1st EUROPEAN CONGRESS OF CONSERVATION BIOLOGY 22-26 August, 2006 Eger - Hungary BOOK OF ABSTRACTS PATRONS OF ECCB 2006 László SÓLYOM President of the Republic of Hungary Miklós PERSÁNYI Minister of Environment and Water Management of the Republic of Hungary 1 1st European Congress of Conservation Biology - Hungary, 2006. ABSTRACTS Ordered by last name of first author Abstracts of plenary lectures………………………………………………………... 5 Abstracts of symposia and contributed oral presentations………………………. 9 Abstracts of poster presentations…………………………………………………. 91 Author index……………………………………………………...………………… 173 1st European Congress of Conservation Biology - Hungary, 2006. PLENARY LECTURES ABSTRACTS ABSTRACTS OF PLENARY LECTURES 5 6 1st European Congress of Conservation Biology - Hungary, 2006. PLENARY LECTURES ABSTRACTS 1. EUROPEAN BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION: 3. BIODIVERSITY LOSS; EUROPE IN A GLOBAL SCIENCE, POLICY AND PRACTICE SETTING Professor Sir LAWTON, JOHN, Royal Commission on MACE, GEORGINA, Institute of Zoology, Zoological Environmental Pollution, United Kingdom Society of London, United Kingdom Europe is an extremely diverse continent, culturally, In 2005 the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) topographically, climatically and biologically. So there reported on the state of the world’s ecosystems and their cannot be one solution to the conservation of our ability to continue to meet the needs of people. As part of biodiversity. Nevertheless, the European Union is this work, a systematic review of the role of biodiversity, committed to halting the loss of biodiversity by 2010 – a and its status and trends was completed at global and bold aspiration! How might this be achieved, and what sub-global levels. This information is important in are the major biological, political and policy-related assessing the extent to which we can and will meet the challenges (not least that not all European nations are in 2010 goal for biodiversity loss to be halted in Europe. In the EU)? Fundamentally, conservation is not about this talk I will review what the science in the MA is telling science. Many conservation biologists will react with us about the pressures affecting biodiversity, and what hostility to this statement, but it is true. Rather, ‘society’ - we know about it status in Europe compared to the rest policy makers, politicians and people generally - have to of the world. I will assess the range of policy options and decide what it is they value about biodiversity on cultural, the evidence for their effectiveness at different ethical, moral, economic and other grounds. Of course, geographical and political scales. Finally, I will try to draw conservation biologists have a say in this process, but we together the critical science gaps that are limiting our are one competing voice among many. Conservation ability to both detect and respond to the changes taking science kicks in when we know what the goals are, and place in the natural world. many of the means again have very little to do with biology. They lie in a maze of European and national legislation, EU Directives, economic instruments and so on. This lecture will explore these issues with examples of successes and failures for conservation across 4. MOVING TARGETS: PLANNING TO MAINTAIN Europe, not least the huge challenges posed by climate BIODIVERSITY PROCESSES IN THE CONTEXT OF change. ANTHROPOGENIC LANDSCAPE DYNAMICS PRESSEY, ROBERT, University of Queensland, Australia; Cabeza, Mar, University of Helsinki, Finland; 2. THE NATURA 2000 NETWORK – TIME FOR Cowling, Richard, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan MOVING TO MANAGEMENT University, South Africa; Possingham, Hugh, University of Queensland, Australia; Wilson, Kerrie, University of MIKO, LADISLAV, Directorate General Environment, Queensland, Australia European Commission, Brussels, Belgium Early methods for systematic conservation planning dealt Natura 2000, the ecological network of the European with biodiversity pattern - relatively static, mappable Union, now consists of over 25,000 sites. The nature and features such as vegetation types and species locality status of these sites vary considerably, partly reflecting records. They also implicitly assumed that landscapes geographic variation, but also differences in historical were static and that areas selected for conservation land use. The network is largely complete for the 15 older would retain their values until protective management Member States, with the exception of the marine could be implemented. Recent advances in the field have environment. It is advancing well in the new 10 Member begun to address two important areas. The first concerns States. Therefore attention should now increasingly focus the planning implications of biodiversity processes on a structured approach to management of Natura operating over a wide range of spatial and temporal 2000. This should recognise different management scales. The second concerns ways of scheduling the categories, ranging possibly from strictly protected areas implementation of conservation action so that losses of through various degrees of control to heavily used and biodiversity caused by continued development and managed areas. Toolkits will need to be developed to extractive activities can be minimized. We draw on case assist site managers to achieve combined and studies and recent reviews to summarize recent work in sometimes conflicting goals of favourable conservation both these areas, illustrating requirements for data and status for habitat types and species for which the sites optional methods for analysis. We also emphasise that were designated. A wider European approach to allowing the intersection of these two areas – planning for natural processes to work in favour of biodiversity and biodiversity processes in the context of anthropogenic ecosystem services, including e.g. the need for definition landscape dynamics – defines the reality of conservation of wilderness areas in some habitats close to climax planning in many regions, but has been barely explored stage, will need to be addressed. The European by scientists and planners. We discuss some recent Commission, following up its recent Communication on progress in combining them and list the unresolved Biodiversity, aims to promote the necessary discussions issues that need attention soon. with EU Member States and stakeholder groups on how to achieve this objective. 7 8 1st European Congress of Conservation Biology - Hungary, 2006. ORAL ABSTRACTS ABSTRACTS OF SYMPOSIA AND CONTRIBUTED ORAL PRESENTATIONS 9 10 1st European Congress of Conservation Biology - Hungary, 2006. ORAL ABSTRACTS 5. THE HEIGHT OF THE STUMP MATTERS.. - AT existing reserve design methods that seek efficiency and LEAST FOR WOOD LIVING BEETLES clustering of sites are not suitable to deal with the occurrence of hotspots. Those that incorporate target criteria to encourage ABRAHAMSSON, MARKUS, Swedish University of Agricultural aggregation of sites are not capable to avoid the fragmentation Cciences, Sweden; Lindbladh, Matts, Swedish University of that the existence of distant hotspots creates. Methods that Agricultural Cciences, Sweden enforce strict contiguity act in the same way as the algorithms meant to establish wildlife corridors to connect fragmented The making of high-stumps (stumps cut at about 3 meters) is landscapes, and give rise to long and thin reserves, where edge- becoming more and more common in Scandinavian forestry in effects and species avoidance are enhanced. Hence specific order to increase the amount of dead wood. Several studies of methods to design ecological reserves when hotspots exist are created high-stumps have shown their high conservation value needed. We propose a 0/1 linear programming model to deal for many wood living species, especially saproxylic beetles. with this issue and report computational results with two However, on a clear-cut the amounts of dead wood and bark datasets concerning the distribution of 118 species of breeding surface on high-stumps are small compared to the amount on birds and 45 species of butterflies. the ordinary cut stumps. So far the beetle fauna of high-stumps and that of ordinary cut stumps have not been compared and that was the aim of the present study. A total of 10,984 8. THE NATTERJACK TOAD (BUFO CALAMITA) IN saproxylic beetle individuals divided into 67 species, were DENMARK - THE GENETIC CONSEQUENCES OF collected by sieving bark from ordinary stumps and high -stumps DECLINING AND ISOLATED POPULATIONS (at ground and at breast height). The number of species found in high-stumps at ground level was significantly higher than the ALLENTOFT, MORTEN E., University of Copenhagen, numbers found in high-stumps at breast height and low stumps. Denmark; Andersen, Liselotte W., Danish National Many of the caught species showed preferences for one or two Environmental Research Institute, Denmark; Siegismund, Hans of the three substrate types and analysing beetle communities R., University of Copenhagen, Denmark showed that they were different at the three substrate types. The study shows that even though the amount of bark and wood in Based upon 12 variable microsatellite-markers the genetic high-stumps are small compared to the ordinary stumps they do consequences of declining numbers and severe geographical provide important complementary habitats for many wood living isolation was investigated concerning 12 subpopulations of the beetles. endangered Natterjack Toad (Bufo calamita) in Denmark. B.calamita is listed on the EU-Habitat