Table 1:
Summary of the list of the various sub-disciplines of conservation science with relevant connections to conservation physiology
| Sub-disciplines | Summary of sub-discipline and key references | Examples of potential integration with conservation physiology |
|---|---|---|
| Conservation anthropology | Documenting knowledge, traditions, concerns and definitions of different stakeholders relative to conservation (Orlove and Brush, 1996; Brosius 2006) | Knowledge on the physiology of native organisms can be extracted from stakeholders, providing direction for experimentation or further investigation (e.g. for rainforest conservation; Ellen, 1997) |
| Conservation behaviour | Understanding behavioural variation and exploiting it to develop tools for preventing extinction (Sutherland, 1998; Caro, 1999; Buchholz, 2007; Ruxton and Schaefer, 2012) | Physiology has the ability to elucidate mechanisms associated with alterations in behaviour |
| Physiology and behaviour yield a more complete understanding of individuals, and how different drivers could scale up to affect higher levels of biological organization | ||
| Integration could improve predictions of individual responses to environmental perturbations (based on exposure and sensitivity; Metcalfe et al., 2012) | ||
| Integration could be particularly relevant for ex situ conservation and issues associated with captive breeding and reintroductions | ||
| Quantifying secondary impacts on plants of threats to animal pollinators and dispersers | ||
| Conservation biogeography | Application of concepts and methods of biogeography to address conservation problems and to provide predictions about the fate of biota (Simberloff and Abele, 1976; Richardson and Whittaker, 2010) | Knowledge of variation in physiological traits over large geographical, temporal, and phylogenetic scales can contribute to addressing how drivers of environmental change operate (Chown and Gaston, 2008) |
| Conservation ethics | Consideration of the ethical dimension of conservation, natural resource management, and sustainability (Callicott, 1991, 2005) | Physiology could be used to resolve questions regarding what the appropriate measures of ecosystem integrity or health may be |
| Conservation genetics and genomics | Conservation of genetic diversity and the application of genetic and genomic methods towards resolving problems in conservation (Frankham, 1995; Hedrick, 2001; Frankham et al., 2002; Ryder, 2005; Kramer and Havens, 2009; Primmer, 2009) | Could be used to understand and define discrete conservation units/populations/stocks that can be evaluated for physiological capacity and tolerances to characterize the consequences of such genetically based categorizations |
| Physiology can be used to assess the consequences of outbreeding and inbreeding depression on organismal fitness | ||
| Use of molecular tools (e.g. gene arrays) for assessment of loci or genes that may be directly involved in responses to processes such as environmental change (Ryder, 2005; Primmer, 2009) | ||
| Physiology can be used to improve quantification of functional differentiation among populations, to set priorities | ||
| Physiological knowledge is essential to test hypotheses concerning whether populations are occupying optimal habitats | ||
| Conservation medicine | Understanding the relationship between human and animal health (e.g. disease transfer), and environmental conditions to inform conservation (Deem et al., 2000, 2001; Meffe, 2001; Aguirre et al., 2002; Ostfeld et al., 2002; Tabor, 2002; Niinemets and Peñuelas, 2008) | The basis for veterinary and human medicine is organismal anatomy and physiology |
| Physiology can identify consequences of disease for organisms and, in some cases, the triggers (e.g. stress) | ||
| Physiology and conservation medicine could be used in parallel to address the causes and consequences of outbreaks of disease and biotoxins (e.g. toxic algal blooms), thus potentially revealing solutions (Aguirre et al., 2002) | ||
| Quantifying the impacts of non-native plants on ecosystem ‘health’ and human health | ||
| Conservation planning | Process (ideally systematic) that is defensible, flexible, and accountable to enable plans to be devised and reviewed in order to enable conservation objectives to be met (Groves et al., 2002; Pierce et al., 2005; Margules et al., 2007; Pressey et al., 2007) | Physiological tools can be used as part of monitoring programmes to review successes of plan components |
| Physiological knowledge can be used to inform the selection and refinement of action elements of conservation plans (Wikelski and Cooke, 2006) | ||
| Physiology can be used to identify and prioritize threats that would need to be mitigated as part of species or ecosystem recovery plans | ||
| Conservation policy | Development of policy instruments and governance structures consistent with the principles of conservation science (Meffe and Viederman, 1995; Ludwig et al., 2001) | Physiology can provide mechanistic explanations and establish cause-and-effect relationships consistent with generating an evidence base to support policy and decision-making (Cooke and O'Connor, 2010) |
| Conservation psychology | Understanding the reciprocal relationships between humans and the rest of nature, with a particular focus on how to encourage conservation (Bott et al., 2003; Saunders, 2003; Kaufman et al., 2006) | Physiological approaches could identify and clarify processes and mechanisms that could enable stakeholders to make better connections to conservation issues |
| Conservation social science | Understanding how socio-economic factors (e.g. markets, cultural beliefs and values, wealth/poverty, laws and policies, demographic change) shape human interactions with the environment (Costanza, 1991; Jacobson and Duff, 1998; Mascia et al., 2003) | The cause-and-effect nature of physiology could alter stakeholder perspectives of conservation issues by providing credibility and relative certainty |
| Conservation toxicology | Understanding and predicting the consequences of pollutants on various levels of biological organization to inform conservation action (Hansen and Johnson, 1999, 2009) | Physiology is a core component of toxicological studies and can be used to identify the mechanisms of action and thresholds for various pollutants (Hansen and Johnson 1999, 2009) |
| Physiology can be used to inform risk assessments and support regulatory processes related to pollution | ||
| Landscape ecology | Understanding and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems (Hansson and Angelstam, 1991; Hobbs, 1997; Gutzwiller, 2002) | Physiological indices have the potential to contribute to understanding of how landscape pattern affects persistence of populations and species (Chown and Gaston, 2008; Ellis et al., 2012) |
| Physiological tools could indicate problems with habitat quality before it is manifested in negative consequences at the population level (i.e. early warning system; Cooke and Suski, 2008; Ellis et al., 2012) | ||
| Physiology would clarify the cause-and-effect relationship that links landscape change to population responses (Ellis et al., 2012) | ||
| Natural resource and ecosystem management | Managing the way in which people and natural resources interact to maintain ecosystem services, including sustainable human use (Ludwig et al., 1993; Grumbine, 2002; Hawthorne et al., 2012) | Physiology can be used to determine whether management actions are themselves causing problems by monitoring organismal condition and stress (Wikelski and Cooke, 2006) |
| Can be used to identify best practices for management actions of direct relevance to stakeholders (e.g. bycatch reduction strategies, reforestation) | ||
| Physiology can inform decision-support tools/models (see above) | ||
| Population and ecosystem biology and modelling | Application of quantitative modelling techniques to characterize and predict population, community, and ecosystem dynamics relative to stressors and conservation actions (Simberloff, 1988; Beissinger and Westphal, 1998; Schwartz et al., 2000; Medvigy and Moorcroft, 2012) | Physiological knowledge can be incorporated into ecological models to improve their reliability and accuracy (Metcalfe et al., 2012) |
| Physiology can provide the basis for understanding demographic change by linking organismal performance (e.g. growth, fitness) to environmental conditions (Ricklefs and Wikelski, 2002; Young et al., 2006) | ||
| Models provide decision-support tools for practitioners that enable physiological data to be scaled up to be relevant to ecological processes | ||
| Physiology can experimentally validate models | ||
| Potential to generate mechanistic predictive models of how organisms respond to climate change (Pearson and Dawson, 2003) | ||
| Restoration science | Practice of renewing and restoring degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems and habitats in the environment by active human intervention and action (Dobson et al., 1997; Young, 2000; Giardina et al., 2007) | Physiological knowledge (e.g. environmental tolerances of plants) can be used to inform the selection of candidate taxa to be used in restoration and remediation activities (Pywell et al., 2003; Ehleringer and Sandquist, 2006; Cooke and Suski, 2008) |
| Physiological tools can be used to monitor the success of restoration activities (Cooke and Suski, 2008) | ||
| Physiological knowledge can be exploited to inform the control of invasive or introduced species (e.g. Wagner et al., 2006) |
Sub-disciplines are listed alphabetically.