ALBERT

Description: Biodiversity and conservation data are generally costly to collect, particularly in the marine realm. Hence, data collected for a given—often scientific—purpose are occasionally contributed toward secondary needs, such as policy implementation or other types of decision-making. However, while the quality and accessibility of marine biodiversity and conservation data have improved over the past decade, the ways in which these data can be used to develop and implement relevant management and conservation measures and actions are not always explicit. For this reason, there are a number of scientifically-sound datasets that are not used systematically to inform policy and decisions. Transforming these marine biodiversity and conservation datasets into knowledge products that convey the information required by policy- and decision-makers is an important step in strengthening knowledge exchange across the science-policy interface. Here, we identify seven characteristics of a selection of online biodiversity and conservation knowledge products that contribute to their ability to support policy- and decision-making in the marine realm (as measured by e.g., mentions in policy resolutions/decisions, or use for reporting under selected policy instruments; use in high-level screening for areas of biodiversity importance). These characteristics include: a clear policy mandate; established networks of collaborators; iterative co-design of a user-friendly interface; standardized, comprehensive and documented methods with quality assurance; consistent capacity and succession planning; accessible data and value-added products that are fit-for-purpose; and metrics of use collated and reported. The outcomes of this review are intended to: (a) support data creators/owners/providers in designing and curating biodiversity and conservation knowledge products that have greater influence, and hence impact, in policy- and decision-making, and (b) provide recommendations for how decision- and policy-makers can support the development, implementation, and sustainability of robust biodiversity and conservation knowledge products through the framing of marine policy and decision-making frameworks.

Description: Oscillations in the Earth's temperature and the subsequent retreating and advancing of ice-sheets around the polar regions are thought to have played an important role in shaping the distribution and genetic structuring of contemporary high-latitude populations. After the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), retreating of the ice-sheets would have enabled early colonizers to rapidly occupy suitable niches to the exclusion of other conspecifics, thereby reducing genetic diversity at the leading-edge. Bottlenose dolphins (genus Tursiops) form distinct coastal and pelagic ecotypes, with finer-scale genetic structuring observed within each ecotype. We reconstruct the postglacial colonization of the Northeast Atlantic (NEA) by bottlenose dolphins using habitat modeling and phylogenetics. The AquaMaps model hindcasted suitable habitat for the LGM in the Atlantic lower latitude waters and parts of the Mediterranean Sea. The time-calibrated phylogeny, constructed with 86 complete mitochondrial genomes including 30 generated for this study and created using a multispecies coalescent model, suggests that the expansion to the available coastal habitat in the NEA happened via founder events starting ~15 000 years ago (95% highest posterior density interval: 4 900-26 400). The founders of the 2 distinct coastal NEA populations comprised as few as 2 maternal lineages that originated from the pelagic population. The low effective population size and genetic diversity estimated for the shared ancestral coastal population subsequent to divergence from the pelagic source population are consistent with leading-edge expansion. These findings highlight the legacy of the Late Pleistocene glacial cycles on the genetic structuring and diversity of contemporary populations.