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Abstract Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder associated with severe visuocognitive impairment. Individuals with WS also report difficulties with everyday wayfinding. To study the development of body‐, environment‐, and object‐based spatial frames of reference in WS, we tested 45 children and adults with WS on a search task in which the participant and a spatial array are moved with respect to each other. Although individuals with WS showed a marked delay, like young controls they demonstrated independent, additive use of body‐ and environment‐based frames of reference. Crucially, object‐based (intrinsic) representations based on local landmarks within the array were only marginally used even by adults with WS, whereas in typical development these emerge at 5 years. Deficits in landmark use are consistent with wayfinding difficulties in WS, and may also contribute to problems with basic localization, since in typical development landmark‐based representations supplement those based on the body and on self‐motion. Difficulties with inhibition or mental rotation may be further components in the impaired ability to use the correct reference frame in WS.

AbstractIt has been suggested that learning an object's location relative to (1) intramaze landmarks and (2) local boundaries is supported by parallel striatal and hippocampal systems, both of which rely upon input from a third system for orientation. However, little is known about the developmental trajectories of these systems' contributions to spatial learning. The present study tested 5‐ and 7‐year‐old children and adults on a water maze‐like task in which all three types of cue were available. Participants had to remember the location of an object hidden in a circular bounded environment containing a moveable intramaze landmark and surrounded by distal cues. Children performed less accurately than adults, and showed a different pattern of error. While adults relied most on the stable cue provided by the boundary, children relied on both landmark and boundary cues similarly, suggesting a developmental increase in the weighting given to boundary cues. Further, adults were most accurate in coding angular information (dependent on distal cues), whereas children were most accurate in coding distance, suggesting a developing ability to use distal cues to orient. These results indicate that children as young as 5 years use boundary, intramaze landmark, and distal visual cues in parallel, but that the basic accuracy and relative weighting of these cues changes during subsequent development.

The United States of America (USA) is the largest consumer of internationally legally traded wildlife in the world. A proportion of this trade consists of species, products and parts listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which are recorded in the CITES Trade Database. Using this database, we quantified wildlife entering the USA from major exporting countries and political regions, as well as the most traded wildlife products and taxonomic groups. The trends in legal trade, and seizures of illegally traded items, over time were also examined for 21 taxonomic groups, and the relationships between legal trade and seizures were tested against four national measures of biodiversity. We found that: 1) there seems to be a overall relationship between legal and illegal trade flows; 2) Asia was the main region exporting CITES-listed wildlife products and parts to the USA between 1979 and 2013; 3) some taxonomic groups are traded more frequently for consumption while others are more frequently traded as pets or fashion items: 4) bears, crocodilians and the group 'other mammals' (mammals that do not fall into Ursidae, Felidae, Cetacea, Proboscidea, Primates or Rhinocerotidae) increased in both legal trade and seizures from 1980 to 2013; 5) both seizures and legally traded items from felines and elephants have significantly decreased through time; 6) volumes of legally traded species and seizures are correlated with four attributes of exporting countries: species endemism, species richness, number of IUCN threatened species and country size. One of the challenges facing analyses documenting legal and illegal trade in CITES-listed species is the variation in reporting efficiency and enforcement over time; this is minimised here because we only use import and seizure data from one country – the United States – which has maintained a similar enforcement system over time. We therefore provide a broadly comprehensive analysis of wildlife imports into the USA in a form that can be used ...

To inform governmental discussions on the nature of a revised Strategic Plan for Biodiversity of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), we reviewed the relevant literature and assessed the framing of the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets in the current strategic plan. We asked international experts from nongovernmental organizations, academia, government agencies, international organizations, research institutes, and the CBD to score the Aichi Targets and their constituent elements against a set of specific, measurable, ambitious, realistic, unambiguous, scalable, and comprehensive criteria (SMART based, excluding time bound because all targets are bound to 2015 or 2020). We then investigated the relationship between these expert scores and reported progress toward the target elements by using the findings from 2 global progress assessments (Global Biodiversity Outlook and the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). We analyzed the data with ordinal logistic regressions. We found significant positive relationships (p < 0.05) between progress and the extent to which the target elements were perceived to be measurable, realistic, unambiguous, and scalable. There was some evidence of a relationship between progress and specificity of the target elements, but no relationship between progress and ambition. We are the first to show associations between progress and the extent to which the Aichi Targets meet certain SMART criteria. As negotiations around the post‐2020 biodiversity framework proceed, decision makers should strive to ensure that new or revised targets are effectively structured and clearly worded to allow the translation of targets into actionable policies that can be successfully implemented nationally, regionally, and globally.

The international legal trade in wildlife can provide economic and other benefits, but when unsustainable can be a driver of population declines. This impact is magnified by the additional burden of illegal trade, yet how it covaries with legal trade remains little explored. We combined law-enforcement time-series of seizures of wildlife goods imported into the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) with data on reported legal trade to evaluate the evidence for any relationships. Our analysis examined 28 US and 20 EU products derived from CITES-listed species with high volume and frequency of both reported trade and seizures. On average, seizures added 28% and 9% to US and EU reported legal trade levels respectively, and in several cases exceeded legal imports. We detected a significant but weak overall positive relationship between seizure volumes and reported trade into the US over time, but not into the EU. These results highlight the importance of maintaining long-term records of border seizures and enforcement effort, and accounting for illegal trade where possible in non-detriment findings. Our findings suggest a complex and nuanced temporal association between the illegal and legal wildlife trades.

Consumption of globally traded agricultural commodities like soy and palm oil is one of the primary causes of deforestation and biodiversity loss in some of the world's most species-rich ecosystems. However, the complexity of global supply chains has confounded efforts to reduce impacts. Companies and governments with sustainability commitments struggle to understand their own sourcing patterns, while the activities of more unscrupulous actors are conveniently masked by the opacity of global trade. We combine state-of-the art material flow, economic trade and biodiversity impact models to produce an innovative approach for understanding the impacts of trade on biodiversity loss and the roles of remote markets and actors. We do this for the production of soy in the Brazilian Cerrado, home to more than 5% of the world´s species. Distinct sourcing patterns of consumer countries and trading companies result in substantially different impacts on endemic species. Connections between individual buyers and specific hotspots explain the disproportionate impacts of some actors on endemic species and individual threatened species, such as the particular impact of EU consumers on the recent habitat losses for the iconic Giant Anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). In making these linkages explicit, our approach enables commodity buyers and investors to target their efforts much more closely to improve the sustainability of their supply chains in their sourcing regions, while also transforming our ability to monitor the impact of such commitments over time.

The Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), established in 2012 to counter the biodiversity crisis, requires the best scientific input available to function as a successful science-policy interface that addresses the knowledge needs of governments for safeguarding nature and its services. For the macroecological research community, IPBES presents a great opportunity to contribute knowledge, data and methods, and to help identify and address knowledge gaps and methodological impediments. Here, we outline our perspectives on how macroecology may contribute to IPBES. We focus on three essential topics for the IPBES process, where contributions by macroecologists will be invaluable: biodiversity data, biodiversity modelling, and modelling of ecosystem services. For each topic, we discuss the potential for contributions from the macroecological community, as well as limitations, challenges, and knowledge gaps. Overall, engagement of the macroecological community with IPBES should lead to mutual benefits. Macroecologists may profit as their contributions to IPBES may strengthen and inspire them as a community to design and conduct research that provides society-relevant results. Furthermore, macroecological contributions will help IPBES become a successful instrument of knowledge exchange and uncover the linkages between biodiversity and human well-being.

Consumption of globally traded agricultural commodities like soy and palm oil is one of the primary causes of deforestation and biodiversity loss in some of the world's most species-rich ecosystems. However, the complexity of global supply chains has confounded efforts to reduce impacts. Companies and governments with sustainability commitments struggle to understand their own sourcing patterns, while the activities of more unscrupulous actors are conveniently masked by the opacity of global trade. We combine state-of-the-art material flow, economic trade, and biodiversity impact models to produce an innovative approach for understanding the impacts of trade on biodiversity loss and the roles of remote markets and actors. We do this for the production of soy in the Brazilian Cerrado, home to more than 5% of the world´s species. Distinct sourcing patterns of consumer countries and trading companies result in substantially different impacts on endemic species. Connections between individual buyers and specific hot spots explain the disproportionate impacts of some actors on endemic species and individual threatened species, such as the particular impact of European Union consumers on the recent habitat losses for the iconic giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). In making these linkages explicit, our approach enables commodity buyers and investors to target their efforts much more closely to improve the sustainability of their supply chains in their sourcing regions while also transforming our ability to monitor the impact of such commitments over time.

During the past century, anthropogenic activities have altered the distribution of mercury (Hg) on the earth's surface. The impacts of such alterations to the natural cycle of Hg can be minimized through coordinated management, policy decisions, and legislative regulations. An ability to quantitatively measure environmental Hg loadings and spatiotemporal trends of their fate in the environment is critical for science-based decision making. Here, we outline a Hg monitoring program for temperate estuarine and marine ecosystems on the Atlantic Coast of North America. This framework follows a similar, previously developed plan for freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems in the United States. Methylmercury (MeHg) is the toxicologically relevant form of Hg, and its ability to bioaccumulate in organisms and biomagnify in food webs depends on numerous biological and physicochemical factors that affect its production, transport, and fate. Therefore, multiple indicators are needed to fully characterize potential changes of Hg loadings in the environment and MeHg bioaccumulation through the different marine food webs. In addition to a description of how to monitor environmental Hg loads for air, sediment, and water, we outline a species-specific matrix of biotic indicators that include shellfish and other invertebrates, fish, birds and mammals. Such a Hg monitoring template is applicable to coastal areas across the Northern Hemisphere and is transferable to arctic and tropical marine ecosystems. We believe that a comprehensive approach provides an ability to best detect spatiotemporal Hg trends for both human and ecological health, and concurrently identify food webs and species at greatest risk to MeHg toxicity.