Advances and challenges in ecological connectivity science.
Amanda R Liczner, Richard Pither, Joseph R Bennett, Jeff Bowman, Kimberly R Hall, Robert J Fletcher, Adam T Ford, Julia L Michalak, Bronwyn Rayfield, Julian Wittische, Jason Pither
Author Information
Amanda R Liczner: Okanagan Institute for Biodiversity, Resilience and Ecosystem Services University of British Columbia Kelowna British Columbia Canada. ORCID
Richard Pither: National Wildlife Research Centre Environment and Climate Change Canada Ottawa Ontario Canada.
Joseph R Bennett: Department of Biology Carleton University Ottawa Ontario Canada.
Jeff Bowman: Wildlife Research and Monitoring Section Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry Peterborough Ontario Canada.
Kimberly R Hall: North America Science The Nature Conservancy Haslett Michigan USA.
Robert J Fletcher: Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation University of Florida Gainesville Florida USA.
Adam T Ford: Okanagan Institute for Biodiversity, Resilience and Ecosystem Services University of British Columbia Kelowna British Columbia Canada.
Julia L Michalak: School of Environmental and Forest Sciences University of Washington Seattle Washington USA.
Maintaining and restoring ecological connectivity will be key in helping to prevent and reverse the loss of biodiversity. Fortunately, a growing body of research conducted over the last few decades has advanced our understanding of connectivity science, which will help inform evidence-based connectivity conservation actions. Increases in data availability and computing capacity have helped to dramatically increase our ability to model functional connectivity using more sophisticated models. Keeping track of these advances can be difficult, even for connectivity scientists and practitioners. In this article, we highlight some key advances from the past decade and outline many of the remaining challenges. We describe the efforts to increase the biological realism of connectivity models by, for example, isolating movement behaviors, population parameters, directional movements, and the effects of climate change. We also discuss considerations of when to model connectivity for focal or multiple species. Finally, we reflect on how to account for uncertainty and increase the transparency and reproducibility of connectivity research and discuss situations where decisions may require forgoing sophistication for more simple approaches.
