Biology subjects

Di Marco, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Di Marco, M..

25 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Areas of global importance for terrestrial biodiversity, carbon, and water

Summary paragraphTo meet the ambitious objectives of biodiversity and climate conventions, countries and the international community require clarity on how these objectives can be operationalized spatially, and multiple targets be pursued concurrently1. To support governments and political conventions, spatial guidance is needed to identify which areas should be managed for conservation to generate the greatest synergies between biodiversity and natures contribution to people (NCP). Here we present results from a joint optimization that maximizes improvements in species conservation status, carbon retention and water provisioning and rank terrestrial conservation priorities globally. We found that, selecting the top-ranked 30% (respectively 50%) of areas would conserve 62.4% (86.8%) of the estimated total carbon stock and 67.8% (90.7%) of all clean water provisioning, in addition to improving the conservation status for 69.7% (83.8%) of all species considered. If priority was given to biodiversity only, managing 30% of optimally located land area for conservation may be sufficient to improve the conservation status of 86.3% of plant and vertebrate species on Earth. Our results provide a global baseline on where land could be managed for conservation. We discuss how such a spatial prioritisation framework can support the implementation of the biodiversity and climate conventions.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

Global trends in biodiversity and ecosystem services from 1900 to 2050

Despite the scientific consensus on the extinction crisis and its anthropogenic origin, the quantification of historical trends and of future scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services has been limited, due to the lack of inter-model comparisons and harmonized scenarios. Here, we present a multi-model analysis to assess the impacts of land-use and climate change from 1900 to 2050. During the 20th century provisioning services increased, but biodiversity and regulating services decreased. Similar trade-offs are projected for the coming decades, but they may be attenuated in a sustainability scenario. Future biodiversity loss from land-use change is projected to keep up with historical rates or reduce slightly, whereas losses due to climate change are projected to increase greatly. Renewed efforts are needed by governments to meet the 2050 vision of the Convention on Biological Diversity. One Sentence SummaryDevelopment pathways exist that allow for a reduction of the rates of biodiversity loss from land-use change and improvement in regulating services but climate change poses an increasing challenge.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

Drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of terrestrial mammal species

The breadth of a species climatic niche is an important ecological trait that allows adaptation to climate change, but human activities drive niche erosion. Life-history traits, such as dispersal ability and reproductive speed, instead allow species to cope with climate change. But how do these characteristics act in combination with human pressure to determine niche change? Here we investigate the patterns and drivers of change in the realised climatic niche of 589 terrestrial mammal species. Our goal is to disentangle the impacts of humans, climate change, and life history. We calibrated the past and present climatic niches of each species by considering past climatic conditions (Mid Holocene) within their pre-human impact distributions, and current climatic conditions within the current distributions. Depending on the relationship between past and current niche, we defined four categories of change: "shrink", "shift", "stable", and "expand". We found over half of the species in our sample have undergone niche shrink, while only 15-18% of species retained a stable niche. After controlling for biogeography, climatic factors were the strongest correlates of species niche change, followed by anthropogenic pressure and species life history. Factors that increased the probability of niche shrink include: overall climatic instability in the area (both intermediate or high), large body mass, long gestation time, highly carnivorous or herbivorous diets, historical land-use change, and current human population density. We identified the conditions under which species are less likely to maintain their niche breadth, potentially losing adaptation capacity under climate change. Species with these characteristics require interventions that facilitate natural dispersal or assisted colonisation, to survive to rapidly changing climates.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Reconciling global priorities for conserving biodiversity habitat

Degradation and loss of natural habitat is the major driver of the current global biodiversity crisis. Most habitat conservation efforts to date have targeted small areas of highly threatened habitat, but emerging debate suggests retaining large intact natural systems may be just as important. We reconcile these perspectives by integrating fine-resolution global data on habitat condition and species assemblage turnover, to identify Earths high-value biodiversity habitat. These are areas in better condition than most other locations once supporting a similar assemblage of species, and are found within both intact regions and human dominated landscapes. However, only 18.6 % of this high-value habitat is currently protected globally. Averting permanent biodiversity loss requires clear spatially explicit targets for retaining these unprotected high-value habitats.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Conservation attention necessary across at least 44% of Earth’s terrestrial area to safeguard biodiversity

More ambitious conservation efforts are needed to stop the global biodiversity crisis. Here, we estimate the minimum land area to secure important sites for terrestrial fauna, ecologically intact areas, and the optimal locations for representation of species ranges and ecoregions. We discover that at least 64 million km2 (44% of terrestrial area) requires conservation attention. Over 1.8 billion people live on these lands so responses that promote agency, self-determination, equity, and sustainable management for safeguarding biodiversity are essential. Spatially explicit land-use scenarios suggest that 1.3 million km2 of land requiring conservation could be lost to intensive human land-uses by 2030, which requires immediate attention. However, there is a seven-fold difference between the amount of habitat converted under optimistic and pessimistic scenarios, highlighting an opportunity to avert this crisis. Appropriate targets in the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework to ensure conservation of the identified land would contribute substantially to safeguarding biodiversity.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

MutateX: an automated pipeline for in-silico saturation mutagenesis of protein structures and structural ensembles

Mutations resulting in amino acid substitution influence the stability of proteins along with their binding to other biomolecules. A molecular understanding of the effects induced by protein mutations are both of biotechnological and medical relevance. The availability of empirical free energy functions that quickly estimate the free energy change upon mutation ({Delta}{Delta}G) can be exploited for systematic screenings of proteins and protein complexes. Indeed, in silico saturation mutagenesis can guide the design of new experiments or rationalize the consequences of already-known mutations at the atomic level. Often software such as FoldX, while fast and reliable, lack the necessary automation features to make them useful in high-throughput scenarios. Here we introduce MutateX, a software which aims to automate the prediction of {Delta}{Delta}Gs associated with the systematic mutation of each available residue within a protein or protein complex to all other possible residue types, by employing the FoldX energy function. MutateX also supports {Delta}{Delta}G calculations over protein ensembles and the estimation of the changes in free energy upon post-translational modifications. At the heart of MutateX lies an automated pipeline engine that handles input preparation, performs parallel runs with FoldX and outputs publication-ready figures. We here illustrate the MutateX protocol applied to the study of the mutational landscape of cancer-related proteins, industrial enzymes and protein-protein interfaces. The results of the high-throughput scan provided by our tools could help in different applications, such as the analysis of disease-associated mutations, or in the design of protein variants for experimental studies or industrial applications. MutateX is a collection of Python tools that relies on Open Source libraries and requires the FoldX software to be installed beforehand. It is available free of charge and under the GNU General Public License from https://github.com/ELELAB/mutatex.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2018

A protocol for an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized land-use and climate scenarios

Abstract.To support the assessments of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the IPBES Expert Group on Scenarios and Models is carrying out an intercomparison of biodiversity and ecosystem services models using harmonized scenarios (BES-SIM). The goals of BES-SIM are (1) to project the global impacts of land use and climate change on biodiversity and ecosystem services (i.e. natures contributions to people) over the coming decades, compared to the 20th century, using a set of common metrics at multiple scales, and (2) to identify model uncertainties and research gaps through the comparisons of projected biodiversity and ecosystem services across models. BES-SIM uses three scenarios combining specific Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) to explore a wide range of land-use change and climate change futures. This paper describes the rationale for scenarios selection, the process of harmonizing input data for land use, based on the second phase of the Land Use Harmonization Project (LUH2), and climate, the biodiversity and ecosystem service models used, the core simulations carried out, the harmonization of the model output metrics, and the treatment of uncertainty. The results of this collaborative modelling project will support the ongoing global assessment of IPBES, strengthen ties between IPBES and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios and modelling processes, advise the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) on its development of a post-2020 strategic plans and conservation goals, and inform the development of a new generation of nature-centred scenarios.

ecology↗