Darren%20Mann: List of publications

Recent expansion of oil palm agriculture has resulted in loss of forest habitat and forest‐dependent species. However, large numbers of species—particularly insects—can persist within plantations. This study focuses on Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies): a charismatic indicator taxon and a potentially valuable pest control agent. We surveyed adult Odonata populations biannually over three years within an industrial oil palm plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia. We assessed the effects of rainfall (including an El Niño Southern Oscillation‐associated drought), the role of roadside ditches, and the importance of understory vegetation on Odonata populations. To assess the impacts of vegetation, we took advantage of a long‐term vegetation management experiment that is part of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function in Tropical Agriculture (BEFTA) Programme. We found 41 Odonata species, and communities varied between plantation core and roadside edge microhabitats, and between seasons. Abundance was significantly related to rainfall levels four months before surveys, probably indicating the importance of high water levels in roadside ditches for successful larval development. We found no significant effect of the BEFTA understory vegetation treatments on Odonata abundance, and only limited effects on community composition, suggesting that local understory vegetation structure plays a relatively unimportant role in determining communities. Our findings highlight that there are large numbers of Odonata species present within oil palm plantations and suggest that their abundance could potentially be increased by maintaining or establishing waterbodies. As Odonata are predators, this could bring pest control benefits, in addition to enhancing biodiversity within intensive agricultural landscapes. Abstract in Indonesian is available with online material.

The effect of sexual selection on species persistence remains unclear. The cost of bearing ornaments or armaments might increase extinction risk, but sexual selection can also enhance the spread of beneficial alleles and increase the removal of deleterious alleles, potentially reducing extinction risk. Here we investigate the effect of sexual selection on species persistence in a community of 34 species of dung beetles across a gradient of environmental disturbance ranging from old growth forest to oil palm plantation. Horns are sexually selected traits used in contests between males, and we find that both horn presence and relative size are strongly positively associated with species persistence and abundance in altered habitats. Testes mass, an indicator of post-copulatory selection, is, however, negatively linked with the abundance of species within the most disturbed habitats. This study represents the first evidence from a field system of a population-level benefit from pre-copulatory sexual selection.

This report was commissioned to update the national threat status of beetles within the Lucanidae, Geotrupidae, Trogidae and Scarabaeidae. It covers all species in these groups, identifying those that are rare and/or under threat as well as non-threatened and non-native species.

Biodiversity is changing at unprecedented rates, and it is increasingly important that these changes are quantified through monitoring programmes. Previous recommendations for developing or enhancing these programmes focus either on the end goals, that is the intended use of the data, or on how these goals are achieved, for example through volunteer involvement in citizen science, but not both. These recommendations are rarely prioritized. We used a collaborative approach, involving 52 experts in biodiversity monitoring in the UK, to develop a list of attributes of relevance to any biodiversity monitoring programme and to order these attributes by their priority. We also ranked the attributes according to their importance in monitoring biodiversity in the UK. Experts involved included data users, funders, programme organizers and participants in data collection. They covered expertise in a wide range of taxa. We developed a final list of 25 attributes of biodiversity monitoring schemes, ordered from the most elemental (those essential for monitoring schemes; e.g. articulate the objectives and gain sufficient participants) to the most aspirational (e.g. electronic data capture in the field, reporting change annually). This ordered list is a practical framework which can be used to support the development of monitoring programmes. People's ranking of attributes revealed a difference between those who considered attributes with benefits to end users to be most important (e.g. people from governmental organizations) and those who considered attributes with greatest benefit to participants to be most important (e.g. people involved with volunteer biological recording schemes). This reveals a distinction between focussing on aims and the pragmatism in achieving those aims. Synthesis and applications. The ordered list of attributes developed in this study will assist in prioritizing resources to develop biodiversity monitoring programmes (including citizen science). The potential conflict between end users of data and participants in data collection that we discovered should be addressed by involving the diversity of stakeholders at all stages of programme development. This will maximize the chance of successfully achieving the goals of biodiversity monitoring programmes. The ordered list of attributes developed in this study will assist in prioritizing resources to develop biodiversity monitoring programmes (including citizen science). The potential conflict between end users of data and participants in data collection that we discovered should be addressed by involving the diversity of stakeholders at all stages of programme development. This will maximize the chance of successfully achieving the goals of biodiversity monitoring programmes.

<p>Please note: the files for this record have been embargoed and replaced with a second version of the work available to download from the related item.</p> <p>The Elton Archive mostly comprises the Field Notes compiled 1942-1965 by Charles S. Elton, FRS, CBE (1900-1991) while he was Director of the Bureau of Animal Population, a research group affiliated to the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy (from 1963, Department of Zoology), Oxford University. Further material (not yet transcribed) is held in the Bodleian Libraries Special Collections.</p> <p>Also included in this Archive are transcriptions of a seminar that Elton gave in 1962 to mark 30 years of the Bureau of Animal Population, apparently delivered to a small audience in the library of the Magdalen labs., and that of a similar event in 1993 by Dr. John R. Clarke, Elton’s research student and long-time collaborator. The original manuscripts were held in private archives, as were those of the accounts of three Expeditions from Oxford University to the Arctic archipelago now called Svalbard in 1921, 1923 and 1924.</p> <p>They were transcribed and edited 2013-4 by Caroline M. Pond (Emerita Professor of Comparative Anatomy, The Open University and honorary Senior Research Associate in Zoology, Oxford University) as a volunteer recruited by the Joint Museums Volunteer Service and supervised by Nigel Fisher (Wytham Woods), Darren Mann (Hope Entomological Collections) and Keith Kirby (Department of Plant Sciences). Voice-activated software (Dragon and Talkingpoint) was used throughout. The Editor would like to record that she attended Elton’s lectures as an undergraduate in the 1960s, and was a colleague of Stephen Hurry (1932-2008) at The Open University when he worked there 1979-92.</p> <p>The Elton Archive material is made available by permission of his family and the Department of Zoology (successors to the Bureau of Animal Population) and Oxford Museum of Natural History via the Oxford Research Archive, through the work of Professor Caroline Pond who 'read-in' the entire oeuvre.</p> <p>The Elton Archive mostly comprises the Field Notes compiled 1942-1965 by Charles S. Elton, FRS, CBE (1900-1991) while he was Director of the Bureau of Animal Population, a research group affiliated to the Department of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy (from 1963, Department of Zoology), Oxford University. Further material (not yet transcribed) is held in the Bodleian Libraries Special Collections.</p> <p>Also included in this Archive are transcriptions of a seminar that Elton gave in 1962 to mark 30 years of the Bureau of Animal Population, apparently delivered to a small audience in the library of the Magdalen labs., and that of a similar event in 1993 by Dr. John R. Clarke, Elton’s research student and long-time collaborator. The original manuscripts were held in private archives, as were those of the accounts of three Expeditions from Oxford University to the Arctic archipelago now called Svalbard in 1921, 1923 and 1924.</p> <p>They were transcribed and edited 2013-4 by Caroline M. Pond (Emerita Professor of Comparative Anatomy, The Open University and honorary Senior Research Associate in Zoology, Oxford University) as a volunteer recruited by the Joint Museums Volunteer Service and supervised by Nigel Fisher (Wytham Woods), Darren Mann (Hope Entomological Collections) and Keith Kirby (Department of Plant Sciences). Voice-activated software (Dragon and Talkingpoint) was used throughout. The Editor would like to record that she attended Elton’s lectures as an undergraduate in the 1960s, and was a colleague of Stephen Hurry (1932-2008) at The Open University when he worked there 1979-92.</p> <p>The Elton Archive material is made available by permission of his family and the Department of Zoology (successors to the Bureau of Animal Population) and Oxford Museum of Natural History via the Oxford Research Archive, through the work of Professor Caroline Pond who 'read-in' the entire oeuvre.</p>

Agricultural expansion and intensification are major threats to global biodiversity, ecological functions, and ecosystem services. The rapid expansion of oil palm in forested tropical landscapes is of particular concern given their high biodiversity. Identifying management approaches that maintain native species and associated ecological processes within oil palm plantations is therefore a priority. Riparian reserves are strips of forest retained alongside rivers in cultivated areas, primarily for their positive hydrological impact. However, they can also support a range of forest-dependent species or ecosystem services. We surveyed communities of dung beetles and measured dung removal activity in an oil palm-dominated landscape in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. The species richness, diversity, and functional group richness of dung beetles in riparian reserves were significantly higher than in oil palm, but lower than in adjacent logged forests. The community composition of the riparian reserves was more similar to logged forest than oil palm. Despite the pronounced differences in biodiversity, we did not find significant differences in dung removal rates among land uses. We also found no evidence that riparian reserves enhance dung removal rates within surrounding oil palm. These results contrast previous studies showing positive relationships between dung beetle species richness and dung removal in tropical forests. We found weak but significant positive relationships between riparian reserve width and dung beetle diversity, and between reserve vegetation complexity and dung beetle abundance, suggesting that these features may increase the conservation value of riparian reserves. Synthesis and applications: The similarity between riparian reserves and logged forest demonstrates that retaining riparian reserves increases biodiversity within oil palm landscapes. However, the lack of correlation between dung beetle community characteristics and dung removal highlights the need for further research into spatial variation in biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships and how the results of such studies are affected by methodological choices.

Responses to microhabitat are often neglected when ecologists sample animal indicator groups. Microhabitats may be particularly influential in non-passive biodiversity sampling methods, such as baited traps or light traps, and for certain taxonomic groups which respond to fine scale environmental variation, such as insects. Here we test the effects of microhabitat on measures of species diversity, guild structure and biomass of dung beetles, a widely used ecological indicator taxon. We demonstrate that choice of trap placement influences dung beetle functional guild structure and species diversity. We found that locally measured environmental variables were unable to fully explain trap-based differences in species diversity metrics or microhabitat specialism of functional guilds. To compare the effects of habitat degradation on biodiversity across multiple sites, sampling protocols must be standardized and scale-relevant. Our work highlights the importance of considering microhabitat scale responses of indicator taxa and designing robust sampling protocols which account for variation in microhabitats during trap placement. We suggest that this can be achieved either through standardization of microhabitat or through better efforts to record relevant environmental variables that can be incorporated into analyses to account for microhabitat effects. This is especially important when rapidly assessing the consequences of human activity on biodiversity loss and associated ecosystem function and services.

Insect macroecology and conservation biogeography studies are disproportionately scarce, especially in the Neotropics. Dung beetles are an ideal focal taxon for biodiversity research and conservation. Using distribution and body size data on the ecologically important Phanaeini, the best-known Neotropical dung beetle tribe, we determined elevational patterns of species richness, endemism, body size, and elevational range in Bolivia, specifically testing Bergmann's and Rapoport's rule. Richness of all 39 species and of 15 ecoregional endemics showed a hump-shaped pattern peaking at 400 m, but overall declined strongly with elevation up to 4000 m. The relationship between endemic and total species richness appeared to be curvilinear, providing only partial support for the null hypothesis that species-rich areas are more likely to be centers of endemism by chance alone. An elevational increase in the proportion of ecoregional endemics suggests that deterministic factors also appear to influence endemism in the Andes. When controlling for the effect of area using different species-area relationships, the statistically significant richness peak became more pronounced and shifted upslope to 750 m. Larger species did not have higher elevational mid-points, and mean body size decreased significantly with elevation, contradicting Bergmann's rule. Rapoport's rule was supported: species with higher elevational mid-points had broader elevational ranges, and mean elevational range increased significantly with elevation. The elevational decrease of phanaeine richness is in accordance with studies that demonstrated the combined influence of temperature and water availability on species diversity, but also is consistent with niche conservatism. For invertebrates, confirmation of Rapoport's and refutation of Bergmann's rule appear to be scale-invariant general patterns. Analyses of biogeographic patterns across elevational gradients can provide important insights for identifying conservation priorities. Phanaeines with narrow elevational ranges on isolated low-elevation mountains in eastern Bolivia are at greatest climate-change related extinction risk from range-shift gaps and mountaintop extinctions.

We used manipulative field exclusion experiments to investigate the effects of dung beetles on the spatial aggregation of emerging seedlings of two tropical tree species. The results provide the first direct demonstration that tropical dung beetles reduce seedling clustering, with important implications for plant densities and demography. © 2012 by The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation.

A key challenge for tropical conservation biologists is to assess how forest management practices affect biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions. Dung beetles (Scarabaeidae: Scarabaeinae) provide an ideal focal guild for such studies. We compared dung beetle assemblages and experimentally assessed rates of dung removal and seed burial in undisturbed forest, low-intensity selectively logged forest under sustainable forest management, and high-intensity logged forest, not under sustainable management in Malaysian Borneo. In total, 7923 individuals from 39 species of dung beetle were collected. There were no significant differences in abundance, biomass or diversity across sites. Species richness was significantly lower in the high-intensity logged sites. Beta diversity was low: of 35 species recorded in undisturbed forest sites, 32 were also captured in low-intensity sites and 29 in high-intensity sites. The environmental and vegetation variables measured had little influence on species composition. An average of 63–99% of dung was removed over 24h. Mean dung and seed removal were significantly lower in the high-intensity logged sites. Dung removal rates were significantly and positively correlated with dung beetle species richness, but not with dung beetle biomass or abundance. However, the biomass of large-bodied, nocturnal dung beetles was positively correlated with dung removal. In contrast to previous studies, dung beetle biomass and abundance were not correlated with species richness, indicative of density compensation. Overall, dung beetle communities and associated ecosystem functions were robust to low-intensity but not high-intensity selective logging. These differences may be related to changes in the abundance and biomass of particular dung beetle species or guilds rather than community-wide measures of abundance and biomass, highlighting the need to move beyond simplistic biodiversity-ecosystem functioning correlations to understand the functional consequences of habitat modification in high-diversity ecosystems.