Biological Conservation 221 (2018) A1–A2

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Biological Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon

Editorial

Biological Conservation’s goals of advancing science and protecting biodiversity are highlighted by two recent papers

The journal Biological Conservation has a special focus in the field of conservation and biodiversity. Our goal is to publish research that advances knowledge in the field, that provides information that will be of some practical value to people involved in the protection and management of biodiversity , and that informs government and NGO officials who are developing and implementing policy. Two recent articles illustrate the goals of Biological Conservation particularly well. We could have chosen many others to highlight, but these are good examples because they are innovative and have clear applications for conservation management. Also, the authors of both articles believed in the value of their work and produced press releases to spread the key results to a wider audience. In their article, To mow or to mow less: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity in suburban yards, Lerman et al. (2018) investigate the most effective way to manage suburban lawns to promote bee abundance and diversity. This is a particularly important topic due to the global decline in insect populations generally and bees in particular, the expansion of cities into rural areas, and the value of bees as pollinators of wild plants and crops. In their experiment, 16 suburban lawns in Massachusetts were given one of three treatments: mown once a week, mown once every two weeks, or mown once every three weeks. As expected, with a lower frequency of mowing there were more flowers present and the grass was taller. Surprisingly, bee abundance was greatest in the lawns that were mown every two weeks, presumably because these lawns had an abundance of flowers but the grass was not too tall to interfere with bee flight. However, these twice-a-month lawns also had a lower richness and evenness of bee species due to the dominance of a few common species. This article is important in describing how common suburban lawn management techniques can impact bee populations, and suggests many further scientific and practical experiments that can be done on bees and other insects. The results also have significance for homeowner and land managers in demonstrating that they can contribute to bee conservation, and that less frequent mowing of lawns can enhance bee populations. For environmentally aware suburban homeowners, this might be a welcome message; the lazy lawnmower is the most bee-friendly. At a broader scale, the results of this study might be applied to large lawns around commercial areas, parking lots, highways, playgrounds, and public buildings. As scientists, we recognize and appreciate that these results and messages are derived from a well-designed experiment,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2018.04.005

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clear hypothesis testing, and rigorous analysis, with acknowledged limits and sources of uncertainty. The second article, Using opportunistic citizen science data to estimate avian population trends by Horns et al. (2018) examines if the extensive records gathered by hobby birdwatchers can be used to determine changing trends in bird abundance. To investigate this question, these researchers compared trends in changing abundance over time calculated from two types of data: formal bird census data, which has long been considered the gold standard for determining population trends, and checklists of birds—that is, lists of birds seen in a particular place during a specified period of time—that have been gathered and submitted to eBird by birdwatchers. eBird is a large citizen science database organized and maintained by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, and it currently contains over 26 million checklists of birds submitted by over 330,000 users. This study examines data for 574 North American bird species and finds that trends produced by eBird data are almost identical to the trends produced by the bird census data, in terms of which bird species are increasing and decreasing, and the rates of population change. Estimating changes over time from eBird data is best suited for widespread species, and improves with greater numbers of checklists, reaching a plateau at around 10,000 checklists. This approach has the potential to be particularly valuable in tropical countries that do not have formal bird census programs, and where the number of eBird checklists is rapidly increasing. This methodology is also able to incorporate other related data sets such as trip reports and species atlases. This study is a dramatic example of how well-designed, well-funded, and creatively analyzed citizen science programs can contribute to the science of conservation biology. At our journal, we specifically emphasized and promoted this concept in a recent special issue entitled “The role of citizen science in biological conservation.” This present study by Horns et al. (2018) has particular importance to the editors of Biological Conservation as our journal published one of the first papers about eBird in 2009 where the authors explained their goals and vision for involving citizen scientists in a global network for bird conservation (Sullivan et al. 2009). Now, 10 years later, that vision is being realized in this successful world-class program. In looking at recent issues of Biological Conservation, it is clear that there are many articles that we could have chosen to illustrate our goal of publishing outstanding research that advances the field and provides

Biological Conservation 221 (2018) A1–A2

Editorial

information for managers and policy makers. We selected these two articles for their clear message, and for the enthusiasm of the authors, who believe in sharing their results with a wide audience. Reading their articles gives us satisfaction as editors, and we hope they will inspire our readers with new ideas for scientific research as well as conservation management practices.

Sullivan, B.L., Wood, C.L., Iliff, M.J., Bonney, R.E., Fink, D., Kelling, S., 2009. eBird: a citizen-based bird observation network in the biological sciences. Biol. Conserv. 142, 2282–2292.

Editor, Biological Conservation Richard B. Primack Biology Department, Boston University, USA E-mail address: [email protected]

References

Editor-in-Chief, Biological Conservation Vincent Devictor Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution, Université Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, 34090, Montpellier, France

Horns, J.J., Adler, F.R., Şekercioğlu, C.H., 2018. Using opportunistic citizen science data to estimate avian population trends. Biol. Conserv. 221, 151–159. Lerman, S.B., Contosta, A.R., Milam, J., Bang, C., 2018. To mow or to mow less: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity in suburban yards. Biol. Conserv. 221, 160–174.

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