Gabriel Dansereau

Species interactions are the building blocks of ecological networks and key components of biodiversity, yet are often overlooked in conservation and monitoring. With the monitoring framework of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calling Parties to report on biodiversity status and trends, many countries are implementing Biodiversity Observation Networks (BONs) to monitor biodiversity change through long-term surveys. There is a need to determine how to efficiently integrate species interactions into these developing monitoring efforts to better inform on a biodiversity facet critical to understanding ecosystem change.

In this manuscript, we use realistic simulations to examine how sampling design strategies used to establish BONs influence the monitoring efficiency for species interactions. We highlight three key elements:

1. Baseline monitoring expectations in spatially-balanced designs (similar to current BONs) should be much lower for interactions than for species richness.
2. Available information can optimize BON design to monitor interactions with higher efficiency. For example, prior knowledge of a species’ range represents attainable information, from which we can efficiently design BONs to retrieve interactions.
3. There is a level of tolerance regarding the precision of the information needed for optimization. Under- or overestimating a species’ range by 10% yielded similar efficiency to knowing the exact range, highlighting that we do not need perfect information to expect improvements.

These conclusions can guide the design of future BONs towards a more efficient and complete monitoring of biodiversity, including the crucial but often overlooked contribution of species interactions. Available knowledge and information can lead to improvements; therefore, it is crucial that we start using it as soon as possible.