Historical data to plan the recovery of the European eel

1. Long-term perspectives are critical to understand contemporary ecological systems. However, historical data on the distribution of biodiversity have only rarely been used in applied environmental sciences. 2. Here, we use historical sources to reconstruct the historical range of the European eel, a critically endangered species. We then use this baseline range to set range targets for the recovery of the European eel, as opposed to the abundance-based targets established by the European Union, which are constrained by the poor information on pre-collapse stocks. 3. We collected over 10 000 historical freshwater fish records from Spain in the 19th and 16th centuries, as well as over 25 000 records from the global biodiversity information facility (GBIF) to characterize historical and current European eel distribution in the Iberian Peninsula. We converted fish records into an eel presence–absence data set using subcatchment as spatial unit of analysis and modelled eel distribution in ...1. 要洞悉当代生态系统，长期视角至关重要。然而，生物多样性分布的历史数据极少应用于应用环境科学领域。2. 本研究依托历史资料，重构极危物种欧洲鳗鲡的历史分布范围。随后以此基线分布范围为参照，为欧洲鳗鲡的种群恢复制定分布范围目标，这与欧盟制定的基于种群丰度的恢复目标有所不同——后者受限于种群崩溃前的相关数据匮乏。3. 本研究收集了16世纪与19世纪西班牙境内的逾10000条历史淡水鱼类记录，同时从全球生物多样性信息设施（Global Biodiversity Information Facility, GBIF）获取超25000条相关记录，以刻画伊比利亚半岛欧洲鳗鲡的历史与当前分布格局。本研究以子汇水区作为空间分析单元，将鱼类记录转化为鳗鲡出现-缺失数据集，并对欧洲鳗鲡的分布开展建模……