Biology subjects

Roy, H. E.

Publications and source records attributed to Roy, H. E..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

European scenarios for future biological invasions

O_LIInvasive alien species are one of the major threats to global biodiversity, ecosystem integrity, natures contribution to people and human health. While scenarios about potential future developments have been available for other global change drivers for quite some time, we largely lack an understanding of how biological invasions might unfold in the future across spatial scales. C_LIO_LIBased on previous work on global invasion scenarios, we developed a workflow to downscale global scenarios to a regional and policy-relevant context. We applied this workflow at the European scale to create four European scenarios of biological invasions until 2050 that consider different environmental, socio-economic and socio-cultural trajectories, namely the European Alien Species Narratives (Eur-ASNs). C_LIO_LIWe compared the Eur-ASNs with their previously published global counterparts (Global-ASNs), assessing changes in 26 scenario variables. This assessment showed a high consistency between global and European scenarios in the logic and assumptions of the scenario variables. However, several discrepancies in scenario variable trends were detected that could be attributed to scale differences. This suggests that the workflow is able to capture scale-dependent differences across scenarios. C_LIO_LIWe also compared the Global- and Eur-ASNs with the widely used Global and European Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), a set of scenarios developed in the context of climate change to capture different future socio-economic trends. Our comparison showed considerable divergences in the scenario space occupied by the different scenarios, with overall larger differences between the ASNs and SSPs than across scales (global vs. European) within the scenario initiatives. C_LIO_LIGiven the differences between the ASNs and SSPs, it seems that the SSPs do not adequately capture the scenario space relevant to understanding the complex future of biological invasions. This underlines the importance of developing independent, but complementary, scenarios focused on biological invasions. The downscaling workflow we presented and implemented here provides a tool to develop such scenarios across different regions and contexts. This is a major step towards an improved understanding of all major drivers of global change including biological invasions. C_LI

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

A scenario-guided strategy for the future management of biological invasions

Future dynamics of biological invasions are highly uncertain because they depend on multiple environmental, societal and socio-economic drivers. We adopted a qualitative scenario approach to explore the future of invasive alien species (IAS) in Europe and created an overall strategy for their management that considers different plausible future developments. The scenarios and strategy were developed during two online workshops with a multidisciplinary team of experts. First, we downscaled four global scenarios of biological invasions to the European level. Second, we developed a management strategy structured into 19 goals that cover a broad array of IAS-related topics (i.e. policy, research, public awareness and biosecurity), and provided solutions for achieving these goals considering the European scenarios. Third, we identified four interrelated recommendations around which any long-term strategy for managing IAS in Europe can be structured: (i) a European biosecurity regime, (ii) a dedicated communication strategy, (iii) data standardization and management tools, and (iv) a monitoring and assessment system. Finally, we identified the feasibility of the IAS management strategy, finding strong differences among the four scenarios. High levels of technological development, public environmental awareness, and effectiveness of IAS policies facilitated the implementation of the overall management strategy. Together, our results indicate that it is time for a new management of biological invasions in Europe based on a more integrative perspective across sectors and countries to be better prepared for future challenges.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2021

Alternative futures for global biological invasions

Scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool to analyze complex and uncertain future socio-ecological developments. However, current global scenarios (narratives of how the world may develop) have neglected biological invasions, a major threat to biodiversity and the economy. We used a novel participatory process to develop a diverse set of global biological invasion scenarios spanning a wide breadth of plausible global futures through 2050. We adapted the widely used "two axes" scenario analysis approach to develop four families of four scenarios each, resulting in 16 scenarios that were later clustered into four contrasting sets of futures. Our analysis highlighted that socio-economic developments and changes in sustainability policies and lifestyle have the potential to shape biological invasions, in addition to well-known ecological drivers, such as climate and human land use change. Our scenarios align fairly well with the recently developed shared socio-economic pathways, but the factors that drive differences in biological invasions are underrepresented there. Including these factors in global scenarios and models is essential to adequately consider biological invasions in global environmental assessments, and obtain a more integrative picture of future socio-ecological developments.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Thinking like a naturalist: enhancing computer vision of citizen science images by harnessing contextual data

O_LIThe accurate identification of species in images submitted by citizen scientists is currently a bottleneck for many data uses. Machine learning tools offer the potential to provide rapid, objective and scalable species identification for the benefit of many aspects of ecological science. Currently, most approaches only make use of image pixel data for classification. However, an experienced naturalist would also use a wide variety of contextual information such as the location and date of recording.\nC_LIO_LIHere, we examine the automated identification of ladybird (Coccinellidae) records from the British Isles submitted to the UK Ladybird Survey, a volunteer-led mass participation recording scheme. Each image is associated with metadata; a date, location and recorder ID, which can be cross-referenced with other data sources to determine local weather at the time of recording, habitat types and the experience of the observer. We built multi-input neural network models that synthesise metadata and images to identify records to species level.\nC_LIO_LIWe show that machine learning models can effectively harness contextual information to improve the interpretation of images. Against an image-only baseline of 48.2%, we observe a 9.1 percentage-point improvement in top-1 accuracy with a multi-input model compared to only a 3.6% increase when using an ensemble of image and metadata models. This suggests that contextual data is being used to interpret an image, beyond just providing a prior expectation. We show that our neural network models appear to be utilising similar pieces of evidence as human naturalists to make identifications.\nC_LIO_LIMetadata is a key tool for human naturalists. We show it can also be harnessed by computer vision systems. Contextualisation offers considerable extra information, particularly for challenging species, even within small and relatively homogeneous areas such as the British Isles. Although complex relationships between disparate sources of information can be profitably interpreted by simple neural network architectures, there is likely considerable room for further progress. Contextualising images has the potential to lead to a step change in the accuracy of automated identification tools, with considerable benefits for large scale verification of submitted records.\nC_LI

ecology↗