There is no unified evidence base to help decision-makers understand how the multiple components of natural capital interact to deliver ecosystem services. We systematically reviewed 780 papers, recording how natural capital attributes (29 biotic attributes and 11 abiotic factors) affect the delivery of 13 ecosystem services. We develop a simple typology based on the observation that five main attribute groups influence the capacity of natural capital to provide ecosystem services, related to: A) the physical amount of vegetation cover; B) presence of suitable habitat to support species or functional groups that provide a service; C) characteristics of particular species or functional groups; D) physical and biological diversity; and E) abiotic factors that interact with the biotic factors in groups A–D. ‘Bundles’ of services can be identified that are governed by different attribute groups. Management aimed at maximising only one service often has negative impacts on other services and on biological and physical diversity. Sustainable ecosystem management should aim to maintain healthy, diverse and resilient ecosystems that can deliver a wide range of ecosystem services in the long term. This can maximise the synergies and minimise the trade-offs between ecosystem services and is also compatible with the aim of conserving biodiversity

Understanding how farmers perceive climate change risks and how this affects their willingness to adopt adaptation practices is critical for developing effective climate change response strategies for the agricultural sector. This study examines (i) the perceptual relationships between farmers' awareness of climate change phenomena, beliefs in climate change risks and actual adaptation behaviour, and (ii) how these relationships may be modified by farm-level antecedents related to human, social, financial capitals and farm characteristics. An extensive household survey was designed to investigate the current pattern of adaptation strategies and collect data on these perceptual variables and their potential antecedents from private landowners in Veszprém and Tolna counties, Hungary. Path analysis was used to explore the causal connections between variables. We found that belief in the risk of climate change was heightened by an increased awareness of directly observable climate change phenomena (i.e. water shortages and extreme weather events). The awareness of extreme weather events was a significant driver of adaptation behaviour. Farmers' actual adaptation behaviour was primarily driven by financial motives and managerial considerations (i.e. the aim of improving profit and product sales; gaining farm ownership and the amount of land managed; and, the existence of a successor), and stimulated by an innovative personality and the availability of information from socio-agricultural networks. These results enrich the empirical evidence in support of improving understanding of farmer decision-making processes, which is critical in developing well-targeted adaptation policies.

While tick-borne zoonoses, such as Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis, present an increasing global concern, knowledge of their vectors’ distribution remains limited, especially for China. In this paper, we present the first comprehensive dataset of known tick species and their distributions in China, derived from peer-reviewed literature published between 1960 and 2017. We searched for journal articles, conference papers and degree thesis published in both English and Chinese, extracted geographic information associated with tick occurrence, and applied quality-control procedures to remove duplicates and ensure accuracy. The dataset contains 5731 records of geo-referenced occurrences for 123 tick species distributed over 1141 locations distinguished at four levels of scale i.e., provincial, prefectural, county, and township and finer. The most frequently reported tick species include Haemaphysalis longicornis, Dermacentor silvarum, Ixodes persulcatus, Haemaphysalis conicinna, Rhipicephalus microplus, and Rhipicephalus sanguineus sensu lato. The geographical dataset provides an improved map of where ticks inhabit China and can be used for a variety of spatial analyses of ticks and the risk of zoonoses they transmit.

Ticks are the most important pathogen vectors in Europe. They are known to be influenced by environmental factors, but these links are usually studied at specific temporal or spatial scales. Focusing on Ixodes ricinus in Belgium, we attempt to bridge the gap between current “single-sided” studies that focus on temporal or spatial variation only. Here, spatial and temporal patterns of ticks are modelled together.