KEVIN J GASTON

Porcelli, D., Butlin, R.K., Gaston, K.J., Joly, D. & Snook, R.R. (2015) The environmental genomics of metazoan thermal adaptation. Heredity 114, 502–514.

Continued and accelerating change in the thermal environment places an ever-greater priority on understanding how organisms are going to respond. The paradigm of ‘move, adapt or die’, regarding ways in which organisms can respond to environmental stressors, stimulates intense efforts to predict the future of biodiversity. Assuming that extinction is an unpalatable outcome, researchers have focussed attention on how organisms can shift in their distribution to stay in the same thermal conditions or can stay in the same place by adapting to a changing thermal environment. How likely these respective outcomes might be depends on the answer to a fundamental evolutionary question, namely what genetic changes underpin adaptation to the thermal environment. The increasing access to and decreasing costs of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, which can be applied to both model and non-model systems, provide a much-needed tool for understanding thermal adaptation. Here we consider broadly what is already known from non-NGS studies about thermal adaptation, then discuss the benefits and challenges of different NGS methodologies to add to this knowledge base. We then review published NGS genomics and transcriptomics studies of thermal adaptation to heat stress in metazoans and compare these results with previous non-NGS patterns. We conclude by summarising emerging patterns of genetic response and discussing future directions using these increasingly common techniques.

Dallimer, M., Davies, Z.G., Diaz-Porras, D.F., Irvine, K.N., Maltby, L., Warren, P.H., Armsworth, P.R. & Gaston, K.J. (2015) Historical influences on the current provision of multiple ecosystem services. Global Environmental Change 31, 307-317.

Ecosystem service provision varies temporally in response to natural and human-induced factors, yet research in this field is dominated by analyses that ignore the time-lags and feedbacks that occur within socio-ecological systems. The implications of this have been unstudied, but are central to understanding how service delivery will alter due to future land-use/cover change. Urban areas are expanding faster than any other land-use, making cities ideal study systems for examining such legacy effects. We assess the extent to which present-day provision of a suite of eight ecosystem services, quantified using field-gathered data, is explained by current and historical (stretching back 150 years) landcover. Five services (above-ground carbon density, recreational use, bird species richness, bird density, and a metric of recreation experience quality (continuity with the past) were more strongly determined by past landcover. Time-lags ranged from 20 (bird species richness and density) to over 100 years (above-ground carbon density). Historical landcover, therefore, can have a strong influence on current service provision. By ignoring such time-lags, we risk drawing incorrect conclusions regarding how the distribution and quality of some ecosystem services may alter in response to land-use/cover change. Although such a finding adds to the complexity of predicting future scenarios, ecologists may find that they can link the biodiversity conservation agenda to the preservation of cultural heritage, and that certain courses of action provide win-win outcomes across multiple environmental and cultural goods.

Mitchell, M.G.E., Suarez-Castro, A.F., Martinez-Harms, M., Maron, M., McAlpine, C., Gaston, K.J., Johansen, K. & Rhodes, J.R. (2015) Reframing landscape fragmentation’s effects on ecosystem services. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 30(4), 190-198.

Landscape structure and fragmentation have important effects on ecosystem services, with a common assumption being that fragmentation reduces service provision. This is based on fragmentation’s expected effects on ecosystem service supply, but ignores how fragmentation influences the flow of services to people. Here we develop a new conceptual framework that explicitly considers the links between landscape fragmentation, the supply of services, and the flow of services to people. We argue that fragmentation’s effects on ecosystem service flow can be positive or negative, and use our framework to construct testable hypotheses about the effects of fragmentation on final ecosystem service provision. Empirical efforts to apply and test this framework are critical to improving landscape management for multiple ecosystem services.

Shanahan, D.F., Lin, B.B., Bush, R., Gaston, K.J., Dean, J.H., Barber, E. & Fuller, R.A. (2015) Toward improved public health outcomes from urban nature. American Journal of Public Health, 105 (3), 470-477.

There is mounting concern for the health of urban populations as cities expand at an unprecedented rate. Urban green spaces provide settings for a remarkable range of physical and mental health benefits, and pioneering health policy is recognizing nature as a cost effective tool for planning healthy cities. Despite this, limited information on how specific elements of nature deliver health outcomes restricts its use for enhancing population health. We articulate a framework for identifying direct and indirect causal pathways through which nature delivers health benefits, and highlight current evidence. We see a need for a bold new research agenda founded on testing causality that transcends disciplinary boundaries between ecology and health. This will lead to cost-effective and tailored solutions that could enhance population health and reduce health inequalities.