Integrating animal physiology into the adaptive management of restored landscapes

Global-scale ecological changes and intensifying habitat destruction and have caused alarming declines in wildlife populations, resulting in a great need for concerted efforts towards their conservation. Despite this, animals are frequently overlooked in restoration and management initiatives and therefore populations often do not reassemble following disturbance without re-establishing habitat that meets their abiotic and biotic requirements. However, restoration ecologists broadly lack insight into the physiological mechanisms that can govern the responses of fauna to environmental change and management. Therefore, we conducted a literature search for studies reporting a mechanistic understanding of faunal habitat suitability and selection in restored landscapes to deliver an updated perspective on the integration of animal ecophysiology and restoration ecology. Of the 75,442 studies that we identified discussing ecological restoration in the last 50 years, only 8,627 (11.4%) did so in the context of fauna from which 912 studies (1.2%) examined habitat selection, 35 studies (0.05%) integrated physiology and only 15 studies (0.02%) explored thermal biology, despite temperature being one of the most pervasive drivers of physiological functioning. To combat this, we developed a conceptual framework that can guide restoration ecophysiology and promote innovative, multidisciplinary research through an established adaptive management structure. While physiological tools and approaches are currently underutilised in restoration practice, integrating them into ecological restoration, and environmental management more broadly, will offer exciting new opportunities to describe, explain and predict the responses of fauna to environmental change occurring, and that yet to come.