A critique of 'countryside biogeography' as a guide to research in human-dominated landscapes

Proliferation of redundant terms in ecology and conservation slows progress and creates confusion. 'Countryside biogeography' has been promoted as a new framework for conservation in production landscapes, so may offer a replacement for other concepts used by landscape ecologists. We conducted a systematic review to assess whether the 'countryside biogeography' concept provides a distinctive framing for conservation in human-dominated landscapes relative to existing concepts. We reviewed 147 papers referring to countryside biogeography and 81 papers that did not. These papers were divided into categories representing three levels of use of countryside biogeography concepts (strong, weak, cited only) and two categories that did not use countryside biogeography at all but used similar concepts including fragmentation and matrix. We revealed few distinctions among groups of papers. Countryside biogeography papers made more frequent use of the terms 'ecosystem services', 'intensification' and 'land sparing' compared with non-countryside biogeography papers. Papers that did not refer to countryside biogeography sampled production areas (e.g. farms) less often, and this related to their focus on habitat specialist species for which patch-matrix assumptions were reasonable. Countryside biogeography offers a conceptual wrapper rather than a distinctive framework for advancing research in human-modified landscapes. This and similar wrappers such as 'conservation biogeography' and 'agricultural biogeography' risk creating confusion among new researchers, and can prevent clear communication about research. To improve communication, we recommend using the suite of well-established terms already applied to conservation in human-modified landscapes rather than through an interceding conceptual wrapper.