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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an important area of study due to the multiple positive firm outcomes associated with an effective CSR program. In addition, CSR has become a more high-profile topic due to recent events in the United States stemming from societal unrest in 2020 and beyond. Therefore, understanding the possible impacts on CSR from firm strategic decisions like mergers and acquisitions is important as well. Mergers and acquisitions are a fruitful venue for examining CSR because (a) mergers and acquisitions are consequential actions that are outside of the daily operations of the firm and have impacts on firm wealth, and (b) cooperation and trade-offs from the firm’s stakeholders is required to secure approval and successfully execute the transaction. This study’s objectives are two-fold. First, impacts to CSR, using Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings as a proxy, from corporate merger and acquisition activity are examined to determine overall impacts as well as relative impacts to various categories of industries. Second, ESG pillar ratings, as well as total (ESG) ratings, are used to: (a) study the individual impact of the pillars on overall ratings, (b) examine relationships between CSR and firm performance, and (c) how ESG ratings have grown over time as well as which pillars have experienced the most growth in various industry categories. Using Difference in Differences (DID) statistical methodology, results indicate mergers and acquisitions act as a moderator to increase CSR in the combined company. Results indicate companies that completed a significant merger (i.e., $1 billion or greater) in 2019 saw their ESG ratings increase by 3.84 points in 2020 and 2021. This finding is explained by Stakeholder theory, which holds that firms must successfully address the implicit and explicit needs of their stakeholders to gain support and buy-in for firm plans. Thus, when firms undertake mergers or acquisitions, they must address their universe of stakeholders to be successful. In addition, results indicate that merged firms in non-environmentally sensitive industries experienced a greater increase in their CSR programs compared to environmentally sensitive industries. The Environmental Pillar was found to have contributed the most when examining the individual pillar impacts on total ESG scores via regression analysis. Interestingly, higher ESG scores (a proxy for successful CSR programs) were not found to be related to superior firm performance as examined through a regression analysis of a key firm financial performance ratio. Finally, ESG scores were found to have grown over the study period 2016-202. During this time, the Governance pillar grew the most for environmentally sensitive industries while the Environmental pillar experienced the greatest growth for environmentally non-sensitive industries. The study’s results contribute to our knowledge of how meaningful firm strategic actions like mergers and acquisitions impact CSR in the combined company. In addition, the study makes various methodological contributions via the statistical methods used, studying industry effects and further examining the effectiveness of ESG ratings as a proxy for CSR performance. These findings also present ample opportunity for future research.

Are island ecosystems connected to their nearshore marine environment? Islands are global biodiversity hotspots and the management of their natural resources is vital to the maintenance of global biodiversity and the survival of Earth's life support systems. However, both research and management have been slow to incorporate the importance of land-sea connections into their practice. Terrestrial and marine habitats are inextricably connected; incorporating the connections between the two to any research or management of these systems will improve efficacy by improving the resolution of our understanding of ecosystem drivers. If we are to incorporate land-sea connectivity into research and management, we first need to clarify our understanding of the patterns and variability of connectivity across geographic and biological contexts. The focus of this paper is to identify the factors mediating the ecological connection between land and sea on islands, which can be interpreted to determine the local importance of land-sea connectivity and identify candidate mechanisms defining the connectivity. With more detailed understanding of land-sea linkages, there is opportunity to apply this knowledge toward applied issues of island resource management and restoration. Using a practical case study of island restoration, we operationalize our proposed factors mediating the strength of land-sea connectivity to compare a set of islands targeted for restoration efforts, creating a prioritization based upon the island-specific estimated potential for improved land-sea connectivity and associated marine co-benefit of terrestrial management.

Every morning, ecologist Tim Blackburn is inspired by the diversity contained within the moth trap he runs on the roof of his London flat. Beautiful, ineffably mysterious organisms, these moths offer a glimpse into a larger order, one that extends beyond individual species of moth, beyond lepidoptera or insects, and into a hidden landscape. Just as Michael Faraday's iron filings arrange themselves to articulate a magnetic field that would otherwise be invisible, Tim shows us that when we pay proper attention to these tiny animals, their relationships with one another, and their connections to the wider web of life, a greater truth about the world gradually emerges into focus. In this book, Tim reflects on what he has learned in the last thirty years of work as a scientist studying ecosystems and demonstrates how the contents of one small box can illuminate the workings of all nature.

We are in the Anthropocene—an epoch where humans are the dominant force of planetary change. Ecosystems increasingly reflect rapid human‐induced, socioeconomic and cultural selection rather than being a product of their surrounding natural biophysical setting. This poses the intriguing question: To what extent do existing ecological paradigms capture and explain the current ecological patterns and processes we observe? We argue that, although biophysical drivers still influence ecosystem structure and function at particular scales, their ability to offer predictive capacity over coupled social–ecological systems is increasingly compromised as we move further into the Anthropocene. Traditionally, the dynamics of coral reefs have been studied in response to their proximate drivers of change rather than their underlying socioeconomic and cultural drivers. We hypothesise this is limiting our ability to accurately predict spatial and temporal changes in coral reef ecosystem structure and function. We propose “social–ecological macroecology” as a novel approach within the field of coral reef ecology to a) identify the interactive effects of biophysical and socioeconomic and cultural drivers of coral reef ecosystems across spatial and temporal scales; b) test the robustness of existing coral reef paradigms; c) explore whether existing paradigms can be adapted to capture the dynamics of contemporary coral reefs; and d) if they cannot, develop novel coral reef social–ecological paradigms, where human dynamics are part of the paradigms rather than the drivers of them. Human socioeconomic and cultural processes must become embedded in coral reef ecological theory and practice as much as biophysical processes are today if we are to predict and manage these systems successfully in this era of rapid change. This necessary shift in our approach to coral reef ecology will be challenging and will require truly interdisciplinary collaborations between the natural and social sciences. A plain language summary is available for this article. Plain Language Summary

An urgent challenge facing biologists is predicting the regional-scale population dynamics of species facing environmental change. Biologists suggest that we must move beyond predictions based on phenomenological models and instead base predictions on underlying processes. For example, population biologists, evolutionary biologists, community ecologists and ecophysiologists all argue that the respective processes they study are essential. Must our models include processes from all of these fields? We argue that answering this critical question is ultimately an empirical exercise requiring a substantial amount of data that have not been integrated for any system to date. To motivate and facilitate the necessary data collection and integration, we first review the potential importance of each mechanism for skilful prediction. We then develop a conceptual framework based on reaction norms, and propose a hierarchical Bayesian statistical framework to integrate processes affecting reaction norms at different scales. The ambitious research programme we advocate is rapidly becoming feasible due to novel collaborations, datasets and analytical tools.

Macroecology is a growing and important subdiscipline of ecology, but it is becoming increasingly diffuse, without an organizing principle that is widely agreed upon. I highlight two main current views of macroecology: as the study of large-scale systems and as the study of emergent systems. I trace the history of both these views through the writings of the founders of macroecology. I also highlight the transmutation principle that identifies serious limitations to the study of large-scale systems with reductionist approaches. And I suggest that much of the underlying goal of macroecology is the pursuit of general principles and the escape from contingency. I highlight that there are many intertwined aspects of macroecology, with a number of resulting implications. I propose that returning to a focus on studying assemblages of a large number of particles is a helpful view. I propose defining macroecology as “the study at the aggregate level of aggregate ecological entities made up of large numbers of particles for the purposes of pursuing generality”.

A vizes élőhelyek hazánkban és az egész világon védelmet igényelnek, hiszen a legsérülékenyebb ökoszisztémák közé tartoznak. Unikális jelleggel, rendkívüli fajgazdagsággal rendelkeznek, jelentőségük pedig az emberek számára nyújtott ökoszisztéma-szolgáltatások révén is kiemelkedő. Az édesvízi ökoszisztémák megóvása tehát fontos mind a természeti értékek megőrzése szempontjából, mind a társadalom számára, melyhez elengedhetetlen működésének feltérképezése és megértése.Doktori értekezésem új ismeretekkel kíván hozzájárulni a vizes élőhelyek diverzitásának fenntartásában jelentős szerepet játszó vízimadarak általi propagulumterjesztés témájához. Az értekezésem alapjául szolgáló vizsgálatok során terepi minták feldolgozásával igyekeztünk feltárni a különböző vízimadár fajok által terjesztett propagulumközösségek közötti különbségeket, illetve a terjesztett közöségekben tapasztalható eltéréseket meghatározó tulajdonságokat, továbbá laboratóriumi kísérlet által törekedtünk kiterjeszteni ismereteinket a vízimadarak által potenciálisan terjeszthető halfajokra vonatkozóan.