Social network analysis and the implications for Pontocaspian biodiversity conservation in Romania and Ukraine: A comparative study

Two out of six central stakeholders in Romania, namely the National Institute of Marine Research and Development "Grigore Antipa” (NIMR), and the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Authority (DDA) had a structurally favorable position to act as brokers based on betweenness centrality and Burt’s constraint scores (Table 3). Qualitative data, however, showed that these structurally well-positioned organizations were not engaging in brokering behavior with regard to Pontocaspian biodiversity. From network narratives we found that NIMR was a national focal point in many international bodies, such as UNESCO, the Black Sea Commission and GEF/Black Sea, among others, and very actively involved in the Black Sea Biodiversity conservation. However, its primary focus was on Marine and not on Ponto- caspian biodiversity conservation (S3 Table). In the studied network NIMR was collaborating with other organizations, e.g. with the Ministry of Environment, Danube Delta National Insti- tute for Research and Development and DDA on conservation planning in Natura 2000 sites, which sometimes incidentally involved PC habitats. But it did not have any incentive to initiate PC biodiversity relevant conservation actions, either due to low priority for PC biodiversity conservation or lack of knowledge on PC species. The second structurally well positioned organization to act as broker was DDA. This organization was a major local administrative body and was found to mostly request and receive information from other stakeholders but

rarely communicated the knowledge back to the network (Tables 2 and 3 and S3). From the narratives we learned that this organization was experiencing frequent institutional turnover and was politically constrained (see S2 Table), which complicated the establishment of rela- tionships. As a result, DDA was not found to facilitate any brokering behavior and served as a local protected area administrator and a data aggregator (Table 3). WWF accounted for high betweenness values in both networks; however, they did not directly bridge many disconnected nodes (indicated by their high Burt’s constraint scores). Table 3. Node-specific centrality measures and interaction categories from Romania. Abbr. Degree centrality No. ties Strong/weak Betweenness centrality Burt’s constraint Collaboration relations Communication Relations DDNI 13 (4, 9) 7/6 57 36 15 (6, 9) 14 (3, 11) NIMR 13 (6, 7) 9/4 89 25 16 (8, 8) 4 (1, 3) DDA 12 (9, 3) 8/4 54 25 10 (6, 4) 14 (13, 1) GAM 11 (5, 6) 7/4 45 32 13 (4, 9) 8 (3, 5) LAC † 11 (8, 3) 7/4 39 26 6 (4, 2) 11 (9, 2) GEcM 10 (4, 6) 7/3 20 36 8 (4, 4) 8 (0, 8) ANPA † 10 (4, 6) 6/4 64 36 9 (3, 6) 2 (2, 0) OUC 9 (3, 6) 7/2 48 32 8 (5, 3) 6 (2, 4) MOE 8 (5, 3) 2/6 0 66 8 (4, 4) 4 (4, 0) IBB 6 (2, 4) 2/4 0 100 6 (3, 3) 6 (2, 4) WWF 6 (4, 2) 4/2 49 50 7 (4, 3) 4 (3, 1) MWF 5 (3, 2) 2/3 0 100 4 (2, 2) 1 (1, 0) AZS 4 (2, 2) 2/2 0 100 4 (2, 2) 2 (1, 1) UB 3 (1, 2) 3/0 0 56 2 (2, 0) 2 (0, 2) MN 2 (1, 1) 2/0 0 50 1 (1, 0) 1, (0,1)

OC 2 (1, 1) 0/2 0 NA 1 (1, 0) 1, (0,1) CMSN 1 (1, 0) 1/0 0 100 0 1 (1, 0) Values between brackets under the ‘Degree centrality’ represent the in-degree and out-degree measures respectively. In bold are values higher than, or equal to the third quartile threshold (lower or equal to the first quartile threshold in case of ‘Burt’s constraint’). Burt’s constraint value for OC is not defined (NA) as the calculation was based only on strong ties (� 3). † Institutions that could not be interviewed for which relationships were imputed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221833.t003 PLOS ONE Social network analysis and the implications for Pontocaspian biodiversity conservation in Romania and Ukraine PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221833 October 23, 2020 12 / 20