[LTER-BioProd] Biodiversity Agenda Paper - action required!

Thu Feb 18 08:50:25 PST 2021

Hi Mary,

Thanks for this new version. It reads very well.
I have left some comments on the Box doc. I suggested some text to distinguish between positive and negative feedback.

Tricky to add minor suggestions to the PDF. So here goes:
Line 172, 243: Cite GEO BON with capitals and a space.

Section IV - Knowledge gaps
Line 221: Insert the importance of the distinction bn +ve and -ve feedbacks. in this section. It is important to clarify that we need to understand when perturbations (e.g. anthropogenic) are damped vs. amplified. In climate science, +ve feedbacks due to change in albedo have been important to communicate. I think we need to state that we have a knowledge gap when it comes to assessing when these two types of feedback are at play. For example, in McCann et al. (2020) Ecology Letters we show when nutrients (runoff from Ag fields) amplify oscillations that can drive instability and extinctions.
Line 244: Do you mean accompanying EF measures that are taken at the same time and location and the biodiversity measures? GEO BON is publishing essential ecosystem variables but there is a need to statistically assess the co-variation with layers of (functional) biodiversity change.
Line 347: There some advances linking functional trait variation to functioning, both at the local scale (Norberg et al; Enquist et al) and biogeographic scales (Violle et al 2014 PNAS).
Line 387, Challenge 6: You might cite Miller et al. 2012
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3328856/

A specific example that could be used as an example is for seagrasses and the need to consider feedbacks in their management. Maxwell et al.  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27581168/

If PRSB doesn't take this, I think Oikos Forum would be a great venue. Note, I am no longer EIC at Oikos, so there would not be a conflict of interest.

Line 425: Gonzalez et al. 2016 (Ecology) we quantified these spatial biases.
Line 430: cite Runge et al. 2019 Nat. Comms. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10105-3

I hope these suggestions are useful.

Cheers,
Andy

Andrew Gonzalez F.R.S.C.
Professor | Liber Ero Chair in Biodiversity Conservation
Dept. Biology | McGill University
1205 Dr. Penfield Avenue, Montreal, H3A 1B1, Quebec, Canada

co-Chair GEO BON<https://geobon.org/>
Director Quebec Centre for Biodiversity Science<https://qcbs.ca/>
Co-founder Eco2Urb<https://www.eco2urb.com/about-eco2urb.html>
@bio_diverse | Google Scholar<https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=nxg3KqkAAAAJ&hl=en>

Open-access paper:
Gonzalez, A., Germain, R., Srivastava, D. et al. (2020) Scaling‐up biodiversity‐ecosystem functioning research. Ecology Letters<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ele.13456>
________________________________
From: Bioprod <bioprod-bounces at lists.lternet.edu> on behalf of Mary O'Connor <oconnor at zoology.ubc.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2021 1:36 PM
To: Forest Isbell <isbell at umn.edu>
Cc: William Cheung <w.cheung at oceans.ubc.ca>; bioprod at lternet.edu <bioprod at lternet.edu>
Subject: [LTER-BioProd] Biodiversity Agenda Paper - action required!

Dear all,

I hope you and yours are doing all right. I’m writing with the "Agenda paper", ready to submit and just need your final ‘OK’ or any minor feedback!

Update:

As you know, this has proceeded in fits and starts over the last few years. I thought we were done in summer 2019, but a few good points were raised around that time that required a bit more work on my part, and here we are. Last summer (2020) I presented this at ESA and around that time, got good and careful comments and contributions on the MS from our core writing team (Forest, Akira, Laura, Andy G). I have incorporated all those comments, and have also updated the manuscript a little bit since our original drafting (3 years ago!).

I hope you like it! I’d like to submit it by the end of Feb to Proceedings of the Royal Society. Right now I’m simply asking for your ‘ok’. If there are revisions needed that can wait till we get reviews, I will happily take them and file them for that time; if things need to be done before we submit, I will do my best!. The ms hasn’t changed much since summer so if your read it then you have a good idea of where it is. If you haven’t read it in a few years, I suggest you do take a quick look.

Finally, you will see that William Cheung has joined us as a co-author and on this email. William is a colleague at UBC and has been a contributor and co-author on the IBPES modelling scenarios and the scenarios chapter to which we refer in this paper, so I’m very grateful he has joined us and provided his comments on the ms as well.

Action items (in summary):

1. Please confirm that you’re ok for me to submit this to PRSB
2. Please send me your address or add it in a comment in the ms.
3. OPTIONAL: help with figures if you are inspired
4. OPTIONAL: minor edits for pre-submission, major edits for post-review
5. OPTIONAL: Box 3 needs a little work, I think, and I wonder if one of you who originally drafted it could finalize it?

A few loose ends on the figures remain to be tied up, which I will do while you review. If you have time AND see opportunities to improve figures, I welcome that help at this stage! (There were some issues I couldn’t resolve with the figures we had before, but if you miss them and would like help revise, we can discuss how to do that; it is possible).

Best wishes,

Mary

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. Mary O'Connor
Associate Professor, Department of Zoology
Associate Director, Biodiversity Research Centre
University of British Columbia

ph: 604-827-5653
oconnor at zoology.ubc.ca<mailto:oconnor at zoology.ubc.ca>
oconnorlab.weebly.com

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