CHANS Lab

Singh, G.G., V.F. Farjalla, B. Chen, … K.M.A. Chan (2019). “Researcher engagement in policy deemed societally beneficial yet unrewarded.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 0(0). Doi: 10.1002/fee.2084

Maintaining the continued flow of benefits from science, as well as societal support for science, requires sustained engagement between the research community and the general public. On the basis of data from an international survey of 1092 participants (634 established researchers and 458 students) in 55 countries and 315 research institutions, we found that institutional recognition of engagement activities is perceived to be undervalued relative to the societal benefit of those activities. Many researchers report that their institutions do not reward engagement activities despite institutions’ mission statements promoting such engagement. Furthermore, institutions that actually measure engagement activities do so only to a limited extent. Most researchers are strongly motivated to engage with the public for selfless reasons, which suggests that incentives focused on monetary benefits or career progress may not align with researchers’ values. If institutions encourage researchers’ engagement activities in a more appropriate way – by moving beyond incentives – they might better achieve their institutional missions and bolster the crucial contributions of researchers to society.

Echeverri, A., R. Naidoo, D.S. Karp, K.M.A. Chan and J. Zhao (2019). “Iconic manakins and despicable grackles: Comparing cultural ecosystem services and disservices across stakeholders in Costa Rica.” Ecological Indicators 106: 105454. Doi: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2019.105454

Despite the great cultural and economic benefits associated with birdwatching and other bird-related cultural ecosystem services (CES), little is known about the bird-related CES and disservices perceived by people, and how they differ across stakeholders and species. The goal of this study was to explore CES and disservices across three stakeholder groups in Northwestern Costa Rica. We conducted surveys (n = 404 total) in which we presented farmers (n = 140), urbanites (n = 149), and birdwatchers (n = 115) with illustrations and songs of bird species and collected participants’ ratings on items designed to measure multiple CES and disservices. We found bird-related CES and disservices were perceived as six different categories: identity, bequest, education, birdwatching, acoustic aesthetic, and disservices. The three stakeholder groups expressed varying preferences across services, disservices, and species. Specifically, birdwatchers ranked species higher in terms of their education scores and lower in disservices scores compared to the other two groups, whereas farmers scored species higher on identity scores compared to the other two groups. Farmers and urbanites had remarkably similar perceptions towards birds in general, but differed from birdwatchers. Our approach represents a novel method for assessing CES and disservices associated with species that can be adapted and modified for different taxa and multiple geographical contexts.

Echeverri, A., L.O. Frishkoff, J.P. Gomez, J.R. Zook, P. Juárez, R. Naidoo, K.M.A. Chan, D.S. Karp “Precipitation and tree cover gradients structure avian alpha diversity in North-western Costa Rica.” Diversity and Distributions 0(0). Doi: 10.1111/ddi.12932

Aim Changes in climate and land use are modifying biodiversity worldwide. Yet it remains unclear how both drivers interact to structure communities and determine patterns in taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional diversity at local scales. We focused on bird diversity and asked: how do precipitation and forest cover gradients interactively structure these elements of avian diversity?
Location Guanacaste, North-western Costa Rica.
Methods We quantified changes in the abundance and composition of bird communities along independent gradients of regional precipitation, local forest cover and landscape forest cover that serve as proxies for climate drying and habitat conversion. We conducted point counts at 150 sites and statistically accounted for imperfect detection to test how environmental variation shaped community-wide diversity metrics.
Results We found that the three dimensions of diversity diverged in their responses to environmental gradients. Specifically, species richness increased linearly with precipitation, reached maximum values with intermediate tree cover at local scales and peaked at high levels of landscape tree cover. While phylogenetic diversity did not vary strongly across any gradient, functional diversity increased monotonically with both local and landscape-level tree cover. Maximum values of functional diversity only occurred in large patches of forest where the tree cover was >75% at both local and landscape scales. Contrary to our expectations, we did not detect significant interactions between precipitation and tree cover gradients on any metric of local bird diversity.
Main conclusions Our findings suggest that taxonomic diversity was more sensitive to environmental gradients than functional and phylogenetic diversity. The lack of synergies between precipitation and forest cover gradients on alpha diversity, at least in this system, simplifies the prospects of predicting future biodiversity change at local scales as our results suggest that climate change and land use act independently of one another.