Assignment Task
Task
Abstract
Contradictory findings among scientific studies that address a particular issue may impede the conversion of science to management implementation. A systematic review of peerreviewed studies to generate a single outcome may overcome this problem. The contentious topic of the impact that a megaherbivore such as the savanna elephant have for other species and their environment can benefit from such an approach. After some 68 years, 367 peer-reviewed papers covered the topic and 51 of these papers provided sufficient data to be included in a meta-analysis.
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Introduction
The impact that iconic megaherbivores have on their environment and on other species carries considerable emotion and disagreement [1–2]. Park managers with a mandate to maintain biodiversity often face disagreements in the scientific literature on how to deal with the consequences of megaherbivore impact [3]. Consequently, to formulate policy they sometimes have to rely on experience and personal opinions [4] instead of scientific evidence [5]. Often, an option is to consider population control to curb impact, which creates great societal discord [2]. A systematic review of the scientific literature may empower conservation managers with evidence-based decisions, by combining the results of relevant and independent peer-reviewed studies to strengthen overall trends on impact and clarify some of the possible discrepancies among peer-reviewed studies [6].
Methods
We searched for scholarly papers on elephant impact using the Biological Sciences, Scopus, Zoological Record and Wildlife Ecology and Studies Worldwide search engines. Our search terms were “elephant”, “tree”, “vegetation”, “biodiversity”, “damage”, ‘impact” in the titles, abstracts and keywords of English written papers published up to December 2015 (final search was in April 2016).
Analysis
For the purpose of this meta-analysis we assigned any measurement made in the presence of elephant as treatment values, and those made in elephant absence as the control values [3]. We used the Cohen’s d statistic to standardize the effect sizes among each of the comparisons [27]. Cohen’s d uses a correction factor that penalizes studies with small sample sizes and gives more weight to studies with relatively larger sample sizes [27]. We then calculated a 95% CI for separately for structure, abundance, population dynamics, diversity and ecological processes associated with trees, herbs, vertebrates, invertebrates, and for soil properties. We interpreted impact as neutral if the 95% CI overlapped with zero. If the effect size was below or above zero, and the 95% CI did not overlap with zero, we regarded the impact as either negative or positive.
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