• Energy Research

Antarctica. The word conjures up images of mountains draped with glaciers, ferocious seas dotted with icebergs and iconic species found nowhere else. The continent includes about one-tenth of the planet's land surface, nearly 90% of Earth's ice and about 70% of its fresh water. Its encircling ocean supports Patagonian toothfish and krill fisheries, and is crucial for regulating climate and the uptake of carbon dioxide by sea water.

AbstractThe rise of food security up international political, societal and academic agendas has led to increasing interest in novel means of improving primary food production and reducing waste. There are however, also many ‘post-farm gate’ activities that are critical to food security, including processing, packaging, distributing, retailing, cooking and consuming. These activities all affect a range of important food security elements, notably availability, affordability and other aspects of access, nutrition and safety. Addressing the challenge of universal food security, in the context of a number of other policy goals (e.g. social, economic and environmental sustainability), is of keen interest to a range of UK stakeholders but requires an up-to-date evidence base and continuous innovation. An exercise was therefore conducted, under the auspices of the UK Global Food Security Programme, to identify priority research questions with a focus on the UK food system (though the outcomes may be broadly applicable to other developed nations). Emphasis was placed on incorporating a wide range of perspectives (‘world views’) from different stakeholder groups: policy, private sector, non-governmental organisations, advocacy groups and academia. A total of 456 individuals submitted 820 questions from which 100 were selected by a process of online voting and a three-stage workshop voting exercise. These 100 final questions were sorted into 10 themes and the ‘top’ question for each theme identified by a further voting exercise. This step also allowed four different stakeholder groups to select the top 7–8 questions from their perspectives. Results of these voting exercises are presented. It is clear from the wide range of questions prioritised in this exercise that the different stakeholder groups identified specific research needs on a range of post-farm gate activities and food security outcomes. Evidence needs related to food affordability, nutrition and food safety (all key elements of food security) featured highly in the exercise. While there were some questions relating to climate impacts on production, other important topics for food security (e.g. trade, transport, preference and cultural needs) were not viewed as strongly by the participants.

Despite a significant growth in food production over the past half-century, one of the most important challenges facing society today is how to feed an expected population of some nine billion by the middle of the 20th century. To meet the expected demand for food without significant increases in prices, it has been estimated that we need to produce 70-100 per cent more food, in light of the growing impacts of climate change, concerns over energy security, regional dietary shifts and the Millennium Development target of halving world poverty and hunger by 2015. The goal for the agricultural sector is no longer simply to maximize productivity, but to optimize across a far more complex landscape of production, rural development, environmental, social justice and food consumption outcomes. However, there remain significant challenges to developing national and international policies that support the wide emergence of more sustainable forms of land use and efficient agricultural production. The lack of information flow between scientists, practitioners and policy makers is known to exacerbate the difficulties, despite increased emphasis upon evidence-based policy. In this paper, we seek to improve dialogue and understanding between agricultural research and policy by identifying the 100 most important questions for global agriculture. These have been compiled using a horizon-scanning approach with leading experts and representatives of major agricultural organizations worldwide. The aim is to use sound scientific evidence to inform decision making and guide policy makers in the future direction of agricultural research priorities and policy support. If addressed, we anticipate that these questions will have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide, while improving the synergy between agricultural policy, practice and research. This research forms part of the UK Government's Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project.

AbstractChanges in animal body size have been widely reported as a correlate of contemporary climate change. Body size affects metabolism and fitness, so changing size has implications for resilience, yet the climatic factors that drive size variation remain poorly understood. We test the role of mean and extreme temperature, rainfall, and remotely sensed primary productivity (NDVI) as drivers of body size in a sedentary, semi‐arid Australian passerine, Ptilotula (Lichenostomus) penicillatus, over 23 years. To distinguish effects due to differential growth from changes in population composition, we analysed first‐year birds and adults separately and considered climatic variation at three temporal scales (current, previous, and preceding 5 years). The strongest effects related to temperature: in both age classes, larger size was associated with warmer mean temperatures in the previous year, contrary to Bergmann's Rule. Moreover, adults were larger in warmer breeding seasons, while first years was larger after heatwaves; these effects are more likely to be mediated through size‐dependent mortality, highlighting the role of body size in determining vulnerability to extinction. In addition to temperature, larger adult size was associated with lower primary productivity, which may reflect a trade‐off between vegetative growth and nectar production, on which adults rely. Finally, lower rainfall was associated with decreasing size in first year and adults, most likely related to decreased food availability. Overall, body size increased over 23 years, strongly in first‐year birds (2.7%) compared with adults (1%), with size outcomes a balance between competing drivers. As rainfall declined over time and productivity remained fairly stable, the temporal increase in body size appears largely driven by rising mean temperature and temperature extremes. Body size responses to environmental change are thus complex and dynamic, driven by effects on growth as well as mortality.

Abstract:  We identified 100 scientific questions that, if answered, would have the greatest impact on conservation practice and policy. Representatives from 21 international organizations, regional sections and working groups of the Society for Conservation Biology, and 12 academics, from all continents except Antarctica, compiled 2291 questions of relevance to conservation of biological diversity worldwide. The questions were gathered from 761 individuals through workshops, email requests, and discussions. Voting by email to short‐list questions, followed by a 2‐day workshop, was used to derive the final list of 100 questions. Most of the final questions were derived through a process of modification and combination as the workshop progressed. The questions are divided into 12 sections: ecosystem functions and services, climate change, technological change, protected areas, ecosystem management and restoration, terrestrial ecosystems, marine ecosystems, freshwater ecosystems, species management, organizational systems and processes, societal context and change, and impacts of conservation interventions. We anticipate that these questions will help identify new directions for researchers and assist funders in directing funds.

Large-scale geographical patterns of biotic specialization and the underlying drivers are poorly understood, but it is widely believed that climate plays an important role in determining specialization. As climate-driven range dynamics should diminish local adaptations and favor generalization, one hypothesis is that contemporary biotic specialization is determined by the degree of past climatic instability, primarily Quaternary climate-change velocity. Other prominent hypotheses predict that either contemporary climate or species richness affect biotic specialization. To gain insight into geographical patterns of contemporary biotic specialization and its drivers, we use network analysis to determine the degree of specialization in plant-hummingbird mutualistic networks sampled at 31 localities, spanning a wide range of climate regimes across the Americas. We found greater biotic specialization at lower latitudes, with latitude explaining 20-22% of the spatial variation in plant-hummingbird specialization. Potential drivers of specialization--contemporary climate, Quaternary climate-change velocity, and species richness--had superior explanatory power, together explaining 53-64% of the variation in specialization. Notably, our data provides empirical evidence for the hypothesized roles of species richness, contemporary precipitation and Quaternary climate-change velocity as key predictors of biotic specialization, whereas contemporary temperature and seasonality seem unimportant in determining specialization. These results suggest that both ecological and evolutionary processes at Quaternary time scales can be important in driving large-scale geographical patterns of contemporary biotic specialization, at least for co-evolved systems such as plant-hummingbird networks.