SynthesisPloS one2014
Local scale comparisons of biodiversity as a test for global protected area ecological performance: a meta-analysis.
Synthesis in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed.
- Arthropod species loss underpins biomass declines.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Current protected areas provide limited benefits for European river biodiversity.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Identification of hotspots of crop wild relatives in Germany to promote their in situ conservation in a network of genetic reserves.Botanical studies · 2025Article
- Article
- Local tree cover predicts mosquito species richness and disease vector presence in a tropical countryside landscape.Landscape ecology · 2025Article
- Using biodiversity features to promote an Ecosystem-Based Conservation framework in terrestrial ecosystems.PloS one · 2025Article
- Article
- Productivity and Species Diversity of Plant Communities Are Higher inside than outside the West Ordos National Nature Reserve, Northern China.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Article
- Article
- Seasonal land use/land cover change and the drivers in Kafta Sheraro national park, Tigray, Ethiopia.Heliyon · 2022Article
- Assessment of the Ecological Protection Effectiveness of Protected Areas Using Propensity Score Matching: A Case Study in Sichuan, China.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Bird Assemblages in Coffee Agroforestry Systems and Other Human Modified Habitats in Indonesia.Biology · 2022Article
- Article
- A forest loss report card for the world's protected areas.Nature ecology & evolution · 2021Article
- Protected Areas Established by Local Communities through Direct Democracy Encompass Habitat for Species as Effectively as Protected Areas Planned over Large Spatial Scales.Environmental management · 2021Article
- Pervasive cropland in protected areas highlight trade-offs between conservation and food security.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Effectiveness of protected areas in conserving tropical forest birds.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Assessing the effectiveness of a national protected area network for carnivore conservation.Nature communications · 2020Article
- The role of protected areas in mitigating human impact in the world's last wilderness areas.Ambio · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Terrestrial protected areas (PAs) are cornerstones of global biodiversity conservation. Their efficacy in terms of maintaining biodiversity is, however, much debated. Studies to date have been unable to provide a general answer as to PA conservation efficacy because of their typically restricted geographic and/or taxonomic focus, or qualitative approaches focusing on proxies for biodiversity, such as deforestation. Given the rarity of historical data to enable comparisons of biodiversity before/after PA establishment, many smaller scale studies over the past 30 years have directly compared biodiversity inside PAs to that of surrounding areas, which provides one measure of PA ecological performance. Here we use a meta-analysis of such studies (N = 86) to test if PAs contain higher biodiversity values than surrounding areas, and so assess their contribution to determining PA efficacy. We find that PAs generally have higher abundances of individual species, higher assemblage abundances, and higher species richness values compared with alternative land uses. Local scale studies in combination thus show that PAs retain more biodiversity than alternative land use areas. Nonetheless, much variation is present in the effect sizes, which underscores the context-specificity of PA efficacy.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.