Facilitating species expansion ‘Protected Areas’ act as a bridge for biodiversity.
The benefits of protected areas (PAs) for biodiversity have been questioned in the context of climate change because PAs are static, whereas the distributions of species are dynamic. Current PAs may, however, continue to be important if they provide suitable locations for species to colonize at their leading-edge range boundaries, thereby enabling spread into new regions.
A new report by UK researchers, offers findings which highlight the importance of current PAs for facilitating range expansions and show that a small subset of the landscape receives a high proportion of colonizations by range-expanding species.
Source: PNAS August 14, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1210251109
