Human Population Size Research Articles

Habitat loss for black flying foxes and implications for Hendra virus

ContextEnvironmental change impacts natural ecosystems and wildlife populations. In Australia, native forests have been heavily cleared and the local emergence of Hendra virus (HeV) has been linked to land-use change, winter habitat loss, and changing bat behavior.ObjectivesWe quantified changes in landscape factors for black flying foxes (Pteropus alecto), a reservoir host of HeV, in sub-tropical Queensland, Australia from 2000–2020. We hypothesized that native winter habitat loss and native remnant forest loss were greatest in areas with the most human population growth.MethodsWe measured the spatiotemporal change in human population size and native ‘remnant’ woody vegetation extent. We assessed changes in the observed P. alecto population and native winter habitats in bioregions where P. alecto are observed roosting in winter. We assessed changes in the amount of remnant vegetation across bioregions and within 50 km foraging buffers around roosts.ResultsHuman populations in these bioregions grew by 1.18 M people, mostly within 50 km foraging areas around roosts. Remnant forest extent decreased overall, but regrowth was observed when policy restricted vegetation clearing. Winter habitats were continuously lost across all spatial scales. Observed roost counts of P. alecto declined.ConclusionNative remnant forest loss and winter habitat loss were not directly linked to spatial human population growth. Rather, most remnant vegetation was cleared for indirect human use. We observed forest loss and regrowth in response to state land clearing policies. Expanded flying fox population surveys will help better understand how land-use change has impacted P. alecto distribution and Hendra virus spillover.

Developing Testable Hypotheses of Anthropogenic Stress: Some Approaches That Work

Conservation Paleobiology (CPB) has many aims, but ultimately depends upon our uncovering, for a target region, the history of environmental pressures and history of biological change, particularly biological change that signifies a response to anthropogenic stress: this is how we detect and correctly attribute deterioration, how we design and evaluate recovery, and how we ultimately assess resilience and sustainability. The focus of concern might be a single taxon of economic or other particular value, or larger-scale changes in biomass, taxonomic or phylogenetic diversity, or trophic complexity. One of the biggest challenges for natural scientists can be building the requisite history of cultural stressors – i.e., uncovering the diverse economic, industrial, social, and regulatory activities that might have affected the system. Such information is commonly not accessible via the Web of Science; it can be extremely important but qualitative or can be quantitative but highly variable in units or methods of measurement; and, with the exception of data on commercial harvesting (e.g., fishing, logging) and human population size, useful time-series are scarce. The CPB scientist thus typically needs to compile their own, original history of human activities having potential to affect natural systems, either to evaluate the (paleo)biological data that they already have on hand (from biomonitoring, live-dead analysis, sedimentary cores) or to frame a new campaign of data collection. Here, I describe approaches to finding and merging cultural data that have worked both for research and for class projects, using two coastal marine examples: (1) testing the effects of historical over-fishing (meta-analyses from the early 2000s), and (2) the unexpected role of land-use in the collapse of the open-shelf benthic ecosystem of southern California.

Cumulative propagule pressure exerted by escaped pet parrots

AbstractThe global pet trade provides a pathway for introduced species to invade new environments. Most studies use trade data as an indirect proxy for propagule pressure exerted by the pet trade. Instead, we quantify the reported rate of loss of captive birds, assess factors that might influence this rate, simulate the survival and retrieval of birds and the overall cumulative propagule pressure exerted by pet birds on the environment.We used online listings of lost birds to estimate the propagule pressure that the pet trade exerts on the establishment of introduced bird species in Aotearoa–New Zealand. Listings from two popular websites were monitored daily for over 3.5 years, and information was recorded on the frequency, location, species composition and characteristics of the loss events. We investigated a range of factors that may influence the rate of loss events, such as season and human population size. We also developed a simulation approach to investigate the cumulative propagule pressure in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city.A total of 1205 birds and at least 33 species were reported lost nationwide during our monitoring period, 92% of which were parrots. We found that the reported loss rate was higher in areas of higher human population size and median income, and lower in the winter months.Simulation results predict that in any given month in Auckland there is an average of at least 491 escaped birds, including 136 potential breeding pairs, and for seven species the chance that at least one locality has a male/female pair at large exceeds 80%.Synthesis and applications. Online listings of lost pets provide an excellent source of data from which to identify species with high propagule pressure in specific localities. We identified escaped parrot species as a high‐risk invasion pathway, as they contribute to a high and consistent propagule pressure. A preventative approach, by banning the sale of these species, is the most appropriate pest management strategy for reducing the probability of establishment and potential impact.

The island biogeography of human population size.

For decades, biogeographers have sought a better understanding of how organisms are distributed among islands. However, the island biogeography of humans remains largely unknown. Here, we investigate how human population size varies among 486 islands at two spatial scales. At a global scale, we tested whether population size increases with island area and declines with island elevation and nearest mainland, as is common in non-human species, or whether humans escape such biogeographic constraints. At a regional scale, we tested whether population sizes vary among islands within archipelagos according to the positioning of different cultural source pools. Results illustrate that on a global scale, human populations increased in size with island area, similar to non-human species, yet they did not decline in size with elevation and distance to nearest mainland. At a regional scale, human population size often varied among islands within archipelagos relative to the location of different cultural source pools. Despite broad-scale similarities in the geographical distribution of human and non-human species among islands, results from this study indicate that the island biogeography of humans may also be influenced by archipelago-specific social, political and historical circumstances.

Changes in human effective population size overlap the beginning and end of a critical time in European medieval history, also characterized by the Black Death epidemic

The intersection of historiography and archaeology has long pondered over the impact of known historical events on census size. In recent times, genetic methods have successfully traced changes over time in the genetic size of a given population. Moreover, the correlation between genetic and census sizes of a population is contingent on several demographic assumptions that are relatively simple for our species. Our research endeavours to examine the changes in effective population size (Ne) in all human populations in the 1000 Genomes Project over the past two millennia. We compared our findings with estimates from historical censuses where available. Our investigation confirms what was already observed in France and reveals a common pattern found in most European populations, which manifests as a drastic population decrease beginning around the year 1300 and growth after the year 1600. This profile aligns well with known wars, famines, and epidemics that characterized these trying times in Europe. The most notable among them being the second plague epidemic, caused by Y. pestis, which in Europe commenced in 1347/8 and is also known as the "Black Death". Our findings demonstrate that changes in genetic population size through time can serve as a dependable proxy for census size, which is independent of potential biases in the written historical record. Consequently, we provide a robust estimate of the impact caused by the population crisis that followed the year 1300 on the European genomic landscape in light of previous results. Our study offers a new paradigm for interpreting the past and underscores the potential of genetic methods in reconstructing historical events.

Characterization of Arabian Peninsula whole exomes: Contributing to the catalogue of human diversity

The cataloging of human genomic variation is a challenging task given the size and diversity of the global human population. Several geographic regions remain under-characterized, such as the Arabian Peninsula (AP), which is unique in being at the cross-roads between Africa, Europe and Asia, and hence is a continuous hot-spot for admixture, counteracted by the worldwide highest levels of consanguinity. We conducted whole exome sequencing enriched for untranslated regions (WES+ UTRs) on 90 Arabians, and identified a considerable amount of new variants (∼17,000 out of ∼145,000). By applying pathogenic predicting tools, we demonstrated that AP WES have a high burden in potentially deleterious variants, especially in nonsynonymous and UTR variants, and that these are located in genes associated with neurologic diseases and congenital malformations. This burden was significantly and positively correlated with the consanguinity level. These results testify the importance of surveying consanguineous populations where pathogenic variants are not efficiently eliminated by genetic drift.

Endemic medicinal plant distribution correlated with stable climate, precipitation, and cultural diversity

Medicinal plants provide crucial ecosystem services, especially in developing countries such as China, which harbors diverse endemic medicinal plant species with substantial cultural and economic value. Accordingly, understanding the patterns and drivers of medicinal plant distribution is critical. However, few studies have investigated the patterns and drivers of endemic medicinal plants distribution in China. Here, we linked endemic medicinal plants distribution with possible explanatory variables, i.e., paleoclimate change, contemporary climate, altitudinal range and ethnic minority human population size at the prefecture city level in China. Our results show that endemic medicinal plants are concentrated in southern China, especially in southwestern China. Notably, both endemic medicinal plant species richness and the ratio of endemic medicinal plant species richness are negatively associated with glacial-interglacial anomaly in temperature, and positively associated with contemporary precipitation and altitudinal range. In addition, we found that endemic medicinal plant species richness is positively associated with ethnic minority population sizes as well as its ratio to the overall population size. These findings suggest that the distribution of endemic medicinal plants is determined by multiple drivers. Furthermore, our findings stress that dramatic future climate changes and massive anthropogenic activities in southern China pose great challenges to the conservation of China's endemic medicinal plants.

MicrobiomeCensus estimates human population sizes from wastewater samples based on inter-individual variability in gut microbiomes.

The metagenome embedded in urban sewage is an attractive new data source to understand urban ecology and assess human health status at scales beyond a single host. Analyzing the viral fraction of wastewater in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has shown the potential of wastewater as aggregated samples for early detection, prevalence monitoring, and variant identification of human diseases in large populations. However, using census-based population size instead of real-time population estimates can mislead the interpretation of data acquired from sewage, hindering assessment of representativeness, inference of prevalence, or comparisons of taxa across sites. Here, we show that taxon abundance and sub-species diversisty in gut-associated microbiomes are new feature space to utilize for human population estimation. Using a population-scale human gut microbiome sample of over 1,100 people, we found that taxon-abundance distributions of gut-associated multi-person microbiomes exhibited generalizable relationships with respect to human population size. Here and throughout this paper, the human population size is essentially the sample size from the wastewater sample. We present a new algorithm, MicrobiomeCensus, for estimating human population size from sewage samples. MicrobiomeCensus harnesses the inter-individual variability in human gut microbiomes and performs maximum likelihood estimation based on simultaneous deviation of multiple taxa’s relative abundances from their population means. MicrobiomeCensus outperformed generic algorithms in data-driven simulation benchmarks and detected population size differences in field data. New theorems are provided to justify our approach. This research provides a mathematical framework for inferring population sizes in real time from sewage samples, paving the way for more accurate ecological and public health studies utilizing the sewage metagenome.

Cumulative effects of long-term anthropogenic impacts on resident fish communities in subarctic fishing harbours

Ecosystems perceived to have sustained historical human pressure from multiple stressors are often considered to be degraded. Diversity and abundance of marine macroflora and macrofauna were observed at 17 harbour sites in Newfoundland (Canada) over four consecutive years (2008–2011), to determine cumulative effects of long-term anthropogenic impacts on coastal marine biota in small fishing harbours. A Principal Component Analysis was applied to evaluate the relative effects of physical harbour characteristics (harbour shape, size, and orientation), and those directly associated with anthropogenic influence (current and historical human population size, human landscape “footprint”, and operating capacity of the local fishing industry), on marine vegetation, fish, and invertebrate macrofauna. The first three principal components explained 77% of the cumulative variance of the physical harbour and anthropogenic variables. PC1 was dominated by variables associated with human use, and site depth; PC2 was associated with physical site orientation and the cumulative wharf length; and PC3 was associated with long-term use and harbour area. The densities of cod (Gadus spp.) and crab species increased significantly along the gradient of human impact metrics, while winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes americanus), cunner (Tautogolaborus adspersus) and shorthorn sculpin (Myoxocephalus scorpius) decreased. Sessile fauna diversity and density, and flora percent cover correlated with long-term use and harbour area. Species densities changed in response to cumulative effects of long term human settlement near harbours, but prominent species were ubiquitous in these coastal ecosystems.

A retrospective socio‐ecological analysis of seal strandings in the Gulf of Maine

AbstractOver the past several decades, the Gulf of Maine has experienced significant socio‐ecological change. Coastlines have become more densely populated and developed, rapid and dramatic climate change has affected coastal ocean environments, and seal populations have grown as a result of federal protections. Long‐term data sets from marine mammal stranding networks represent a valuable resource for investigating indicator species for coastal ocean health during this period of change. Using data collected from stranded harbor (Phoca vitulina), harp (Pagophilus groenlandicus), and gray (Halichoerus grypus) seals from 2002 to 2017 in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, we tested for spatiotemporal correlations between stranding density and human population density, size of and proximity to seal haul‐outs, sea surface temperature, North Atlantic Oscillation, snowfall, and sea ice extent. We found that in the Gulf of Maine proximity to coastal human population centers and large seal haul‐outs are the greatest drivers of reported seal stranding density. Environmental factors played an important role only for harp seals, which do not breed in the study area, although recent shifts in the environmental seascape have the potential to affect all seal species in the Gulf of Maine.

Cause of Land Degradation and Rehabilitation Practices in Case of Amba Sidist Western Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, land degradation has become a serious problem affecting all spheres of social, economic and political life of the population. It is one of the major challenges to agricultural development and food security of the country. In order to solve the problem of land degradation, a lot of efforts have been made since 1970s. However, at the end the intervention couldn’t be sustainable and able to bring the intended impact. Thus, identification of challenges in relation to land rehabilitation practices is of paramount importance. The study was undertaken in Amba 6 kebele. In order to achieve the objective of the study, both primary and secondary data were generated by employing qualitative and quantitative data. Stratified sampling technique was used to select 76 household heads were selected from on Amba 6 by using stratified random sampling as it is believed that the households are similar with respect to the characteristics that influence the research output. The process of analysis of the study was carried out using qualitative description and quantitative analysis. The quantitative data was analyzed using frequency, percentage and mean when appropriate. The qualitative data was discussed to substantiate the study. The findings of the study indicated that decrease in productivity of farm land, involvement in off-farm activities, increase in size of human population, lack of full cooperation of family members to involve in land rehabilitation practices, low assistance gained from neighbor-hoods, less access to extension service and inadequate attention from woreda Agriculture and Rural Development office are the major challenges encountering the implementation of land rehabilitation practices in effective way.

Community‐based monitoring of wild felid hunting in Central Amazonia

AbstractHunting is a critical issue in wild felid conservation, contributing to the decline of these species worldwide. Here, we present 18 years of a community‐based monitoring program, quantifying and characterizing wild felid hunting in two sustainable development reserves in Central Amazonia. We investigated how felid hunting was affected by the flood pulse and whether local human population size, habitat type, and total hunting events influenced felid hunting. We recorded 71 adult felids being killed, most of them in opportunistic events (88.7%), usually during hunting expeditions aimed at other game species. Four felid species were recorded in the hunts (Panthera onca, Leopardus pardalis, Puma concolor, and Leopardus wiedii) with jaguars accounting for almost half of all hunting events (N = 35). We found that more felid hunting events occurred during the flooded season, in more populated communities, and in várzea habitats. Most felids were hunted opportunistically, demonstrating the complexity of human‐felid interactions. Stories of attacks on humans are widespread in the study area, which may strengthen an instinctive fear of felids, driving their persecution. The increase of hunting events during the flooded season seems to be related to a higher probability of encounters between humans and wild felids. High waters make fishing difficult, therefore, locals hunt more, entering deep into the forest through flooded habitats. Since jaguars have an arboreal lifestyle during the flooded season in várzea forests, they are easily spotted by locals and have less of a chance to escape since they are slower and more exposed when swimming, which increases the probability of being killed. It is generally acknowledged that involving local stakeholders in conservation projects is essential for their success. In our case, collaboration among researchers and community members was fundamental to access hunting information. We show that community‐based monitoring empowers the local communities and facilitates data collection on sensitive topics.

Scientists' warning on population

Humanity must commit to transformative change on all levels in order to address the climate emergency and biodiversity collapse. In particular, stabilizing and ultimately reducing the human population size is necessary to ensure the long-term wellbeing of our species and other life on Earth. We show how this transition can be accomplished in an equitable framework that promotes human rights. Specifically, we issue a global appeal for women and men to have at most one child and call for policy-makers to implement population policies that improve education for girls and young women and ensure the availability of high-quality family-planning services.

Old World Vultures Reflect Effects of Environmental Pollutants Through Human Encroachment.

African wildlife face challenges from many stressors including current and emerging contaminants, habitat and resource loss, poaching, intentional and unintentional poisoning, and climate-related environmental change. The plight of African vultures exemplifies these challenges due to environmental contaminants and other stressors acting on individuals and populations that are already threatened or endangered. Many of these threats emanate from increasing human population size and settlement density, habitat loss from changing land use for agriculture, residential areas, and industry, and climate-related changes in resource availability. Environmental chemicals that are hazardous include legacy chemicals, emerging chemicals of concern, and high-volume-use chemicals that are employed as weed killers and in other agricultural applications. Furthermore, there are differences in risk for species living in close proximity to humans or in areas affected by habitat loss, climate, and industry. Monitoring programs are essential to track the status of nesting pairs, offspring survival, longevity, and lifetime productivity. This is important for long-lived birds, such as vultures, that may be especially vulnerable to chronic exposure to chemicals as obligate scavengers. Furthermore, their position in the food web may increase risk due to biomagnification of chemicals. We review the primary chemical hazards to Old World vultures and the interacting stressors affecting these and other birds. Habitat is a major consideration for vultures, with tree-nesters and cliff-nesters potentially experiencing different risks of exposure to environmental chemicals. The present review provides information from long-term monitoring programs and discusses a range of these threats and their effects on vulture populations. Environ Toxicol Chem 2022;41:1586-1603. © 2022 SETAC.

Scaling patterns of human diseases and population size in Colombia

Colombia has had one of the largest numbers of internally displaced populations in the world and in 2016 entered a period of post-conflict. These socio-ecological and geopolitical processes and trends have increased the migration of people towards cities and accordingly are affecting the distribution and occurrence of tropical diseases in its urban and peri-urban areas. Studies have suggested that anthropogenic phenomena such as urbanization scale according to the size of human populations regardless of cultural context. But, other studies show that health epidemics such as malarial and human immunodeficiency virus infections, follow a scale-free distribution in terms of urban population size and density. Here, we explore these relationships and dynamics in a tropical context using statistical analyses and available geospatial data to identify the scale relationships between urban growth processes and disease transmission in Colombia. Our results show that the dynamics of rural populations and certain diseases were characterized by power-laws that are indeed observed in urbanization studies. However, as opposed to these other studies, we found that malaria presented a higher intensity of infection in human settlements with less than 50,000 individuals and in particular for ethnic, indigenous populations. Results indicate that disease and urbanization relationships in Colombia do indeed follow scales; findings that differ from previous epidemiological studies such as those for malarial infection. Additionally, we identified trends showing that malarial infections become endemic in peri-urban areas. This approach using few, but robust and readily available, data is key for managing public health issues and understanding the spatial distribution of environmental impacts in the urbanizing tropics.

Dating the Emergence of Human Endemic Coronaviruses.

Four endemic coronaviruses infect humans and cause mild symptoms. Because previous analyses were based on a limited number of sequences and did not control for effects that affect molecular dating, we re-assessed the timing of endemic coronavirus emergence. After controlling for recombination, selective pressure, and molecular clock model, we obtained similar tMRCA (time to the most recent common ancestor) estimates for the four coronaviruses, ranging from 72 (HCoV-229E) to 54 (HCoV-NL63) years ago. The split times of HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43 from camel alphacoronavirus and bovine coronavirus were dated ~268 and ~99 years ago. The split times of HCoV-HKU1 and HCoV-NL63 could not be calculated, as their zoonoticic sources are unknown. To compare the timing of coronavirus emergence to that of another respiratory virus, we recorded the occurrence of influenza pandemics since 1500. Although there is no clear relationship between pandemic occurrence and human population size, the frequency of influenza pandemics seems to intensify starting around 1700, which corresponds with the initial phase of exponential increase of human population and to the emergence of HCoV-229E. The frequency of flu pandemics in the 19th century also suggests that the concurrence of HCoV-OC43 emergence and the Russian flu pandemic may be due to chance.

A Mathematical Model of Solid Waste Accumulation and Treatment with a Varying Human Population Size

Solid waste management has continued to be an increasing challenge worldwide and the situation has become worse in urban areas of developing countries. The rapid urban population growth, mainly due to high immigration and birth rates, has led to large amounts of solid waste, making it difficult for authorities to effectively manage the accumulated waste. Existing mathematical models of solid waste accumulation consider solid waste management by an external effort and do not address the contribution of the population in the management process. In this study, a mathematical model of solid waste accumulation is developed and analysed incorporating parameters for human immigration and solid waste recycling by particular population age groups. The solid waste is considered to be of two categories: biodegradable and non-biodegradable. Existence of equilibrium points is established and their stability analysed. Numerical simulations are done using MATLAB and Maple. Results show that solid waste increases with increasing human population and thus a solid waste free environment cannot be achieved. Sensitivity analysis suggests that improving the biodegradability of solid waste coupled with aiding solid waste decay and recycling reduces the final size of solid waste.

Epidemic malaria dynamics in Ethiopia: the role of self-limiting, poverty, HIV, climate change and human population growth

BackgroundDuring the last two decades, researchers have suggested that the changes of malaria cases in African highlands were driven by climate change. Recently, a study claimed that the malaria cases (Plasmodium falciparum) in Oromia (Ethiopia) were related to minimum temperature. Critics highlighted that other variables could be involved in the dynamics of the malaria. The literature mentions that beyond climate change, trends in malaria cases could be involved with HIV, human population size, poverty, investments in health control programmes, among others.MethodsPopulation ecologists have developed a simple framework, which helps to explore the contributions of endogenous (density-dependent) and exogenous processes on population dynamics. Both processes may operate to determine the dynamic behaviour of a particular population through time. Briefly, density-dependent (endogenous process) occurs when the per capita population growth rate (R) is determined by the previous population size. An exogenous process occurs when some variable affects another but is not affected by the changes it causes. This study explores the dynamics of malaria cases (Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax) in Oromia region in Ethiopia and explores the interaction between minimum temperature, HIV, poverty, human population size and social instability.ResultsThe results support that malaria dynamics showed signs of a negative endogenous process between R and malaria infectious class, and a weak evidence to support the climate change hypothesis.ConclusionPoverty, HIV, population size could interact to force malaria models parameters explaining the dynamics malaria observed at Ethiopia from 1985 to 2007.

Microplastics in intertidal water of South Australia and the mussel Mytilus spp.; the contrasting effect of population on concentration

Microplastics, plastic particles <5 mm in size, are of global concern as human-caused pollutants in marine and fresh waters, and yet little is known of their distribution, behaviour and ecological impact in the intertidal environment of South Australia. This study confirms for the first time, the presence of microplastic in the South Australian intertidal ecosystem by quantifying the abundance of particles in intertidal water and in the keystone species, the blue mussel, Mytilus spp., an important fisheries species, at ten and six locations respectively, along the South Australian coastline. For a remote region known for its pristine environment, microplastic concentration in intertidal water was found to be low to moderate (mean = 8.21 particles l−1 ± 4.91) relative to global levels and microplastic abundance in mussels (mean = 3.58 ± 8.18 particles individual−1) was within the range also reported globally. Microplastic particles were ubiquitous across sites and bioavailable by size in water (mean = 906.36 μm) and in mussel (mean = 983.29 μm) raising concerns for the health of South Australia's unique coastal ecosystems and for the human food chain. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between human coastal population size and microplastic concentration in intertidal water, irrespective of influences from industry - tourism, fishing and shipping ports. FTIR analysis determined plastic type to include polyamide (PA), polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), acrylic resin, polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) and cellulose, suggesting synthetic and semi-synthetic particles from single-use, short-life cycle products, fabrics, ropes and cordage. Our findings shed light on the urgent need to establish the local sources of microplastic pollution in order to assist the community, industry and government to reduce the impact of microplastic on the fragile marine systems within South Australian intertidal waters and on the organisms associated with the human food chain.

Nationally reported metrics can’t adequately guide transformative change in biodiversity policy

Biodiversity loss is rampant (1⇓–3). To safeguard the future of life on Earth, there are growing calls for transformative change in biodiversity policy [i.e., for a fundamental and system-wide reorganization of how such policy is designed, implemented, and enforced across scales and sectors (1)]. Here we argue that to achieve this change, nations need to urgently implement robust biodiversity metrics into decision-making processes and policy. To have any chance of retaining the globe’s biodiversity, nations must implement better, more robust biodiversity metrics into decision-making processes and policy. Image credit: Shutterstock/Stu Shaw. Because biodiversity sustains human life and economy, biodiversity metrics should be elevated to the same level as other core statistics and should be regarded as essential for guiding societies toward transformative change. Biodiversity metrics should be held to the same standards, rigor, and accuracy as any other nationally reported data, such as those on human population size, age structure, economic growth, and agricultural or industrial production. Measures of the state of biodiversity should thus be published as part of national statistics and mandated by legislation to ensure delivery. In March 2021, the 52nd United Nations Statistical Commission introduced the notion of biodiversity accounting in economic and financial decision-making, a move that represents an important step in changing international attitudes toward enhancing biodiversity policies. As researchers continue to gather knowledge on the structure, mechanisms, and determinants of biodiversity, governments should leverage that knowledge to guide policy. We therefore call for stronger efforts to implement monitoring schemes that provide species abundance data and for metrics that are globally harmonized to provide a more accurate quantification of patterns of biodiversity change (4, 5). To guide policy, governments and institutions require statistics that adequately and sensitively reflect ongoing change. Most current assessments of biodiversity status and trends are … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: tomas.roslin{at}helsinki.fi or anna-liisa.laine{at}uzh.ch. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1