European countries are experiencing population decline and the tacit assumption in most analyses is that the decline may have detrimental welfare effects. In this paper we use a survey among the population in the Netherlands to discover whether population decline is always met with fear. A number of results stand out: population size preferences differ by geographic proximity: at a global level the majority of respondents favors a (global) population decline, but closer to home one supports a stationary population. Population decline is clearly not always met with fear: 31 percent would like the population to decline at the national level and they generally perceive decline to be accompanied by immaterial welfare gains (improvement environment) as well as material welfare losses (tax increases, economic stagnation). In addition to these driving forces it appears that the attitude towards immigrants is a very strong determinant at all geographical levels: immigrants seem to be a stronger fear factor than population decline.

The world population surpassed eight billion people in 2022, having doubled from its figure less than 50 years previously. Looking forward, it is projected that the world population will reach nine billion in 2038, and 10 billion in 2060, but it will peak around 10.3 billion in the 2080s before it then goes into decline. Regional variations The global population has seen rapid growth since the early 1800s, due to advances in areas such as food production, healthcare, water safety, education, and infrastructure, however, these changes did not occur at a uniform time or pace across the world. Broadly speaking, the first regions to undergo their demographic transitions were Europe, North America, and Oceania, followed by Latin America and Asia (although Asia's development saw the greatest variation due to its size), while Africa was the last continent to undergo this transformation. Because of these differences, many so-called "advanced" countries are now experiencing population decline, particularly in Europe and East Asia, while the fastest population growth rates are found in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, the roughly two billion difference in population between now and the 2080s' peak will be found in Sub-Saharan Africa, which will rise from 1.2 billion to 3.2 billion in this time (although populations in other continents will also fluctuate). Changing projections The United Nations releases their World Population Prospects report every 1-2 years, and this is widely considered the foremost demographic dataset in the world. However, recent years have seen a notable decline in projections when the global population will peak, and at what number. Previous reports in the 2010s had suggested a peak of over 11 billion people, and that population growth would continue into the 2100s, however a sooner and shorter peak is now projected. Reasons for this include a more rapid population decline in East Asia and Europe, particularly China, as well as a prolongued development arc in Sub-Saharan Africa.

United States US: Population: Growth data was reported at 0.713 % in 2017. This records a decrease from the previous number of 0.734 % for 2016. United States US: Population: Growth data is updated yearly, averaging 0.979 % from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2017, with 58 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1.702 % in 1960 and a record low of 0.711 % in 2013. United States US: Population: Growth data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United States – Table US.World Bank.WDI: Population and Urbanization Statistics. Annual population growth rate for year t is the exponential rate of growth of midyear population from year t-1 to t, expressed as a percentage . Population is based on the de facto definition of population, which counts all residents regardless of legal status or citizenship.; ; Derived from total population. Population source: (1) United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2017 Revision, (2) Census reports and other statistical publications from national statistical offices, (3) Eurostat: Demographic Statistics, (4) United Nations Statistical Division. Population and Vital Statistics Reprot (various years), (5) U.S. Census Bureau: International Database, and (6) Secretariat of the Pacific Community: Statistics and Demography Programme.; Weighted average;

The relative effect of top-down versus bottom-up forces in regulating and limiting wildlife populations is an important theme in ecology. Untangling these effects is critical for a basic understanding of trophic dynamics and effective management. We examined the drivers of moose (Alces alces) population growth by integrating two independent sources of observations within a hierarchical Bayesian population model. This analysis used one of the largest existing spatiotemporal datasets on ungulate population dynamics globally. We documented a 20% population decline over the period examined. Moose population growth was negatively density-dependent. Although the mechanisms producing density-dependent suppression of population growth could not be determined, the relatively low densities at which moose populations were documented suggests it could be due primarily to density-dependent predation. Predation primarily limited population growth, except at low density, where it was regulating. Harvest appeared to be largely additive and contributed to population declines. Our results, highlight how population dynamics are context dependent and vary strongly across gradients in climate, forest type, and predator abundance. These results help clarify long-standing questions in population ecology and highlight the complex relationships between natural and human-caused mortality in driving ungulate population dynamics.

Our global population is getting older, largely because of increasing life expectancies and declining birth rates. In 2018 the number of people older than 64 years old surpassed the number of children under 5 years old. This was the first time in history this was the case.

Age groups: - 0-4 years - 5-14 years - 15-24 years - 24-65 years - 65+ year

Data Source: Age Structure - Our World in Data

Full Data (1950-2021): Population by age group, including UN projections, World

For decades, biogeographers have sought a better understanding of how organisms are distributed among islands. However, the island biogeography of humans remains largely unknown. Here, we investigate how human population size varies among 486 islands at two spatial scales. At a global scale, we tested whether population size increases with island area and declines with island elevation and nearest mainland, as is common in non-human species, or whether humans escape such biogeographic constraints. At a regional scale, we tested whether population sizes vary among islands within archipelagos according to the positioning of different cultural source pools. Results illustrate that on a global scale, human populations increased in size with island area, similar to non-human species, yet they did not decline in size with elevation and distance to nearest mainland. At a regional scale, human population size often varied among islands within archipelagos relative to the location of different cultural source pools. Despite broad-scale similarities in the geographical distribution of human and non-human species among islands, results from this study indicate that the island biogeography of humans may also be influenced by archipelago-specific social, political and historical circumstances.

Disentangling the impact of Late Quaternary climate change from human activities can have crucial implications on the conservation of endangered species. We investigated the population genetics and demography of the Mediterranean monk seal (Monachus monachus), one of the world's most endangered marine mammals, through an unprecedented dataset encompassing historical (extinct) and extant populations from the eastern North Atlantic to the entire Mediterranean Basin. We show that Cabo Blanco (Western Sahara/Mauritania), Madeira, Western Mediterranean (historical range) and Eastern Mediterranean regions segregate into four populations. This structure is likely the consequence of recent drift, combined with long-term isolation by distance (R2 = 0.7), resulting from prevailing short-distance (less than 500 km) and infrequent long-distance dispersal (less than 1500 km). All populations (Madeira especially), show high levels of inbreeding and low levels of genetic diversity, seemingly declining since historical time, but surprisingly not being impacted by the 1997 massive die-off in Cabo Blanco. Approximate Bayesian Computation analyses support scenarios combining local extinctions and a major effective population size decline in all populations during Antiquity. Our results suggest that the early densification of human populations around the Mediterranean Basin coupled with the development of seafaring techniques were the main drivers of the decline of Mediterranean monk seals.

Human land transformation is one of the leading causes of vertebrate population declines. These declines are thought to be partly due to decreased connectivity and habitat loss reducing animal population sizes in disturbed habitats. With time, this can lead to declines in effective population size and genetic diversity which restricts the ability of wildlife to efficiently cope with environmental change through genetic adaptation. However, it is not well understood whether these effects generally hold across taxa. We address this question by repurposing and synthesizing raw microsatellite data from online repositories for 19 amphibian species sampled at 554 georeferenced sites in North America. For each site, we estimated gene diversity, allelic richness, effective population size, and population differentiation. Using binary urban-rural census designations, and continuous measures of human population density, the Human Footprint Index, and impervious surface cover, we tested for genera...

Describing the drivers of species loss and of community change are important goals in both conservation and ecology. However, it is difficult to determine whether exploited species decline due to direct effects of harvesting or due to other environmental perturbations brought about by proximity to human populations. Here we quantify differences in species richness of coral reef fish communities along a human population gradient in Papua New Guinea to understand the relative impacts of fishing and environmental perturbation. Using data from published species lists we categorize the reef fishes as either fished or non-fished based on their body size and reports from the published literature. Species diversity for both fished and non-fished groups decreases as the size of the local human population increases, and this relationship is stronger in species that are fished. Additionally, comparison of modern and museum collections show that modern reef communities have proportionally fewer fished species relative to 19th century ones. Together these findings show that the reef fish communities of Papua New Guinea experience multiple anthropogenic stressors and that even at low human population levels targeted species experience population declines across both time and space.

Madagascar MG: Fertility Rate: Total: Births per Woman data was reported at 4.184 Ratio in 2016. This records a decrease from the previous number of 4.241 Ratio for 2015. Madagascar MG: Fertility Rate: Total: Births per Woman data is updated yearly, averaging 6.237 Ratio from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2016, with 57 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 7.308 Ratio in 1965 and a record low of 4.184 Ratio in 2016. Madagascar MG: Fertility Rate: Total: Births per Woman data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Madagascar – Table MG.World Bank: Health Statistics. Total fertility rate represents the number of children that would be born to a woman if she were to live to the end of her childbearing years and bear children in accordance with age-specific fertility rates of the specified year.; ; (1) United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2017 Revision. (2) Census reports and other statistical publications from national statistical offices, (3) Eurostat: Demographic Statistics, (4) United Nations Statistical Division. Population and Vital Statistics Reprot (various years), (5) U.S. Census Bureau: International Database, and (6) Secretariat of the Pacific Community: Statistics and Demography Programme.; Weighted average; Relevance to gender indicator: it can indicate the status of women within households and a woman’s decision about the number and spacing of children.

Environmental degradation is proportional to the number of humans. Despite a general decrease in birth rates, the global population continues to grow. The tendencies of decrease are insufficient to achieve sustainability within a realistic time frame. High fertility is used for geopolitical advance and should be counteracted. In countries with insufficiently observed human rights, de facto reproductive coercion is used for birth rate elevation. International conflicts are motives to boost fertility, since the military needs young people. Birth control has been rejected in some countries on the grounds of presumed national interests, such as stronger defences and sovereignty, which can be bolstered by demographic growth. Smouldering international conflicts contribute to birth rate elevation in some regions. Of note, durable peace is needed to accomplish large environment protection initiatives, in particular, nuclear, thermonuclear, hydroelectric power plants, and other energy sources instead of oil and coal. Notwithstanding the prospects of cheaper and cleaner energy, there is currently no solution to a decline in regional and global populations. It seems to be inevitable that the global human population will become reduced during the present century. How this happens may be to some extent within our control. It will not remain so indefinitely.

Planetary health is crucial to human well-being, ecosystem sustainability, and biodiversity. The camera trap (CT) is an effective sampling tool used to monitor biodiversity through remote sensing. This study examines the potential drivers of CT research growth using a logistic model based on specific variables, including global gross domestic product (GDP), temperature growth, the declined living planet index (LPI), and human population growth (Pop), by referencing Web of Science (WoS) indexed publications. LPI was identified as a statistically significant driver (p-value < 0.01), suggesting that the concept of “understanding the creatures we share the planet with” influences CT studies. In addition, this study examines CT research trends using the bibliometric insights of 2,377 extracted WoS-indexed publications. We examined and visualized the network of co-occurrence of authors and authors’ countries, keywords, and keywords plus documents. Overall, this study assesses ecological and conservation informatics and provides a reference to scholars, policymakers, and decision-makers.

1. Population decline is associated with increased vulnerability to extinction, but also with possible density-, frequency-, or distance-related ‘rarity advantages’ that increase recruitment success as individuals become isolated from their congeners. Distinguishing between these alternatives (risk versus recovery of rare populations via demographic processes) has become critical, given how anthropogenic disturbances are causing population declines globally. 2. Here, we demonstrate how distance-related rarity advantages are evident in spatially isolated recruits of a canopy-dominant but regionally rare species of oak that appears to be suffering recruitment collapse. As distance from parent trees increased, seedlings had significantly more leaves and experienced reduced insect browsing and intraspecific competition. Long-term field-based experimental treatments revealed these advantages to be associated with rapid rates of juvenile maturation and survival that are unobserved in natural settings. 3. The discrepancy between the experimental and natural settings was explained by trophic collapse and habitat loss - two changes ubiquitous to many terrestrial ecosystems – that combine to concentrate vertebrate herbivores in habitat remnants and cause 100% juvenile mortality via the browsing of taller juveniles. Exotic grass cover, long associated with oak recruitment failure, significantly suppressed seedling height and leaf production, but appeared to delay mortality by hiding shorter seedlings from vertebrate herbivores. 4. Synthesis. Our work demonstrates how rarity advantages have the potential to positively influence the population performance of a declining species, but are short-circuited by intense herbivory associated with human-based environmental change. Regionally, there appear to be few existing conditions on the contemporary landscape that favor juvenile survival, suggesting ongoing recruitment difficulties without intervention. Our work clarifies how extinction risk can in some cases be best defined by how anthropogenic disturbances affect, and are offset by, demographic-based persistence mechanisms, than simply by present-day abundance or distribution. Duwyn-MacDougall JECOL data

Urbanization and associated environmental changes are causing global declines in vertebrate populations. In general, population declines of the magnitudes now detected should lead to reduced effective population sizes for animals living in proximity to humans and disturbed lands. This is cause for concern because effective population sizes set the rate of genetic diversity loss due to genetic drift, the rate of increase in inbreeding, and the efficiency with which selection can act on beneficial alleles. We predicted that the effects of urbanization should decrease effective population size and genetic diversity, and increase population-level genetic differentiation. To test for such patterns, we repurposed and reanalyzed publicly archived genetic data sets for North American birds and mammals. After filtering, we had usable raw genotype data from 85 studies and 41,023 individuals, sampled from 1,008 locations spanning 41 mammal and 25 bird species. We used census-based urban-rural designations, human population density, and the Human Footprint Index as measures of urbanization and habitat disturbance. As predicted, mammals sampled in more disturbed environments had lower effective population sizes and genetic diversity, and were more genetically differentiated from those in more natural environments. There were no consistent relationships detectable for birds. This suggests that, in general, mammal populations living near humans may have less capacity to respond adaptively to further environmental changes, and be more likely to suffer from effects of inbreeding.

The "Info_samples.txt" file gives information about the population, region and site coordinates for all the sampled individuals.

The "Red_Spruce_intersect_poly_snpeff.vcf.gz" file is a vcf file including the genotype likelihoods and annotations of all the polymorphic sites used in the study.

This archive contains code and data for reproducing the analysis for “Replication Data for Revisiting ‘The Rise and Decline’ in a Population of Peer Production Projects”. Depending on what you hope to do with the data you probabbly do not want to download all of the files. Depending on your computation resources you may not be able to run all stages of the analysis. The code for all stages of the analysis, including typesetting the manuscript and running the analysis, is in code.tar. If you only want to run the final analysis or to play with datasets used in the analysis of the paper, you want intermediate_data.7z or the uncompressed tab and csv files. The data files are created in a four-stage process. The first stage uses the program “wikiq” to parse mediawiki xml dumps and create tsv files that have edit data for each wiki. The second stage generates all.edits.RDS file which combines these tsvs into a dataset of edits from all the wikis. This file is expensive to generate and at 1.5GB is pretty big. The third stage builds smaller intermediate files that contain the analytical variables from these tsv files. The fourth stage uses the intermediate files to generate smaller RDS files that contain the results. Finally, knitr and latex typeset the manuscript. A stage will only run if the outputs from the previous stages do not exist. So if the intermediate files exist they will not be regenerated. Only the final analysis will run. The exception is that stage 4, fitting models and generating plots, always runs. If you only want to replicate from the second stage onward, you want wikiq_tsvs.7z. If you want to replicate everything, you want wikia_mediawiki_xml_dumps.7z.001 wikia_mediawiki_xml_dumps.7z.002, and wikia_mediawiki_xml_dumps.7z.003. These instructions work backwards from building the manuscript using knitr, loading the datasets, running the analysis, to building the intermediate datasets. Building the manuscript using knitr This requires working latex, latexmk, and knitr installations. Depending on your operating system you might install these packages in different ways. On Debian Linux you can run apt install r-cran-knitr latexmk texlive-latex-extra. Alternatively, you can upload the necessary files to a project on Overleaf.com. Download code.tar. This has everything you need to typeset the manuscript. Unpack the tar archive. On a unix system this can be done by running tar xf code.tar. Navigate to code/paper_source. Install R dependencies. In R. run install.packages(c("data.table","scales","ggplot2","lubridate","texreg")) On a unix system you should be able to run make to build the manuscript generalizable_wiki.pdf. Otherwise you should try uploading all of the files (including the tables, figure, and knitr folders) to a new project on Overleaf.com. Loading intermediate datasets The intermediate datasets are found in the intermediate_data.7z archive. They can be extracted on a unix system using the command 7z x intermediate_data.7z. The files are 95MB uncompressed. These are RDS (R data set) files and can be loaded in R using the readRDS. For example newcomer.ds <- readRDS("newcomers.RDS"). If you wish to work with these datasets using a tool other than R, you might prefer to work with the .tab files. Running the analysis Fitting the models may not work on machines with less than 32GB of RAM. If you have trouble, you may find the functions in lib-01-sample-datasets.R useful to create stratified samples of data for fitting models. See line 89 of 02_model_newcomer_survival.R for an example. Download code.tar and intermediate_data.7z to your working folder and extract both archives. On a unix system this can be done with the command tar xf code.tar && 7z x intermediate_data.7z. Install R dependencies. install.packages(c("data.table","ggplot2","urltools","texreg","optimx","lme4","bootstrap","scales","effects","lubridate","devtools","roxygen2")). On a unix system you can simply run regen.all.sh to fit the models, build the plots and create the RDS files. Generating datasets Building the intermediate files The intermediate files are generated from all.edits.RDS. This process requires about 20GB of memory. Download all.edits.RDS, userroles_data.7z,selected.wikis.csv, and code.tar. Unpack code.tar and userroles_data.7z. On a unix system this can be done using tar xf code.tar && 7z x userroles_data.7z. Install R dependencies. In R run install.packages(c("data.table","ggplot2","urltools","texreg","optimx","lme4","bootstrap","scales","effects","lubridate","devtools","roxygen2")). Run 01_build_datasets.R. Building all.edits.RDS The intermediate RDS files used in the analysis are created from all.edits.RDS. To replicate building all.edits.RDS, you only need to run 01_build_datasets.R when the int... Visit https://dataone.org/datasets/sha256%3Acfa4980c107154267d8eb6dc0753ed0fde655a73a062c0c2f5af33f237da3437 for complete metadata about this dataset.

Humans are regularly cited as the main driver of current biodiversity extinction, but the impact of historic volcanic activity is often overlooked. Pre-human evidence of wildlife abundance and diversity are essential for disentangling anthropogenic impacts from natural events. Réunion Island, with its intense and well-documented volcanic activity, endemic biodiversity, long history of isolation and recent human colonization, provides an opportunity to disentangle these processes. We track past demographic changes of a critically endangered seabird, the Mascarene petrel Pseudobulweria aterrima, using genome-wide SNPs. Coalescent modeling suggested that a large ancestral population underwent a substantial population decline in two distinct phases, ca. 125,000 and 37,000 years ago, coinciding with periods of major eruptions of Piton des Neiges. Subsequently, the ancestral population was fragmented into the two known colonies, ca. 1,500 years ago, following eruptions of Piton de la Fournaise. In the last century, both colonies declined significantly due to anthropogenic activities, and although the species was initially considered extinct, it was rediscovered in the 1970s. Our findings suggest that the current conservation status of wildlife on volcanic islands should be firstly assessed as a legacy of historic volcanic activity, and thereafter by the increasing anthropogenic impacts, which may ultimately drive species towards extinction. Methods Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) genotyping was carried out by Diversity Arrays Technology (DarT Pty Ltd, Canberra) using the DArTseq protocol. DArT library was prepared using DNA from 93 birds and the restriction enzymes PstI and SphI. Loci were aligned to the genome assembly of Calonectris borealis (family Procellariidae; GCA_013401115.1). The raw DArTseq data (67,095 SNPs) was filtered by the authors using the dartR v 2.1.4 R package (see manuscript for details). Four genomic datasets (dataset 1 – dataset 4) were generated and used for the downstream analyses (See Text S1 and Fig. S8 for details). Specimen metadata was collated during fieldwork.

Over the history of humankind cultural innovations have helped improve survival and adaptation to environmental stress. This has led to an overall increase in human population size, which in turn further contributed to cumulative cultural learning. During the Anthropocene, or arguably even earlier, this positive socio-demographic feedback has caused a strong decline in important resources, that - coupled with projected future transgression of planetary boundaries - may potentially reverse the long-term trend in population growth. Here we present a simple consumer/resource model that captures the coupled dynamics of stochastic cultural learning and transmission, population growth, and resource depletion in a changing environment. The idealized stochastic mathematical model simulates boom/bust cycles between low-population subsistence, high density resource exploitation and subsequent population decline. For slow resource recovery timescales and in the absence of climate forcing, the model predicts a longterm global population collapse. Including a simplified periodic climate forcing, we find that cultural innovation and population growth can couple with the climatic forcing via nonlinear phase-synchronization. We discuss the relevance of this finding in the context of cultural innovation, the anthropological record and longterm future resilience of our own predatory species. Methods This dataset contains the Matlab code used to solve the ordinary differential equations (ODE) (1-3) of the paper "Phase synchronization between culture and climate forcing" in Proceedings of the Royal Society, B. The prognostic equation describe the dynamics of population density, resources/carrying capacity and culture, respectively. The Matlab code represents an Euler discretization of the stochastic ODEs and a Weibull-distributed noise distribution is assumed for the cultural innovation term. All images in the paper can be reproduced - at least in a statistical sense - by changing the parameters in the code by the parameters indicated in the figure caption of the manuscript.

Almost 80% of the 4 billion projected increase in world population by 2100 comes from 37 Mid-African Countries (MACs), caused mostly by slow declines in Total Fertility Rate (TFR). Historically, TFR has declined in response to increases in wellbeing associated with economic development. We show that, when Infant Survival Rate (ISR, a proxy for wellbeing) has increased, MAC fertility has declined at the same rate, in relation to ISR, as it did in 61 comparable Other Developing Countries (ODCs) whose average fertility is close to replacement level. If MAC ISR were to increase at the historic rate of these ODCs, and TFR declined correspondingly, then the projected world population in 2100 would be decreasing and 1.1 billion lower than currently projected. Such rates of ISR increase, and TFR decrease, are quite feasible and have occurred in comparable ODCs. Increased efforts to improve the wellbeing of poor MAC populations are key.

This dataset consists of biannual qualitative surveys for the presence of the non-crop flora in and around pilot organic fields set in 2017 on the island of Mauritius. Plants were identified in-situ or collected for identification at The Mauritius Herbarium. The monitoring of ten fields or greenhouses scattered around the island and having different crops, is part of an effort from Mauritius NGO Le Velo Vert (LVV) to mainstream organic agriculture. LVV wants to highlight the importance of correct plant identification and the uses of non-crop species to improve and support organic farming. LVV believes sharing data will increase transparency and help cooperation of local, regional and global stakeholders of different fields to improve perspectives and multidisciplinarity, much needed to face the increasing problems of declining biodiversity and resources, and a growing human population.

This databasing effort has been funded by BID Africa Call 2017, grant BID-AF2017-SMA_0316 (https://www.gbif.org/project/aRCxBBF1BYU2C0us62ea4/getting-the-plants-to-all-dissemination-of-information-from-the-collection-of-the-mauritius-herbarium.)