vital for species persistence, but there is little consensus on why individual species vary so greatly in the rates at which their ranges have shifted in response to recent climate warming. Here, using 40 years of distribution data for 291 species from 13 invertebrate taxa in Britain, we show that interactions between habitat availability and exposure to climate change at the range margins explain up to half of the variation in rates of range shift. Habitat generalists expanded faster than more specialised species, but this intrinsic trait explains less of the variation in range shifts than habitat availability, which additionally depends on extrinsic factors that may be rare or widespread at the range margin. Similarly, while climate change likely underlies polewards expansions, we find that more of the between-species variation is explained by differences in habitat availability than by changes in climatic suitability. A model that includes both habitat and climate, and their statistical interaction, explains the most variation in range shifts. We conclude that climate-change vulnerability assessments should focus as much on future habitat availability as on climate sensitivity and exposure, with the expectation that habitat restoration and protection will substantially improve species’ abilities to respond to uncertain future climates.

The increasing impacts of climate change instigate the need for adaptation. However, most adaptation initiatives focus on actions by government or businesses, despite growing calls for communities on the frontline of climate risks to be involved in planning and selecting strategies. Here we appraise a pilot process using participatory systems mapping with citizens to identify (1) diverse threat vectors for local climate impacts and (2) context-relevant interventions to protect households and communities while (3) considering synergies and trade-offs with other socially desirable outcomes. We tested the pilot process in communities in the Lower Volta Basin in Ghana, the Assam region in India and Southern England. From participants’ perspectives, the process increased awareness of and preparedness for climate change impacts and raised essential learning points for upscaling citizen-led adaptation approaches. These include understanding multiple outcomes of interventions, barriers and enablers to implementation, and sensitivity of co-design to regional geography and socio-cultural context.Increasing individual awareness could help communities better prepare for climate change. Here a pilot study using participatory system mapping finds that the process increases awareness and preparedness for climate risk, and identifies considerations for promoting citizen-led adaptation.

Human societies and ecological systems face increasingly severe risks, stemming from crossing planetary boundaries, worsening inequality, rising geo-political tensions, and new technologies. In an interconnected world, these risks can exacerbate each-other, creating systemic risks, which must be thoroughly assessed and responded to. Recent years have seen the emergence of analytical frameworks designed specifically for, or applicable to, systemic risk assessment, adding to the multitude of tools and models for analysing and simulating different systems. By assessing two recent global food and energy systemic crises, we propose a methodological framework applicable to assessing systemic risks in a polycrisis context, drawing from and building on existing approaches. Our framework’s polycrisis-specific features include: exploring system architectures including their objectives and political economy; consideration of transformational responses away from risks; and cross-cutting practices including consideration of non-human life, trans-disciplinarity, and diversity, transparency and communication of uncertainty around data, evidence and methods. This paper proposes a framework to assess systemic risks that compound and cascade within and between systems. This emphasizes political economy and transformations, as well as trans-disciplinarity and diverse participation, evidence and methods.

Most studies on the biological impact of climate change have focussed on incremental climate warming, rather than extreme events. Yet responses of species' populations to climatic extremes may be one of the primary drivers of ecological change. We assess the resilience of individual populations in terms of their sensitivity to- and ability to recover from- environmental perturbation. We demonstrate the method using a model species, the ringlet butterfly Aphantopus hyperantus, and analyse the effects of an extreme drought event using data from 79 British sites over 10 yr. We find that populations crashed most severely in drier regions but, additionally, the landscape structure around sites influenced population responses. Larger and more connected patches of woodland habitat reduced population sensitivity to the drought event and also facilitated faster recovery. Having enough, sufficiently connected habitat appears essential for species' populations to be resilient to the increased climatic variability predicted under future scenarios.

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. Records from intensive surveys revealed that seven bird and butterfly species have colonized PAs 4.2 (median) times more frequently than expected from the availability of PAs in the landscapes colonized. Records of an additional 256 invertebrate species with less-intensive surveys supported these findings and showed that 98% of species are disproportionately associated with PAs in newly colonized parts of their ranges. Although colonizing species favor PAs in general, species vary greatly in their reliance on PAs, reflecting differences in the dependence of individual species on particular habitats and other conditions that are available only in PAs. These findings highlight the importance of current PAs for facilitating range expansions and show that a small subset of the landscape receives a high proportion of colonizations by range-expanding species.

Spatially synchronised population dynamics are driven by a combination of shared environmental conditions among sites and the movements of individuals between sites. Untangling the drivers of population synchrony requires investigation of how populations are correlated across space and time in relation to climate and mobility‐related attributes. Here, we use species survey data from over four decades to investigate average levels and temporal trends in population synchrony for 58 British bird and butterfly species. We first show that population synchrony is significantly associated with synchrony in seasonal climatic variables. After accounting for spatiotemporal climatic patterns, we determine whether temporal trends in population synchrony are shaped by mobility‐related attributes. We test this through an interspecies comparison using three variables correlated with mobility: biotope specialism, estimated species mobility, and local abundance change, which is known to affect emigration rate. We find that temporal trends in population synchrony are most marked for generalist butterfly species, butterflies with high estimated mobility, and butterflies that had changed in their mean abundance. For birds, we find changes in population synchrony are associated with specialist bird species and those that increased in abundance over time. Our results reveal a widespread effect of mobility attributes and abundance patterns on population synchrony over time, suggesting that variation in dispersal is a key factor determining the extent to which population dynamics are synchronised. Spatially synchronised population dynamics are driven by a combination of shared environmental conditions among sites and the movements of individuals between sites. We were able to disentangle these drivers and show that after trends in climate autocorrelation were accounted for, population synchrony is significantly associated with mobility‐related attributes of birds and butterflies.

The reproductive success of plants often depends on their local conspecific densities. The degree of isolation from conspecific plants can mediate an individual's interactions with other organisms. For example, a high density of flowers can attract pollinators and improve seed set, and a high density of seeds can attract enemies such as seed predators. It is the joint outcome of positive and negative density‐dependent effects that will determine the spatial distribution of a population, yet they are rarely studied simultaneously. We related two indicators of reproductive success (fruit set and fruit drop) to tree size and the density of neighbouring conspecifics for 32 Crataegus monogyna (Rosaceae) individuals in a temperate woodland. Overall, 26% of flowers set seed, but seed set was not density dependent. We found that 25% of fruits were dropped before reaching maturity, and 24% of mature fruits were dropped before the typical dispersal period. The drop of both immature and mature fruits increased with the density of reproductive conspecifics in this system, with potential implications for spatial patterns of seedling recruitment. It is the joint outcome of positive and negative density‐dependent effects which will determine the spatial distribution of a plant population, yet they are rarely studied simultaneously. We related two indicators of reproductive success (fruit set and fruit drop) to the size and density of neighbouring conspecifics for Crataegus monogyna (Hawthorn) individuals in a temperate woodland. Our results point towards a pattern of net negative conspecific density‐dependence in the pre‐dispersal reproductive success of Hawthorn trees, with individuals in areas with few reproductive conspecifics at an advantage.

Our current global food system – from food production to consumption, including manufacture, packaging, transport, retail and associated businesses – is responsible for extensive negative social and environmental impacts which threaten the long-term well-being of society. This has led to increasing calls from science–policy organizations for major reform and transformation of the global food system. However, our knowledge regarding food system transformations is fragmented and this is hindering the development of co-ordinated solutions. Here, we collate recent research across several academic disciplines and sectors in order to better understand the mechanisms that ‘lock-in’ food systems in unsustainable states. The current configuration of our global food system is undermining many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), leading to calls for major food system reform and transformation. Concurrently, other science–policy and business initiatives call for a food system more resilient to economic and environmental shocks, for example, by improving the economic resilience of current supply chains. Prioritization of short-term security to a subset of vested interests, however, can undermine the resilience of longer term beneficial outcomes for society. Here we advocate a more inclusive and farsighted approach focussing on the resilience of positive outcomes for the whole of society, that is, capturing the aim to promote resilient delivery of multiple UN SDGs. A significant challenge is to prioritize suites of interventions that can effectively transform the global food system to deliver these goals. Here, we use a transdisciplinary lens to identify ‘lock-in’ mechanisms that span four key areas – knowledge-based, economic/regulatory, sociocultural and biophysical constraints – which will help avoid ineffective siloed solutions to food system reform. Furthermore, we show how emergent system dynamics need to be considered using a more holistic approach. We highlight the importance of well-coordinated actions on multiple leverage points during windows of opportunity for food system transformation.

Drought events are projected to increase in frequency and magnitude, which may alter the composition of ecological communities. Using a functional community metric that describes abundance, life history traits and conservation status, based upon Grime’s CSR (Competitive – Stress tolerant – Ruderal) scheme, we investigated how British butterfly communities changed during an extreme drought in 1995. Throughout Britain, the total abundance of these insects had a significant tendency to increase, accompanied by substantial changes in community composition, particularly in more northerly, wetter sites. Communities tended to shift away from specialist, vulnerable species, and towards generalist, widespread species and, in the year following, communities had yet to return to equilibrium. Importantly, heterogeneity in surrounding landscapes mediated community responses to the drought event. Contrary to expectation, however, community shifts were more extreme in areas of greater topographic diversity, whilst land-cover diversity buffered community changes and limited declines in vulnerable specialist butterflies.