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

EU budgets, which involve wider Pontocaspian taxa, will likely increase the PC conservation awareness and interest of different types of stakeholders in both countries to engage more in the conservation actions related to PC biota. Extending the Sturgeon networks to the other, non-charismatic Pontocaspian species may be a preferable course to initiate such action. Supporting information S1 Dataset. Raw data used for performing the network analyses. (XLSX) S1 Fig. Number of themes representing a relational link and the strength of the link. (TIF) S1 Table. Identified themes of stakeholder interactions and their descriptions. (DOCX) S2 Table. Identified themes of insufficient interaction and their description. (DOCX) S3 Table. Number of mentioning of interaction themes by individual stakeholders. (DOCX) S1 Text. Social network analysis methods. (DOCX) S1 Appendix. Survey questions. (PDF) Acknowledgments We would like to thank Professor Marius Stoica and Lea Rausch from the University of Bucha- rest, and Dr. Luis Ovidiu Popa, Alberto Martinez Gandara, Oana Paula Popa and Ana-Maria Krapal from the Grigore Antipa National Museum of Natural History for their invaluable assistance and support in Romania and helping to arrange meetings with stakeholders. We also thank all the interviewed stakeholders for finding time to meet and for providing honest and thorough answers to the survey questions. We acknowledge Cristina Sandu from the International Association for Danube Research for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this

paper. We would like to also acknowledge our colleagues from Naturalis Biodiversity Center: Nieke Knoben, for the assistance in developing the questionnaire and Caroline van Impelen for organizational support. Finally, we thank our reviewers who gave us invaluable comments that improved our work considerably. Author Contributions Conceptualization: Aleksandre Gogaladze, Niels Raes, Jacobus C. Biesmeijer, Frank P. Wesselingh. Formal analysis: Aleksandre Gogaladze, Niels Raes. Investigation: Aleksandre Gogaladze. Methodology: Aleksandre Gogaladze, Niels Raes, Jacobus C. Biesmeijer, Frank P. Wesselingh. Validation: Niels Raes, Jacobus C. Biesmeijer, Camelia Ionescu, Ana-Bianca Pavel, Mikhail O. Son, Natalia Gozak, Vitaliy V. Anistratenko, Frank P. Wesselingh. 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 16 / 20