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Perched among the fronds of the world’s loneliest tree, Viswambharan Sarasan had an important decision to make. Sarasan had worked for years to get access to this palm — the last living member of the species Hyophorbe amaricaulis, which grows in Curepipe Botanic Gardens, Mauritius.He reached up towards a cluster of its walnut-sized, olive-green fruit. Sarasan, a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, near London, had been through sensitive negotiations for permission to take the fruit, each with one crucial seed inside. He then had to wait for the tree, nicknamed the lonesome palm, to produce them. Nine metres up, 50 fruit dangling within his grasp, he had to decide how many to take: enough to give himself a chance of culturing them back at Kew, while leaving enough for local scientists to work with.“It was the only shot I could get,” he says of his visit in June 2006. “But I didn’t want to take all the seeds and then it turns out badly.”He picked ten fruit. It was not his lucky number.When the plight of trees gets publicity, deforestation is generally the reason, but it is not the only crisis they face. Nearly one-third of trees — more than 17,500 species — are threatened with extinction. This is more than twice the number of threatened mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles combined1. Mass plantings of trees, paradoxically, often add to the problem by using single species. Now, hundreds of plant conservationists globally are fighting to save the trees speeding towards extinction.“We shouldn’t be giving up on any tree species,” says Paul Smith, head of Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), a London-based charity that co-leads the campaign to secure the future of the world’s threatened tree species.But time is short, the obstacles are formidable and both climate change and fashions in ecology are moving against them.Peter Bridgewater, a specialist in biodiversity governance at the University of Canberra, Australia, says that finding a natural home for every tree species is impossible because climate change is altering ecosystems so fundamentally. Scientists who think this goal is realistic are “living in their own cloud cuckoo land”, he says.

The ‘lonesome palm’, which lives in the Curepipe Botanic Gardens in Mauritius, is the last surviving member of the species Hyophorbe amaricaulis. Researchers have tried for years to help it reproduce, without success.Credit: Vincent Florens

Neglected trees Inextricably linked with the problem of climate change, and equally as damaging, is the disappearance of species from Earth. The rate of extinction is at historic levels and accelerating, with around one million animals and plants under threat.The plight of trees can get lost among the tales of endangered mammals or birds. To get trees more visibility, in 2016 the BGCI, working with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), organized the largest conservation assessment in the IUCN’s history: the Global Tree Assessment. Hundreds of plant conservationists searched rainforests, mountains and strife-torn regions, sometimes with no more than a crinkly herbarium specimen or the testimony of a long-dead explorer to guide them.In a 2021 report, they announced that they had found 58,497 tree species, of which 17,510 were threatened2. Since then, almost 2,800 of those have been labelled as critically endangered. Some 142 species are thought to be extinct in the wild (see ‘Trees under threat’). This year, a separate group of modellers estimated that a further 9,000 tree species are undiscovered3.

Source: Ref. 2

It is not just the number of trees, but also their diversity that matters. A single species can be the foundation of an entire ecological network, and its disappearance could cause a cascade of extinctions that might lead to an ecosystem collapse.Strong, diverse ecosystems are also better at sequestering carbon, says Jean-Christophe Vié, director-general of the Franklinia Foundation, a private organization in Geneva, Switzerland, that funds tree conservation and supports the Global Tree Assessment. No tree species should be viewed as dispensable, says Vié, because it would set a precedent for every developer, farmer or logger to justify removing any threatened tree.But tree conservation has become lost in international biodiversity targets — partly because trees get subsumed into general plant-conservation goals, and because plants are generally less showy than birds and animals. Trees need to be assessed for ecologists to champion them, says Malin Rivers, head of conservation prioritization at the BGCI.“If you look at mammals, birds, reptiles, they have data to bring to the table when there is a policy discussion,” she says. “Taxonomy gives the species a name; conservation assessment gives it a voice.”Protect and propagateArmed with the Global Tree Assessment’s catalogue of threatened species, conservationists have begun prioritizing species and taxonomic groups. The best approach, says Smith, is to protect vulnerable trees in their natural habitats. If that’s not possible, researchers try growing them from seed in a laboratory, greenhouse or botanic garden.The Global Tree Assessment revealed that nearly two-thirds of threatened trees are found in areas that are already protected, and stressed that one important task is to strengthen or expand these havens.That might mean controlling grazing, implementing a national logging ban for a particular species or establishing plots on which the tree can be cultivated for fruit or flowers without harming the larger population. On the eastern Caribbean island of Dominica, for instance, where harvesting resin for incense was killing lansan trees (Protium attenuatum), a tweak to the tapping method has halted the damage.Sometimes, however, so few trees are left that protecting an area isn’t enough.

In its forest habitat in Tanzania, Karomia gigas is threatened by a seed-killing fungus.Credit: Kirsty Shaw/BGCI

In Tanzania, seed-biology specialist Fandey Mashimba works with a tiny population of a towering species called Karomia gigas. These trees, with their large oval leaves and distinctive, papery fruit, were thought to have gone extinct in the 1980s, but around six of them were discovered in 2011 by botanists from the University of Dar es Salaam. Protecting the habitat isn’t enough, because a fungus destroys their immature fruit. Mashimba, who oversees seed production for Tanzania’s Forest Service Agency, tries to whisk the fruit away before the fungus infects them, to sterilize and multiply the seeds for planting.Mashimba and his colleagues tried germinating hundreds of K. gigas seeds. The result: just three treasured plants, which Mashimba monitors through his office window as their giant leaves wave in the breeze. In 2018, the forestry service also dispatched 6,000 fruit to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis. There, botanist Roy Gereau oversaw the extraction and cultivation of 24,000 seeds. The seeds produced only 30 plants. Last year, one sapling unfurled a small, pale purple flower, which perished within a day. When two trees flower simultaneously, botanists will attempt cross-pollination.

One of the 30 K. gigas plants at Missouri Botanical Garden flowered for a single day last year.Credit: Cassidy Moody/Missouri Botanical Garden

Mashimba is lucky in one respect: at least K. gigas produces seeds. Some trees produce none because their pollinators are gone; sometimes only one sex of a tree remains. For instance, most of the surviving specimens of the catkin yew (Amentotaxus argotaenia) in southern China are male. After a global search, a single female was discovered in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, UK; scientists there dispatched cuttings for planting near the surviving males. When they flower, reproduction can begin, says Gunter Fischer, a restoration ecologist at Missouri Botanical Garden. But this could take 30 years.Even if scientists do manage to acquire seeds from trees that are near extinction, germinating them can be tricky. Some go into dormancy, a protective state that, depending on the species, might be broken only through heating, cooling or scarring. Natural dormancy can last for years. Scientists try to circumvent it by culturing the embryo — the small section of a plant seed that will become the roots and stems — in a process known as embryo rescue.Every trick in the book The lonesome palm in the Curepipe Botanic Gardens — elderly, damaged and spindly — has seed problems, germination problems and more. It has resisted multiple rescuers since the 1980s. One obstacle is that the palm produces male and female flowers at different times, to avoid self-fertilization. Using a ladder and a brush, scientists override this process to collect, store and transfer pollen.It was the fruit of one such assisted-pollination project, each containing a single seed, that Sarasan carried back to Kew in 2006. He knew that lonesome palm seeds don’t grow if they are planted, so he used embryo rescue. With so few seeds, he felt there was no scope for experimenting with different culture media, so he made his best guess as to which blend to use.“I was so protective,” he says. “It was the responsibility, the excitement and also the fear of losing it.”The plantlets grew to 25 centimetres long. Then, one day, their fine white roots turned brown and they died, doubtless because of some nuance of the culture medium, he says.Other efforts have been derailed by mishap. In 2010, Kew horticultural scientist Carlos Magdalena negotiated to collect some freshly picked palm fruit while he was visiting Mauritius. Owing to a misunderstanding, two of the five fruit stored in a nearby fridge were eaten by a garden labourer who did not know their significance. Back at Kew, the seeds from the others failed to germinate.The failure rankles with Magdalena, who has a string of plant rescues to his name. As he roves the Kew greenhouses, steamy sanctuaries for plants that are bereft of a place in the wild, he sometimes feels he is all that stands between a species and its permanent loss.José Luis Marcelo Peña knows how he feels. In 2018, Marcelo Peña, a taxonomist at the National University of Jaén in Peru, was trekking through a steep, parched forest in Peru’s Marañón valley when he discovered a tree with light green flowers: Pradosia argentea, thought to be extinct.“It was a unique happiness that cannot be described,” says Marcelo Peña. Surveys yielded 200 more trees in the area, all of which were imminently threatened by agriculture.COVID-19 lockdowns began just as he attempted to save them. Without university facilities, but with remote help from the BGCI, he extracted 400 seeds from the purple fruit at home. More than 60 germinated: 20 survived. The following year, he tried again using fresh seeds, but a fungus got them all.As he finishes his story, he removes his glasses to wipe tears away. “It’s a big responsibility,” he says. And even with 20 little successes in the nursery, Marcelo Peña is concerned about the next step — reintroduction to the wild. Local people were unaware of P. argentea until recently, he says. They now support protecting the remaining trees — but they also need space to farm, which could put those survivors at risk.Back to the wildThriving in the wild is a distant dream for K. gigas, too. Tanzania’s forest agency and its partners are developing seed-propagation sites and nurseries for the species. But its future is uncertain, mostly because new trees could succumb to the same mysterious fungus.“We might have to content ourselves with saying, well, we have these lovely creatures in the zoo,” says Gereau.

A project at Missouri Botanical Garden produced 30 K. gigas plants.Credit: Cassidy Moody/Missouri Botanical Garden

Reintroductions can be spectacularly successful, however. The BGCI highlights a project on Malawi’s Mount Mulanje, the only natural home of the cypress Widdringtonia whytei. In 2019, just seven mature trees remained, the others victims of illegal felling. By 2022, thanks to a collaboration with Malawi’s Forestry Research Institute and local people, the slopes are alive again with 500,000 seedlings, and many locals now make a living through this endeavour.Propagation itself turned out to be fairly simple, says Smith. In Mauritius, by contrast, ecologists have a tougher task. The Mauritian Wildlife Foundation, with help from botanists elsewhere, is attempting to save multiple critically endangered species at once, but success at propagation varies widely. There have been some dramatic restorations, including of some species from which only a single tree remained. But the lonesome palm, now part of this project, continues to resist.

Scientists affix protective netting around hand-pollinated flowers on H. amaricaulis in Mauritius.Credit: Atmah Toocaram

A fourth attempt has begun. Nets hang around the tree to catch the male flowers and store their pollen for hand fertilization when the female flowers appear. In France, botanist Stéphane Buord at the National Botanical Conservatory of Brest hopes to overcome the problem that faced Sarasan — too few seeds — by tapping into the large quantities of seeds produced by Hyophorbe vaughanii, a close Mauritian relative of the lonesome palm. He and his team have spent years working out a complex technical protocol that coaxes its embryos into rooted seedlings that survive outside a test tube. Now he is waiting to try this approach on the seeds of the lonesome palm.If he succeeds, the palm might eventually be reintroduced into a national park or into the wild. Kersley Pynee, a conservation scientist at the Mauritius National Parks and Conservation Service, has reintroduced other trees and shrubs and says it is an uphill struggle. Plants can fall victim to fungi, pests and other assailants. After one recent planting of 1,000 seedlings of the flowering shrub Nesocodon mauritianus, just 5 now remain, he says.This is to be expected, says Smith. In nature, trees produce vast quantities of seeds, of which only a fraction germinate and survive because of natural dangers such as infestations, fire or competition for light or nutrients.Tree museumThe Global Trees Campaign has so far planted out hundreds of thousands of seedlings from 300 threatened tree species. But for trees that can no longer survive in the wild, the only other options are to keep a specimen in a living collection, or to store its seeds in a bank.One target of the 2011 Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, part of the Convention on Biological Diversity, was to conserve at least 75% of threatened plants in living collections or seed banks by 2020 — a goal that has not been met. What’s more, simply drying and freezing seeds doesn’t always work. Technologies such as cryopreservation — fast freezing at ultra-low temperatures — could offer an alternative, although it is expensive and impractical for many countries. And in 2018, conservationists warned4 that the seeds of one-third of tree species cannot be banked, largely because they don’t survive drying.Smith rejects this bleak diagnosis. Between seed banks, cryopreservation, nurseries, botanic gardens and arboreta, there are plenty of options to “buy us time”, he says.One trend that could help is mass tree-planting, in which governments and corporations plant trees to sequester carbon to meet emissions targets. Done badly, as many of these projects are, mass plantings can destroy biodiversity. Done well, they could rescue many species, says Smith. “This is a bandwagon we really need to jump on.”

This specimen of Encephalartos woodii, found in South Africa, was relocated in the late 1800s to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, near London. It is the only one of this species to ever have been found in the wild.Credit: Andrew McRobb/RBG Kew

To help boost the usefulness of such projects to biodiversity, the BGCI and its partners have drawn up a certification programme for tree-planting projects called the Global Biodiversity Standard.Species conservation could also piggyback on the growing ecosystem-restoration movement. There are now more than 100,000 of these projects globally, helping ecosystems to capture carbon and provide essential services.Smith argues that including native species strengthens such projects. But restoration ecologists are often more concerned with overall function than with individual species, says Curt Meine, a historian of ecology at the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin. And they want ecosystems to provide multiple services to humans, including sustainable livelihoods. Some acknowledge that tree conservation should have a place. “I do think it’s important work and we could learn a lot,” says Robin Chazdon, a restoration ecologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.But there are more threatened tree species than there are restoration projects to absorb them. “It’s not going to be the way of protecting all of those tree species,” she says.Some ecologists have deeper concerns. Bridgewater says that the efforts of conservationists and of restoration ecologists don’t factor in climate change.“They all in the end assume that nothing is going to be changing,” he says. But many trees, and whole ecosystems, just won’t survive in their current ranges, he says.“You could save every tree species but it will not be what people think — it will be in botanical gardens and larger managed conservation areas, and planting where it’s suitable for survival, not where it’s currently growing.”But the tree saviours are driven by something visceral: panic at the permanent loss of the rich, unique, irreplaceable and often-undeciphered identity of each species.“I don’t feel I am, as a humble human, here for a few decades on this planet, authorized to just cut off millions of years of evolutionary history,” says Vié. “Every species has a value.” More

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The Ecomobility is a cross-sectoral, global partnership, an environmentally friendly and socially inclusive way of transportation, seeking the promotion integration of cycling, walking, and passenging (Being a passenger in another’s car or a carpool)1, and wheeling (wheelchairs, non-motorized scooters, walking aids, skates, push scooters, trailer, hand carts, shopping carts/ trolleys, carrying aids)2. In this section, the study introduces the main pillars that will build on them to reach the objectives. Passenging, energy efficiency, partnership for sustainable urban development, and streets’ design (with more focus as one of the core prerequisites of the methods) are discussed here. Although this research approaches the clean and green environment from the window of excluding the fossil-fuel motorized means of transportation, if there is still a necessity, passenging owns a pack of advantages over private cars. As a main passenging option, Carpooling has a lot of benefits to the environment, human health, and social lives, e.g., saving money, better for the environment, Convenience, etc., which are briefed below.PassengingBeing a passenger in another’s car or carpooling that increases efficiency. The concept becomes more apparent, listing the benefits of carpooling as follows3:

1.

Saving money: sharing the cost of gas and parking, cutting expenses by nearly 50%; the more occupants in carpooling, the more saving, and is socially economical. Also, there will be a reduction in constructing new roads, maintenance, and air pollution-related health costs.

2.

Better environment: fewer cars on roads mean reduced Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and better air quality.

3.

Better health: helps reduce some health risks for a human being, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, allergies, and neurological effects.

4.

Convenience: provides commuting Convenience, less stress, and added advantage of companionship while commuting.

5.

Better commuting options: works better for people living where transit service may be non-existent or limited.

Energy efficiencyA study was performed in China to reduce GHG; the study claimed that China targeted the peak around 20304. However, it is expected that the peak may come earlier than expected, which is reflected in the CO2 emission (from coal consumption and fossil fuels) to have its peak also before 2030. Another study evaluated the economic impacts of GHG emission reduction on the Brazilian economy reached that different sectoral targets may balance environmental benefits with the possible financial losses incurred by taxation policy or emission permits5.The energy efficiency studies touched key triggers to reduce carbon emissions, In parallel. An analytical study in China (2013) indicated that if greater intensity emission reduction measures were taken, the carbon emissions would reduce by 31.01 million tons by 2015 and 48.81 million tons by 20206. The previous results indicated the average reduction flow per time.Partnership for sustainable urban developmentSaving the environment is cooperative work that requires sharing experiences with other partners worldwide. The cooperation between the Gulf region and China in the last half of the decade is an example of a global partnership. The Gulf region has achieved a success story, economically and socially. Following a smart investment arrangement of natural resources, the region has succeeded in attracting and retaining international experience, therefore overcoming the discrepancy between its vast economy and small population-base lacking the instantly needed technical skills. The region has collected considerable wealth during the process, financially and else7.The primary purpose of Ecomobility, mentioned previously, is enhancing the opportunity for sustainable urban development. Also, it complies with John Elkington’s triple bottom line (TBL), or what is often referred to as the three “P’s”: people, planet, and prosperity8. Likewise, worldwide, large cities are applying guidelines to guarantee that environment, economics, and sociality are at the lead of urban design. The elevation of healthier streets has formed new chances for social and commercial interaction and more comprehensive outcomes9. Overall, it is the transformation of the earlier global Coalitions of Ecomobility that aims at engaging public and private sectors, promoting and advocating Ecomobility at a worldwide level in Industrialized and developing countries.Streets’ designA potential approach to fostering pedestrian Ecomobility is the streets’ design, which is a core focus of this research. Urban spaces are a vital city part, forming the basic structure of public life. Specific urban planning and design criteria make these spaces “quality public spaces”10. In this perspective, determining and evaluating these criteria will transform those public urban spaces into quality spaces. The last research adopted criteria that came to a head in the relevant reviews and were accepted by most researchers. Also, in the current research, the study chose following these criteria since they have been collected and validated by several researchers over decades (around 17 references; Table 1), and cover the possible aspects of successful streets; they will be presented and used in the next section (Methods).Table 1 Respondents’ statistics (N = 257).Full size tableA noteworthy point is the gap between municipal policies and the guidance provided to street design decision-makers. A study across cities in the United States highlighted some issues regarding the mechanism of developing policies related, as they aim to challenge auto-centrical street design standards in favor of “complete streets,” which are safe for users of all abilities. Also, they address the demands of non-motorized street users and sustainable transportation. Moreover, those policies do not lead to the negotiation of tradeoffs among users inside the street right-of-way; They are broad and defer to optimistic safety goals accommodating all user types equally without recognizing the accommodation’s implicit hierarchy11.Also, the transformative potential of experimentations proposed attaining “streets for people” rather than “streets for traffic” remains under-investigated. There is little to no comparative assessment of already present trials and no critical reflection on their explicit added value for systemic change. While street research aims to create basically diverse arrangements of urban mobility, their potential as triggers of a larger systemic change is blurred12.In the age of autonomous vehicles (AVs), a study reached that with the promise of Avs, which will use less street-right of way and uncouple parking from land uses in the cities; it is time to take back streets and make them serve people first, arranging cycling, walking, and transit. This action will take place precisely in the design process for livable streets. Also, it is time to act and make sure that designers and planners can get at the forefront of the rapidly changing technologies of vehicles13.The street design process had a different approach through medical and psychological professionals. According to the Irvine-Minnesota audit, expert observers calculated street users for four streets, which differed in walkability. From 7 am to 7 pm all days, the whole streets had significant quadratic trends of increasing followed by decreasing use. Furthermore, the two most walkable streets showed substantial linear increases in users across the day. Part of a street’s identity is its temporal activity rhythm, and both walkability and rhythms can report to urban design and restoration14. The study, through its test, searched what makes streets and neighborhoods walkable and found that more walkable streets had more users overall and linear increases in use starting from morning to early evening.This paper focuses on Ecomobility in Riyadh city streets that promote the integration of passenging, cycling, wheeling, and walking. A previous study discussed the pedestrian mobility status in the same city, focusing on the transformation to sustainable mobility. That research case study was applied to the PSU community and argued that the current mobility is unsustainable, as it profoundly relies on privately-owned cars run with fossil fuel. It unveiled that a substantial percentage of the survey sample (72%) traveled by car from home to the campus. However, the assessment results showed that the transformation to sustainable mobility is expected soon by launching the new mega projects related to public transportation like Riyadh Metro and busses, which is considered a key indicator of sustainable mobility15.Riyadh city in Saudi Arabia is a part of a hot-weather zone (almost 7 months a year: April–October), as seen in Fig. 116. As a result, studying the pedestrian thermal comfort affected by street design is a core point. Almost similar conditions were present in a case study in the Australian North Melbourne (southeast) at street level for pedestrians (Subtropical Zone), as seen in Fig. 217. That study assessed modeled existing and future scenarios for different street profiles and the consequences of microclimatic parameters and thermal comfort. The target was to assist urban planners in developing policies that can efficiently reduce the exposure to heat stress at the pedestrian level18.Figure 1The climate in Riyadh16.Full size imageFigure 2World climate zones17.Full size imageA comparison study was also applied to two gulf cities that share the hot weather: Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It compared the efficiency of the early suburbs and the newer ones to provide quick and direct access to destinations (connectivity). The study argued that better connectivity is required for usefulness in hot, dry regions. In this regard, it explored how the abandoned system of alleys could be cultivated to enhance connectivity efficiency19.In residential streets, developers’ width is not a choice but somewhat a constraint enforced through planners’ concluded subdivision standards. Residents can generally compromise by choosing smaller yards or homes in a swap for other facilities or a lower price, but they cannot select a smaller street20.Recently, in Riyadh city, a study highlighted that the rising fuel prices would create a positive atmosphere for implementing the complete streets’ concept, defined as streets’ design that can safely accommodate all transport modes for all society segments. It includes, but is not limited to, public transportation, humanizing neighborhoods, and promoting walking as a healthy lifestyle21.Research problemLacking the dependency on the Ecomobility traveling modes (as mentioned in the results) leads to poor health conditions, air pollution, noise, high greenhouse gas (and CO2) emissions, higher expenses, and excessive energy consumption.Research questionsThe study is seeking through its parts to answer the following questions:

1.

What are the reasons behind the lack of using the ecomobility means of transportation by the community?

2.

What are the community responses for the transformation to ecomobility if the reported barriers are removed or minimized? More

Conservation biologist Kay Van Damme has spent two decades studying biodiversity on the island of Socotra in Yemen.Credit: Søren Solkær

In 1999, Kay Van Damme joined a United Nations-led multidisciplinary expedition to the Socotra archipelago, a Yemeni island group in the Arabian Sea, to explore freshwater ecosystems. Influenced by the area’s rich and unique biodiversity, Van Damme began to run annual expeditions to underground lakes on the main island, Socotra, as well as to its aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems above ground. In 2010, he earned a PhD on the evolutionary relationships of freshwater crustaceans from Ghent University in Belgium. Over the years, with the island facing the environmental challenges of climate change and a civil war that has been under way since 2014, Van Damme started applying his knowledge to conserving endangered aquatic insects and crabs, as well as the remarkable local trees. Now, alongside undertaking fieldwork on Socotra, where he works directly with local communities, Van Damme is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent and at Mendel University in Brno, Czech Republic.What’s so special about Socotra?Socotra’s biodiversity treasures are the result of millions of years of secluded evolution. The archipelago separated from southern Arabia during the Miocene epoch (23 million to 5 million years ago). About 37% of its plant species, 90% of its reptiles and 98% of its land snails don’t exist anywhere else. It is the only Yemeni natural site on the UNESCO World Heritage List, to which it was added in 2008.Islands are often called living laboratories of evolution. Studying these habitats is important for natural history and biogeography. In addition, understanding how highly vulnerable endemic birds, plants and invertebrates have survived on these islands could help to save species in other places.How has your fieldwork changed over the years?Continuous exposure to the amazing nature and Socotra’s islanders have had a strong impact on me. The last forest of umbrella-shaped dragon’s blood trees (Dracaena cinnabari) seems out of this world, a relic of Miocene times, when this vegetation type was more widespread around the world. There’s a strange mix of ancient and recent geological features, ranging from granite mountains to coastal sand dunes and enormous limestone caves, harbouring vulnerable and isolated lifeforms.

Socotra hosts the last forest of dragon’s blood trees (Dracaena cinnabari) in the world.Credit: Kay Van Damme

Seeing the uniqueness of Socotra’s biodiversity and its fragility in the face of climate change, I feel my responsibility has grown to include more than exploration and classification. Gradually, my efforts converged on biodiversity conservation, and my fieldwork has become more strategic: doing biodiversity field surveys to assess threats to endemic species. I help Yemen’s environmental protection agency with conservation planning, including establishing and improving protected areas. We do activities in schools and with the Indigenous Soqotri people to ensure that conservation efforts are integrated into the community, while discussing their concerns about their environment and the impacts of climate change.Which species do you focus on, and why?As co-principal investigator of a conservation project funded by the Franklinia Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland, I work with colleagues from Socotra, Mendel University and the Sapienza University of Rome on protecting the dragon’s blood trees and ten endemic species of frankincense tree (Boswellia). Meanwhile, I chair a UK-based charity called the Friends of Soqotra, which runs biodiversity-conservation and environmental-awareness projects. Together with local communities in north Socotra, we have replanted mangrove trees (Avicennia marina) that had disappeared decades before. I also focus on a magnificent damselfly, the Socotra bluet (Azuragrion granti), and a colourful freshwater crab (Socotrapotamon socotrensis), which are included in the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

The Socotra bluet (Azuragrion granti), a type of damselfly, is threatened by drought, pollution and soil erosion.Credit: Kay Van Damme

What are the biggest threats to these ecosystems? Overgrazing by domestic goats, loss of traditional land-management techniques and the effects of climate change. Violent cyclones and droughts in Socotra affect both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. For instance, cyclones destroyed considerable proportions of unique woodlands of frankincense and dragon’s blood trees in 2015 and 2018. Likewise, threats to freshwater species include drought; landslides due to vegetation loss; pollution; and invasive species, such as a predatory fish called the Arabian toothcarp (Aphanius dispar).The most effective solution to these threats is for the local communities to get involved in leading the conservation work on the ground. For every tree felled by weather, scientists should work with locals to replant another.How have you gained the trust of the local community?I work with our local team, which continues the fieldwork, and with the Soqotri people, who own the land areas. I have great respect for their immense environmental knowledge. We have long conversations with them during visits, asking what is needed. In Socotra, there is no stronger conservation expertise than that which has been applied for centuries by the Soqotri people. For instance, by understanding the quality of a frankincense tree’s incense and the timing of flowering, they have shown us new hybrid species. Our nursery of young frankincense seedlings is maintained by an older Soqotri woman called Mona, who has traditional knowledge of how to take care of them.How does the ongoing civil war affect your fieldwork?In comparison to the mainland, Socotra has remained relatively safe for fieldwork. However, the political landscape of the island is variable and complex. This requires us to be flexible when discussing conservation issues with local decision makers, who are sometimes replaced more than once during a project.

Van Damme (centre) collaborates with community leaders — Saleh Al-Tamek, chair of a local conservation group (left), and natural-heritage specialist Haifaa Abdulhalim — to protect threatened species of mangrove tree.Credit: Marketa Jakovenko

We constantly assess risks and maintain clear communication between research team members and local communities and their leaders about where we are at which moment, and for what purpose. In such circumstances, scientists should know the local terrain and weather conditions extremely well, avoiding unnecessary risks and checking in frequently by mobile phone with their local teams.Do you have any advice for early-career conservation scientists? Local community leaders have the power to facilitate fieldwork or obstruct it. And because not all leaders prioritize nature conservation, there are some practical tips for building mutual trust with them to help form long-standing partnerships. Focus on constant communication with leaders, respect their culture and environmental knowledge, and cooperate with them in protecting the interests of local people, especially during natural disasters.Have you made any non-scientific discoveries about Socotra?My soul has been touched by Socotra’s people. Their kindness towards others is essential to their culture. They speak an endangered Semitic language that has survived through oral tradition, such as poetry and songs. Soqotri people are excellent orators and communicate using good humour. I brought my parents to Socotra to see what has stolen my heart — they understood.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. More

To date, many kinds of potential predator–prey interactions have been demonstrated between ticks and a wide range of animals, including birds, mammals, and arthropods such as beetles, spiders, and ants1,2,3. Of those, the ants were indicated to be one of the most effective tick predators4,5. More than 27 ant species of 17 genera (Anoplolepis, Aphaenogaster, Camponotus, Crematogaster, Ectatomma, Formica, Iridomyrmex, Meranoplus, Monomorium, Myrmica, Notoncus, Pheidole, Pogonomyrmex, Polyrhachis, Rhytidoponera, Solenopsis, and Tapinoma) have been reported to be effective on different tick species (Amblyomma spp., Boophilus spp., Ornithodoros spp., Ixodes spp., Argas spp., Aponomma hydrosauri, Rhipicephalus appendiculatus, Otobius megnini, and Dermacentor variabilis)2,6,7,8. It is known that ants and other predators can affect ticks in a consumptive or nonconsumptive / behavioral manner and, as a result, may reduce the abundance of ticks in the overlap ranges8,9,10. However, the effects of ants on ticks are closely related to the ant species and the species, developmental stages, and physiological status of the ticks, and as a consequence, the impact of ants on ticks can exhibit fairly high variability2,8. Furthermore, there is no sufficient data on the factors determining the tick-ant relationship11,12.Ant predation has been examined in all developmental stages of ticks, but the proportion of the studies based on the eggs is relatively low compared to the other stages2. In an egg-based study, the eggs of O. megnini, the spinose ear tick, were supplied to five different ant species, and of those, Tapinoma melanocephalum was the only species that fed on the eggs7. Conflicting results have been reported from the studies13,14 carried out to determine the predatory effects of ant species Pheidole megacephala on the eggs of Boophilus (Rhipicephalus) microplus14. Rhipicephalus sanguineus was demonstrated to secrete an acarine allomone when attacked by fire ants, Solenopsis invicta15. This allomone-based ant deterrence is known to protect ticks from being eliminated within the sympatric range. The eggs, intact and cracked, of tick species Amblyomma americanum were not attacked by S. invicta, and it was interpreted that this deterrence might be related to the possible presence of the allomone within the eggs12.This study was carried out to determine whether the ant species Lasius alienus (Förster, 1850) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) has any predatory effect on the eggs of tick species Hyalomma marginatum, H. excavatum, and Rhipicephalus bursa, and if the tick egg wax has any protective properties against possible predation. Ticks lay eggs (each 50–100 µg in weight and 0.5–1 mm in length) with a wax coat 0.5–2.0 µm thick, which is secreted by the female-tick-specific glands and organs such as the Gené’s16,17. Different molecules have been detected in the wax, such as alkanes, fatty acids, steroids, alcohols, and some specific proteins and lipoproteins18,19,20. However, detailed data on the wax content, especially its bioactive components, are not yet available20,21. As for the function of the wax, it has been reported that it reduces water loss, waterproofs the eggs, ensures the proper gas exchange between the eggs and air and holds the eggs together16,18. The wax also provides protection against chemical and physical factors such as cold, heat, proteinase K and pronase, or microbial agents including bacteria, fungi, viruses, and protozoa19,20,21,22,23,24,25.Lasius alienus is one of the most abundant ant species in the Western Palearctic26. Its distribution area can range from natural open habitats, light forests, and forest edges to urbanized areas such as wooded residential areas and gardens. The nests can be encountered mostly in the soil, under stones, or other substances, and the nest densities may reach up to 10–50 nests/100 m2 in some endemic territories. The number of workers (2­4 mm in length) in a colony can be more than 10,000. In the active periods in hot and warm months, workers establish foraging trails on the ground, in trees, and even in dwellings for food27,28. Lasius alienus was reported to gather plant nectar, honeydew secreted by aphids and to consume both dead and small living arthropods28,29,30. However, there is no data in the literature on whether this or any other species in the Lasius genera have a predatory interaction with ticks. Furthermore, the only definitive association of L. alienus with predation on Acarina has been established recently with Dermanyssus gallinae (poultry red mite)31.Considering the fact that the workers of L. alienus can forage effectively in many different places within the wide range distribution area27,28,31, it seems quite possible that several tick species encounter this ant species in their habitat32. This ant can feed by scavenging and predating small insects, and it meets their protein needs by hunting large numbers of small invertebrates, especially during larval feeding periods using the central foraging strategy29. Whichever invertebrates are abundant in their environment, the ants undoubtedly tend to consume more of them, especially if they are easy to hunt and transport27,28,29. Engorged large female ixodid ticks (around 1–1.5 cm depending on the species) lay a single batch of a large number of eggs (hundreds or thousands depending on the species and feeding levels) for several days or weeks at the hiding points such as cracks, crevices, and spaces under stones or various objects on the ground21,33 that the ant can easily reach due to its small size. In ixodid ticks, the female ticks lay eggs at once and die. The next generation continues entirely through the eggs21. Referring to these data, it seems hypothetically possible that any level of predation of L. alienus on the eggs, which are immobile and easy to reach and carry for the ants, can have a direct effect on the tick community in the overlap ranges. At this point, of course, whether the natural distribution areas of the ant and tick species overlap and, potentially, whether there is a possible evolutionary background between them are of the expected determining factors in a possible predation34.The nests of L. alienus can be seen almost everywhere in the soil in its ranging territories, however, the density increases from dry steppe, open pasture and bushlands to cultivated areas, woodlands, and gardens29. In this study, three ixodid tick species were selected that are more or less different from each other in terms of biology, ecology, and therefore the probability of encountering L. alienus in their natural habitat. Of these, H. marginatum is a two-host tick, the immature stages (larvae and nymphs) prefer rabbits, hedgehogs and birds to feed, and the adults (male and female) use particularly cattle as host. The immature stages of mostly three-host tick H. excavatum, wild rodents are the preferable host, and a wide range of large wild animals, cattle and some other domestic animals can be the host for the adults. Both species are known as arid environment ticks, however, in accordance with their different host preferences as well, H. excavatum is more prevalent in the arid open fields, steppe, and bushlands32,35. Both immature and adult stages of two-host tick R. bursa use primarily domestic ruminants to feed. Although there is no detailed data on the natural dynamics of R. bursa, this species is suspected of having a kind of peri-farm natural dynamics32. More

Rio Conservation and Sustainability Science Centre, Department of Geography and the Environment, Pontifical Catholic University, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilBernardo B. N. Strassburg, Alvaro Iribarrem, Carlos Leandro Cordeiro, Renato Crouzeilles, Catarina C. Jakovac, André Braga Junqueira, Eduardo Lacerda & Agnieszka E. LatawiecInternational Institute for Sustainability, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilBernardo B. N. Strassburg, Alvaro Iribarrem, Carlos Leandro Cordeiro, Renato Crouzeilles, Catarina C. Jakovac, André Braga Junqueira, Eduardo Lacerda, Agnieszka E. Latawiec, Robin L. Chazdon & Carlos Alberto de M. ScaramuzzaPrograma de Pós Graduacão em Ecologia, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilBernardo B. N. Strassburg, Renato Crouzeilles & Fabio R. ScaranoBotanical Garden Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilBernardo B. N. StrassburgSchool of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, AustraliaHawthorne L. BeyerForest Ecology and Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The NetherlandsCatarina C. JakovacInstitut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, SpainAndré Braga JunqueiraDepartment of Geography, Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, BrazilEduardo LacerdaDepartment of Production Engineering, Logistics and Applied Computer Science, Faculty of Production and Power Engineering, University of Agriculture in Kraków, Kraków, PolandAgnieszka E. LatawiecSchool of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UKAgnieszka E. LatawiecDepartment of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UKAndrew Balmford, Stuart H. M. Butchart & Paul F. DonaldInternational Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Gland, SwitzerlandThomas M. BrooksWorld Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), University of the Philippines, Los Baños, The PhilippinesThomas M. BrooksInstitute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, AustraliaThomas M. BrooksBirdLife International, Cambridge, UKStuart H. M. Butchart & Paul F. DonaldDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USARobin L. ChazdonWorld Resources Institute, Global Restoration Initiative, Washington, DC, USARobin L. ChazdonTropical Forests and People Research Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast, Sunshine Coast, Queensland, AustraliaRobin L. ChazdonInstitute of Social Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Vienna, AustriaKarl-Heinz Erb & Christoph PlutzarDepartment of Forest Sciences, ‘Luiz de Queiroz’ College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Piracicaba, BrazilPedro BrancalionRSPB Centre for Conservation Science, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Edinburgh, UKGraeme Buchanan & Paul F. DonaldSecretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), Montreal, Quebec, CanadaDavid CooperInstituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal, CONICET and Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, ArgentinaSandra DíazUN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UKValerie Kapos & Lera MilesEcosystem Services Management (ESM) Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, AustriaDavid Leclère, Michael Obersteiner & Piero ViscontiEnvironmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UKMichael ObersteinerDivision of Conservation Biology, Vegetation Ecology and Landscape Ecology, University of Vienna, Vienna, AustriaChristoph Plutzar More