One of the objectives of the Transloc project is to understand the distribution of translocation efforts for plants and mammals from local communities to continental assemblages in Europe. Most translocations are species-centred, being implemented at the local scale and often targeting charismatic species, especially among birds and mammals. In turn, this taxonomic bias influences how translocations contribute to the conservation of phylogenetic and functional diversity at global and regional scales. Compared to animals, little is still known about plant translocations.
Dr Filipa Coutinho Soares just joined the Transloc project as a postdoctoral researcher to tackle this question. She will take advantage of the most recent developments and additions to the Transloc database, a comprehensive multi-taxa database of conservation translocations, to investigate the taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional biases of plant translocations across European countries. Moreover, Filipa will explore how translocation strategies of European mammals could have influenced changes in trait diversity patterns over the past decades, considering that recent studies found that translocated mammals in Europe are more functionally distinct than expected by chance.
